“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CotonTchad can pretend not to have heard.
The offer from Elect Sport for Madaoua Tchiva was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
The offer from Elect Sport for Mahamat Adda was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CotonTchad can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Nobody at CotonTchad 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.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and CotonTchad will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
He trains hard, says the right things and goes home to an empty flat. Nobody at CotonTchad has done anything wrong, which is exactly what makes it so difficult to fix.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what CotonTchad can pretend not to have heard.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
AS PSI will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Hasanboy Tojiboyev has pre-agreed a move to CotonTchad, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Roy Katri has his answer from CotonTchad; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Finn McKenlay did not need any: 7.64, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Finn McKenlay has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Esaie Djikoloum 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
Nobody at CotonTchad 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.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. CotonTchad know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Francisco Ayala 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.
“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; CotonTchad are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 9.24 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Finn McKenlay, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.07
A mark of 8.07 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.
The phone has started ringing about Mahamat Adda again, and this time the name on the line is Renaissance. CotonTchad are listening politely and promising nothing.
Francisco Ayala 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.
3 away wins in a row. Travelling support is the truest kind, and this season it is being repaid in the only currency that counts.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Goukouni Abakar was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.05. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
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.
In brief
SquadSeth Clark has become a man the manager trusts
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” CotonTchad have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 38 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.68 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Finn McKenlay did not need any: 7.61, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Francisco Ayala 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.
15 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
6 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.
Nobody at CotonTchad is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason CotonTchad will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Francisco Ayala 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.
“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 CotonTchad know it.
Headers, blocks, tackles, interceptions — 15 of them, and not one goal behind him. The sort of performance that never makes a highlight reel and wins football matches.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 55 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
2 goals, and the second was the one that settled it. Marked 8.82, and he could have had a third with better luck at the near post.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
A brace, and Mahamat Adda takes the afternoon — 8.32
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mahamat Adda provided it, and the 8.32 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.15 at 37, and nobody on the pitch was better.
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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Seth Clark has improved at 26, 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at CotonTchad this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Francisco Ayala 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.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Seth Clark has improved at 25, 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. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Bicto Tyonga 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.
A new face in his position, and Esaie Djikoloum suddenly has to win back what he thought he owned. CotonTchad have promised nothing — clubs rarely do at this stage.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at CotonTchad would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.