Marked for Stan van Dillen
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad11 Sep 2028
Mees Kreekels damages knee ligaments — 54 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 54 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.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Bram Nuytinck breaks a bone — 67 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 67 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Market11 Sep 2028
So close: Iman Griffith’s move dies late
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Groningen moved on, Iman Griffith reports back to NEC, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Match9 Sep 2028
4 matches without a win for NEC
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around NEC are no longer polite ones.
Squad11 Sep 2028
Urho Nissilä 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.
Squad11 Sep 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at NEC this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings11 Sep 2028
A performance of 8.82 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Match9 Sep 2028
It needed Başar Önal to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Heracles, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.
Player ratings11 Sep 2028
Danilo leaves them behind him
Shots: 8. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad21 Aug 2028
A knee injury of the worst kind for Mees Kreekels
76 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. NEC lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Bram Nuytinck breaks a bone — 92 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 92 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Adam Carlén says NEC went back on their word
“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.
Squad21 Aug 2028
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Sky Heesen is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Match19 Aug 2028
De Graafschap left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Kodai Sano was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.81. 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.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Ninety minutes of Başar Önal at his very best
Marked 8.10. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at NEC.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Koki Ogawa could have had three
12 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.
Boardroom21 Aug 2028
A clause somebody insisted on years ago, in a negotiation nobody remembers, has just paid NEC $1.2M. Dirk Proper left a long time ago; the paperwork stayed.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad5 Jul 2027
The words a physio says slowly. 148 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.
Boardroom5 Jul 2027
Pressure builds in the De Graafschap boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
The terraces5 Jul 2027
De Graafschap sell a favourite for $3.5M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Fedde de Jong was one of the reasons people came, and $3.5M does not replace that by itself.
Market5 Jul 2027
Heerenveen pay $3.5M, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad5 Jul 2027
“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.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Rick Jonkers is 23, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Squad5 Jul 2027
Ibrahim El Kadiri 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.
Market5 Jul 2027
“There is a gap, and pretending there is not helps nobody.” Neither side has moved, and the calendar is working for exactly one of them.
Market5 Jul 2027
Givendro Mercera is 19, and De Graafschap have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.