Marked for Daniel Clemente
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad4 Sep 2028
A fracture rules Toni Fuidias out for 99 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cultural Leonesa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Joey Groenbast gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Joey Groenbast has just signed for Cultural Leonesa, and for once the answer mattered.
Match2 Sep 2028
No end in sight to Cultural Leonesa's wait for a win
6 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Cultural Leonesa has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings4 Sep 2028
No sign of nerves from Álex Marchal at 20 — 7.92
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Álex Marchal did not need any: 7.92, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Kelwin 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.
Squad4 Sep 2028
Words at Cultural Leonesa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Iván Calero 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.
Match2 Sep 2028
Cádiz held the lead for 2 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. Cultural Leonesa answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
Match2 Sep 2028
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Market4 Sep 2028
Joey Groenbast is 33 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad14 Aug 2028
A fracture rules Daniel Clemente out for 117 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cultural Leonesa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Kemokho Gassama is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Squad14 Aug 2028
Álex Marchal 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
Uneasy
Squad7 Aug 2028
A fracture rules Daniel Clemente out for 126 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Cultural Leonesa will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kelwin is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market7 Aug 2028
“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.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Joan Jordán 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 Cultural Leonesa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Yayo has improved at 24, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Market7 Aug 2028
Cultural Leonesa have let the market know Daniel Clemente can be had. No price in the advert, but everyone in the trade knows roughly what it says.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad7 Aug 2028
Kazuya Onohara damages knee ligaments — 56 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 56 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.
Boardroom7 Aug 2028
Interim Coach has until the next board meeting
What was said behind closed doors has now been said in front of a microphone. Everybody at Oliveirense can do the arithmetic, including the man it is aimed at.
Boardroom7 Aug 2028
The Oliveirense board call everybody in
Nothing has been announced and everybody understands what it means. A board that summons the whole football department on a Tuesday morning is a board that has stopped believing the problem will fix itself.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Arnas Voitinovičius is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad7 Aug 2028
André Paulo 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.
Squad7 Aug 2028
Adrien Louveau has improved at 28, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 4 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Boardroom7 Aug 2028
Oliveirense pull $709.3K back off the table
The money that was there in the summer is not there now. Nobody upstairs calls this a change of ambition, and everybody downstairs reads it as one.
Market7 Aug 2028
Nobody at Oliveirense has picked up the phone to Raniel
36 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Market7 Aug 2028
The best deals are the ones the accountants never notice. Adrien Louveau arrives at Oliveirense with his wages the only cost and something to prove the only clause.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad23 Aug 2027
Jonny Stuttle: 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.” Oliveirense have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Jonny Stuttle, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.77
A mark of 7.77 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Jonny Stuttle is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Market23 Aug 2027
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Oliveirense can pretend not to have heard.
Squad23 Aug 2027
André Paulo 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 Oliveirense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Words at Oliveirense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Frederico Venâncio 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.
Market23 Aug 2027
Raniel wants European nights
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Match21 Aug 2027
It needed Jonny Stuttle to find the net to bring anything home at all: 1‑1 against Penafiel, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Rui Mendes runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 12. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
The statement thanked him for his efforts and wished him well, in that order and in about that many words. The search begins immediately.
Match2 Aug 2027
Every point is an argument now for Oliveirense
Position 18 and 20 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.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Oliveirense have nobody left to take training
Not an interim appointment — an institution with an empty coaching office. Somebody unfamiliar will run the sessions this week, and the question of how a club gets into this state is one the board will be asked and will not answer.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
“Somebody picks the team on Saturday. This week it is me, and that is as far as I have thought.” No promises were made in either direction, which is how these usually begin.
Squad2 Aug 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Oliveirense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Jonny Stuttle 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.
Squad2 Aug 2027
Frederico Venâncio is playing like a man with something to prove
The oldest phenomenon in the sport: a new voice in the dressing room and suddenly everybody is available for everything. Frederico Venâncio is training as though the last team sheet never existed, because as far as he is concerned it does not.
Boardroom2 Aug 2027
Oliveirense pull $117.8K back off the table
The money that was there in the summer is not there now. Nobody upstairs calls this a change of ambition, and everybody downstairs reads it as one.
Market2 Aug 2027
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Daniel Clemente has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Oliveirense.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad26 Jul 2027
Rui Mendes 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 Oliveirense this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Words at Oliveirense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Frederico Venâncio 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.
Squad26 Jul 2027
Ricardo Rei knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ricardo Rei trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad28 Jun 2027
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 23 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 Jun 2027
At 29 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Market28 Jun 2027
Armando Lopes has left for Famalicao in a $400.0K deal. The accountants are pleased; the supporters are less certain.
Squad28 Jun 2027
Words at Oliveirense training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Frederico Venâncio 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.
Market28 Jun 2027
Raniel wants European nights
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.