Marked for Floris Bos
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad2 Nov 2037
Jerdy Schouten damages knee ligaments — 165 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 165 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.
Squad2 Nov 2037
Sergiño Dest: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PSV have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Squad2 Nov 2037
A fracture rules Floris Bos out for 24 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PSV will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market2 Nov 2037
“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.
Squad2 Nov 2037
“The easiest signature of my career.” Ruben van Bommel and PSV agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Player ratings2 Nov 2037
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.90, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Match31 Oct 2037
PSV and Willem II take a point apiece
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings2 Nov 2037
Shots: 6, enough of them from close enough that a striker in form scores two. He is not a striker in form.
Player ratings2 Nov 2037
Shots: 6. 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.
In brief
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Player ratings
The one thing Ruben van Bommel could not do
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Boardroom
The PSV production line keeps running
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad26 Oct 2037
Jerdy Schouten damages knee ligaments — 173 days out
The words a physio says slowly. 173 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.
Match24 Oct 2037
A European night to remember for PSV
2‑0 against Zulte Waregem, 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.
Squad26 Oct 2037
A fracture rules Floris Bos out for 32 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PSV will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad26 Oct 2037
There were 7 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Player ratings26 Oct 2037
Couhaib Driouech, 35, rolls back the years — 9.19
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.19 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad26 Oct 2037
Lino Sousa says PSV 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2037
23 times he got in the way of something. Centre-halves get written about when they make mistakes and ignored when they do not, so an afternoon like this needs saying out loud: he is the reason the scoreline reads as it does.
Match24 Oct 2037
Ruben van Bommel among the goals in a wild afternoon
6 goals in one match, Ruben van Bommel on the scoresheet, and a scoreline that will look like a misprint. Neutrals could not have asked more of PSV and Ajax.
Player ratings26 Oct 2037
A performance of 9.12 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match17 Oct 2037
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 4‑1 against De Graafschap, and it could have been more.
Squad19 Oct 2037
A fracture rules Floris Bos out for 41 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PSV will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Player ratings19 Oct 2037
Couhaib Driouech, 35, rolls back the years — 9.32
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 9.32 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Squad19 Oct 2037
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at PSV this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad19 Oct 2037
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.
Squad19 Oct 2037
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Player ratings19 Oct 2037
Marked 9.17 — 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.
Player ratings19 Oct 2037
Ninety minutes of Rafael Camacho at his very best
Marked 8.82. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at PSV.
Player ratings19 Oct 2037
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.57, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match10 Oct 2037
PSV strike at the death to beat Groningen
There were 85 minutes on the clock and Groningen had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and PSV did not stop to explain themselves.
Squad12 Oct 2037
Floris Bos breaks a bone — 49 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 49 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings12 Oct 2037
Age has not caught Ryan Flamingo yet — 8.74
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.74 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad12 Oct 2037
Billy van Duijl gets the move he always wanted
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Billy van Duijl has just signed for PSV, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad12 Oct 2037
Tempers go at PSV
Couhaib Driouech 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.
Market12 Oct 2037
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at PSV is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Market12 Oct 2037
Justin Dijks hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what PSV can pretend not to have heard.
Squad12 Oct 2037
Words at PSV training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Wassim Bouziane 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.
Player ratings12 Oct 2037
One of those days for Virgil Aké
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 9.35, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad5 Oct 2037
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 10 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Match3 Oct 2037
A European lesson for PSV
0‑1 against Basel. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
Squad5 Oct 2037
A fracture rules Floris Bos out for 57 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason PSV will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad5 Oct 2037
Sergiño Dest has been here 14 seasons
409 appearances across 14 seasons in one shirt. Nobody builds a career like that on purpose any more; it happens to a certain kind of footballer at a certain kind of club.
Squad5 Oct 2037
“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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2037
Age has not caught Ryan Flamingo yet — 8.31
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.31 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings5 Oct 2037
Successful dribbles: 17. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The terraces5 Oct 2037
Every touch is being weighed now, in print and everywhere else. Some players grow into that and some are quietly ruined by it, and nobody knows which in advance.
Match3 Oct 2037
It needed Emre Ünüvar to find the net to bring anything home at all: 2‑2 against Utrecht, and half the dressing room will call it a point won.