Marked for Aïssa Boudechicha
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Oct 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Aïssa Boudechicha
27 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; ES Setif are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Adama Niane in a row with a teammate
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 Setif this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mohamed Benlebna is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 13. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match3 Oct 2026
Nil-nil, and few chances worth the name. JS Kabylie came to defend and left with exactly what they came for.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad28 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Aïssa Boudechicha
36 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Daniel Gnahoua is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Adama Niane 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Merouane Zerrouki 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.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
A performance of 8.04 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match26 Sep 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad21 Sep 2026
A knee injury of the worst kind for Aïssa Boudechicha
43 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.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
A debut Yusuf Akçiçek will not forget — 7.43
There is exactly one of these per career and it does not usually go like this. 0 on the scoresheet, 7.43 beside the name, and a crowd that had never seen him before chanting it by the end.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Oussama Bouguerri is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Adama Niane in a row with a teammate
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 Setif this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at ES Setif training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Kamohelo Mokotjo 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.
Match19 Sep 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Adama Niane. 1‑0 against USM Alger, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.