Marked for Daniel Schlupp
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad2 Apr 2040
A knee injury of the worst kind for Samuel Asamoah
17 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Inter Allies lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Match2 Apr 2040
Position 16, 19 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Market2 Apr 2040
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad16 May 2039
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Inter Allies this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 May 2039
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Squad16 May 2039
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Osman Annan, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad11 Apr 2039
Jonathan Kudus: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Inter Allies have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Market11 Apr 2039
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad11 Apr 2039
Eugene Amankwah was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad21 Mar 2039
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Inter Allies may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad21 Mar 2039
Eugene Amankwah was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad21 Mar 2039
Jeffrey Partey falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Squad21 Mar 2039
Maxwell Azafokpe has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Inter Allies will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The terraces21 Mar 2039
Everybody has an opinion about Karabo Molefe
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.