The Heracles Sentinel
Squad7 Sep 2026
Alec Van Hoorenbeeck damages knee ligaments — 15 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 15 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.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Erik Ahlstrand was unplayable
Successful dribbles: 26. 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.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Window shuts: 19 in, 1 out at Heracles
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 19 arrived, 1 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Ryan Fredericks turns down Heracles
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Hull City keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Tempers go at Heracles
Luka Kulenović 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.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Door shut on Giovanni González
Heracles asked and River Plate said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad7 Sep 2026
A row about effort at Heracles
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Thomas Bruns was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad7 Sep 2026
9 new faces, and Heracles 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 dugout7 Sep 2026
No hiding place for Sam Hendriks
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Sam Hendriks, and the manager let it.
In brief
- The dugout Luuk Van de Beek: “We have to be better”
- Match No goals between Heracles and Roda
- Looking ahead Yvandro Borges Sanches goes back to face NEC