$670.0K on the table at Angers SCO. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
João Ferreira 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.
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $1.6M for Joan Tincres, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Zuriko Davitashvili was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Irvin Cardona trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AS Saint-Etienne they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Zuriko Davitashvili 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.
Squad17 May 2027
Mahmoud Jaber 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 AS Saint-Etienne know it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Kalifa Coulibaly trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The language is coming and there is somebody to talk to in the dressing room. A footballer who feels at home plays like one, and it never shows up in a scouting report.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Aïmen Moueffek will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AS Saint-Etienne the goodbyes have quietly begun.
4 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at AS Saint-Etienne has to find a result from somewhere.
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
At 18 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mahmoud Jaber was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at AS Saint-Etienne can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
17 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.
“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 AS Saint-Etienne, and it is not being withdrawn.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Lucas Stassin and AS Saint-Etienne agree another 5 years.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Zuriko Davitashvili 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AS Saint-Etienne this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Position 6, 26 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Philippe Legrand after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AS Saint-Etienne, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Irvin Cardona 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.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Mahmoud Jaber 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. AS Saint-Etienne know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Le Mans FC next, and one man in the AS Saint-Etienne dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Nobody at AS Saint-Etienne 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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AS Saint-Etienne, and both men came out saying it was fine.
He asked about his future and was given an answer with minutes in it. The manager has now made a promise in a building where promises are remembered, and the clock on it has started.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.95 for the rest of it.
Julien Le Cardinal 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Mahmoud Jaber was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Irvin Cardona. 2‑0 against Red Star, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
There is a particular helplessness in conceding 2 times before the twentieth minute. Red Star tried to reorganise, AS Saint-Etienne did not allow it, and the result was written long before it was confirmed.
Successful dribbles: 17. 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 last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. AS Saint-Etienne have lost him in all but the paperwork.
$4.9M on the table at Red Star. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $5.2M — a club that wants Gaëtan Poussin enough to be asked twice.
Julien Le Cardinal 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.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Angers SCO have kept their man, and AS Saint-Etienne go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Mahmoud Jaber 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.