22 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. ES Setif lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at ES Setif is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
A 1‑0 win over CS Constantine, earned rather than given, and the sort of afternoon that sends everyone home talking about next week instead of this one.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at ES Setif is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 8 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
Anis Fatahine and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad24 Mar 2036
Words at ES Setif training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iyad Mohamed is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Houssem Tarzout is on it.
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now ES Setif have 7 straight wins of it.
Player ratings10 Mar 2036
A brace, and Ibrahim Adel takes the afternoon — 8.97
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Ibrahim Adel provided it, and the 8.97 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at ES Setif is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
4 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
23 goals and a season average of 7.47 will do that. The space he used to find has gone; he keeps scoring anyway, which is the mark of the real thing.
Player ratings11 Feb 2036
A brace, and Miguel Menino takes the afternoon — 8.52
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Miguel Menino provided it, and the 8.52 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Rayane Abdelmadjid Mahrouz scored, was marked 7.94, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at ES Setif is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Shain Chetioui has, at ES Setif, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. ES Setif have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The offer from CS Constantine for Rayane Abdelmadjid Mahrouz was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at ES Setif, and it is not being withdrawn.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Rachid Haddad will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around ES Setif the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Iyad Mohamed was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
15 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. ES Setif lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
The match ball belongs to Moaz Abdelsalam, whose 3 goals turned a difficult afternoon into a procession.
Player ratings14 Jan 2036
A brace, and Miguel Menino takes the afternoon — 8.33
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Miguel Menino provided it, and the 8.33 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. ES Setif have lost him in all but the paperwork.
12 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Keryane Mansouri will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around ES Setif the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Iyad Mohamed and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. ES Setif know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
4 months left, and both sides know what that means: every week without a signature, the fee ES Setif could ask drops and the wages Dylan Tevreden can ask rise.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Mourad Atal trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.