Manchester United pay $28.8M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Two goals and a mark of 8.69 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
4 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Roger Ibañez 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.
9 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Hajer tried to reorganise, Al-Ahli did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Marked 8.29 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
28 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Ahli lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
29 combined actions and 6.96. The job he did is the one that shows up as other people looking good, and the only reliable way to notice it is to watch what happens on the afternoons he is missing.
Roger Ibañez 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.
16 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
Nobody at Al-Ahli is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
97 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Ahli lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
2 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Al-Ahli hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Franck Kessié 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Ahli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
122 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Al-Ahli lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Roger Ibañez 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.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words at Al-Ahli training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Franck Kessié 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.
Riyad Mahrez damages knee ligaments — 143 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 143 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
The name of Feras Al-Brikan has come up in conversations Al-Ahli were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al-Ahli this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
In brief
SquadWords at Al-Ahli training over how hard people work