Position 14 and 17 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“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 The request is on a desk at ES Mostaganem, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” ES Mostaganem have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad10 May 2027
Mamadou Sakho 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.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and ES Mostaganem know it.
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 Taher Ben Khelifa is on it.
The offer went to CS Constantine this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Ali Haroun 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.
Successful dribbles: 21. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
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.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Nobody at ES Mostaganem 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.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
In brief
Looking aheadA test against the best for ES Mostaganem
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Cuca and ES Mostaganem agree another 1 years.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Mamadou Sakho 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.
Idir Mokeddem 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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Anis Mahdi Mendil is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ES Mostaganem this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Arthylio Nadé was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
ES Setif left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Abdelhak Brahimi to a room that had heard them before.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mamadou Sakho was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Idir Mokeddem 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.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. ES Mostaganem will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
The dugout2 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Abdelhak Brahimi chose the glass-half-full version of 2‑2; the supporters left with the other one.
Cuca is 35 and has run out of things to prove. What he has left is where to stand, when to slow it down and what to say at half-time, and none of that is on a fitness chart.