The offer from MC El Bayadh for Karim El Berkaoui 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 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.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Rostand Djooh trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Jobson 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 spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Rashid Obaid is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Amer Hassan is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Ismail Rashid is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Numbers do not stay secret in a dressing room and never have. He is not asking for more than he is worth; he is asking why somebody beside him is worth more, and at Al Dhafra that is a harder question to answer.
Where he used to play does most of his talking for him at Al Dhafra. The room defers to it, the kids study it, and the only thing that can puncture it is a bad month.
The name of Abderahmane Soussi has come up in conversations Al Dhafra were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Karim El Berkaoui and Al Dhafra agree another 2 years.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Al Dhafra this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Rostand Djooh was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
36 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.