Marked for Mabrouk Rouaï
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad23 Nov 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Romain Thomas 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.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Mabrouk Rouaï knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Valenciennes, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad26 Oct 2026
Romain Thomas 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
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 ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 20. 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
Crisis
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 51. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market5 Oct 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Match3 Oct 2026
6 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Match3 Oct 2026
5 matches without a goal for Valenciennes
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 5 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Squad5 Oct 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Valenciennes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Kylian Kouakou is 19, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at Valenciennes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stredair Appuah Owusu 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.
Match3 Oct 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
Wages eat 86% of everything Valenciennes earn
There is a figure at which a wage bill stops being ambitious and becomes the reason nothing else is possible, and this club has reached it. Nothing is left over for a transfer, a stand or a rainy afternoon.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 40. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
No sign of nerves from Ylan El Hadary at 19 — 7.90
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Ylan El Hadary did not need any: 7.90, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Romain Thomas commits to Valenciennes for another 2 years.
Squad3 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Valenciennes this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Valenciennes training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Stredair Appuah Owusu 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Mabrouk Rouaï
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Market3 Aug 2026
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Market3 Aug 2026
The clock runs on Jean Louchet's contract
49 months left and silence from upstairs — no offer, no talks, nothing for his people to answer. Clubs that let a calendar do their negotiating usually end up negotiating with the calendar.
Match1 Aug 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Bourg-Peronnas leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.