50 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Mehdi Bourabia 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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Anatole Abang 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.
18 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.
4 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.
57 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Mostapha Rezkallah Bott is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
At 24 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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Billal Messaoudi. 1‑0 against ES Mostaganem, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
7 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.
64 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.82 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
Marked 8.37 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
71 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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 Sep 2026
Words at JS Kabylie training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Anatole Abang 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 79 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.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
Mehdi Bourabia 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.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at JS Kabylie
The morning the pathway stops being a brochure and becomes a team sheet. Most of them will not be here in three years; all of them have already done the hard part, which was getting to today.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Yacine Guedioura is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Aissa Benayada has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Islam Djabou has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
87 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. JS Kabylie lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what JS Kabylie can pretend not to have heard.
The words a physio says slowly. 97 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.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what JS Kabylie can pretend not to have heard.
Mehdi Bourabia 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.
The name of Nadir Yakoubi has come up in conversations JS Kabylie were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Anatole Abang 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 104 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.
The offer from MB Rouissat for Lahlou Akhrib 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. JS Kabylie will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
Rashid Sumaila 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.
The words a physio says slowly. 112 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at JS Kabylie, another week without a signature from Babacar Sarr.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at JS Kabylie this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Anatole Abang 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.
Still no offer on the table, and Mohamed Amine Madani’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.