47 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. USM Khenchela lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Badreddine Souyad 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 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.
At 23 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
The words a physio says slowly. 55 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 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.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reece Braithwaite 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.
Boardroom2 Nov 2026
209% of the income goes out in wages at USM Khenchela
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.
30 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.
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Hadji Chekal 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.
Defensive actions: 17, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad26 Oct 2026
9 new faces, and USM Khenchela are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
The unbeaten run reaches 6. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reece Braithwaite 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.
Marked 8.71 — 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. USM Khenchela told Reece Braithwaite something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Two goals and a mark of 9.32 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Hamid Djaouchi provided it, and the 8.39 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
1 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Zin Eddine Meddour is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Khenchela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two goals and a mark of 8.98 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Miguel Sansores 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.
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.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Hadji Chekal 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.
Boardroom5 Oct 2026
342% of the income goes out in wages at USM Khenchela
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.
It needed Luis Alberto Márquez to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against MC Oran, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon Réda Boumechra will want back
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.02 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Khenchela 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.
Successful dribbles: 20. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings28 Sep 2026
Franck Etouga was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.71. 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Khenchela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Defensive actions: 22, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Squad21 Sep 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reece Braithwaite 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 chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
JS Kabylie left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ahmida Zenasni 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.
Defensive actions: 25, and a clean sheet at the end of it. A centre-half's best afternoons look like nothing happening, which is precisely the point.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
4 academy players handed senior numbers at USM Khenchela
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.
The terraces7 Sep 2026
USM Khenchela spend $200.0K on the signing the town wanted
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $200.0K for Mohamed Mouaataz Khenniche, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reece Braithwaite 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.
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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Adel Belaili 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. Abderrahmane Mrezigue 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. Nassim Brahimi 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.
Ahmida Zenasni 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.
8 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
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 nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what USM Khenchela can pretend not to have heard.
Réda Boumechra 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 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Khenchela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at USM Khenchela training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ahmida Zenasni 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.
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at USM Khenchela would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at USM Khenchela this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Oussama Litim and USM Khenchela 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 USM Khenchela 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.
5 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.