The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Excelsior is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
12 clean sheets from 19 appearances at Sparta Rotterdam. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
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 hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Emre Ünüvar did not need any: 8.09, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Valentin Sulzbacher will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Excelsior the goodbyes have quietly begun.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 19-year-old it feels ownership of. Emre Ünüvar has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Successful dribbles: 19. 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.
Half the programme played, position 8, 20 on the board. Doubling it is the sum every supporter has done and the only one nobody at the club will do out loud.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brahim Ghalidi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The mood at Excelsior has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Excelsior heard it as anything else.
Peer Koopmeiners 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.
Successful dribbles: 22. 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.
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.
Every club 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 it has been tried.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brahim Ghalidi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Labinot Bajrami has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Brahim Ghalidi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
Nobody at Excelsior will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“I did not come here to warm up in front of people.” He is out of contract eventually, he is old enough to count the weeks, and Excelsior will have to give him a reason to stay or an exit.
7 clean sheets from 10 appearances at Sparta Rotterdam. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Excelsior they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Peer Koopmeiners and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Marko Pjaca. 1‑0 against Heerenveen, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
1‑1 against OB, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
10 without a win is the sort of run that changes how a town talks about its club, and Sparta Rotterdam were the afternoon it stopped. Nothing is fixed by one result and everything feels different by one.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Emre Ünüvar did not need any: 7.81, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Excelsior they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
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.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Emre Ünüvar. 1‑0 against Sparta Rotterdam, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Emre Ünüvar.
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.
8 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
1‑3 against Austria Wien, and an evening that measured the gap rather than the ninety minutes. Nothing about it was a disgrace and nothing about it was close.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Excelsior they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Excelsior 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 Brahim Ghalidi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
12 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The mood at Excelsior has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
The words a physio says slowly. 24 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Brahim Ghalidi has, at Excelsior, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
Peer Koopmeiners 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.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation Excelsior are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Excelsior, and 0 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
In brief
Player ratingsThe afternoon belonged to Marko Pjaca
The dugoutNoah Naujoks has become a man the manager trusts
The offer from Macarthur FC for Max Balard 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 nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what NAC Breda can pretend not to have heard.
Terms were offered and declined. Whether it was the wages, the role or the town, nobody at Viktoria Plzen is saying, and nobody at NAC Breda is enjoying the guessing.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Leo Greiml was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He is not being dropped. There is simply nowhere in the formation NAC Breda are playing to put a man who does what he does, which is a harder thing to be told than any team sheet.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NAC Breda this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at NAC Breda training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leo Greiml 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 team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Ajax.
Ajax next, and one man in the NAC Breda dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at NAC Breda. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
In brief
The dugoutMoussa Soumano asks for a word with the manager