The offer from Waasland-Beveren for Nathan-Dylan Saliba 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Tom Vandenberghe has just signed for Anderlecht, and for once the answer mattered.
Mario Stroeykens 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 general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad19 Jun 2028
Luuk de Jong 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 easiest signature of my career.” Nathan-Dylan Saliba and Anderlecht agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
60 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. KAA Gent lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Parfait Guiagon wants continental football; whether KAA Gent can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at KAA Gent this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at KAA Gent heard it as anything else.
Squad5 Jun 2028
Atsuki Ito 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.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” KAA Gent have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The offer from KV Mechelen for Tom Vandenberghe 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 ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Adnan Januzaj 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 KAA Gent this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad31 Jan 2028
Atsuki Ito 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.
“I watch every KAA Gent game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Waasland-Beveren runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
Adnan Januzaj 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 want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at KAA Gent heard it as anything else.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
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 did not go to Standard Liege to sit and watch. I want to come back to KAA Gent and fight for my place.” 3 appearances in 16 matches say the rest.
Player ratings6 Dec 2027
Aimé Omgba was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.73. 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.