Position 2, 63 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at PSV, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at PSV hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
De Graafschap made PSV work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad5 Mar 2029
Ángel Alarcón 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 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.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. PSV had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
Sepp van den Berg 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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PSV heard it as anything else.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at PSV has been clear about where Calvin Bassey stands, which is more than many ever get.
The manager kept them in and said what needed saying. A response is expected on Saturday, and if it does not come the questions move upstairs.
The dugout1 Jan 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Donny Aké left the room before anybody could ask which.
8 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
“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.
Match7 Oct 2028
Another one collected away from home
5 on the bounce on the road for PSV. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PSV heard it as anything else.
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.
8 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
PSV offered $64.1M; Leicester City said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 35 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“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.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PSV heard it as anything else.
Sepp van den Berg 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 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ringo Meerveld was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
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.
Rarely has this fixture seen a display like it: 3‑0 against Cambuur, and it could have been more.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
A brace, and Marcel Ruiz takes the afternoon — 8.44
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Marcel Ruiz provided it, and the 8.44 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around PSV people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Player ratings21 Aug 2028
Bendegúz Kovács, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 8.59
A mark of 8.59 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Add another name to the list: CFR Cluj have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Dennis Man. The answer from PSV has not changed — yet.
Mateo Chávez 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 21-year-old it feels ownership of. Bendegúz Kovács 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at PSV can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. PSV will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
PSV have gone to AZ with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Groningen have kept their man, and PSV go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PSV heard it as anything else.
Mateo Chávez 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 deal fell over and took everything it was going to pay for with it. The club wakes up with the same owner, the same budget and rather less goodwill.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Calvin Bassey is on it.
None of them will be seen by anybody outside the training ground for three years, most of them will never play a senior match, and one of them might change the club. That is the whole proposition, and it is why academies exist.
AZ have gone to Crystal Palace with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
AZ and PSV have settled on $26.6M. The rest belongs to the player and his agent, and a supporter who has watched one of these before knows not to buy the shirt yet.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Sheffield Wednesday have kept their man, and AZ go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Market12 Jun 2028
Sem Steijn arrives at AZ in a $26.7M statement of intent
There comes a point where a club either backs its own ambition or admits it does not have any. AZ have paid $26.7M for Sem Steijn, which is the loudest way there is of saying which one it chose.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. AZ have lost him in all but the paperwork.
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $1.0M of what AZ paid for Adriano Bertaccini is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
Bendegúz Kovács has gone, the accounts have $30.7M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
The chase for Bendegúz Kovács ended with $30.7M changing hands and AZ out of reasons to say no. The supporters will judge the fee the only way that matters: on Saturdays.
AZ did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $26.4M for Mateo Chávez, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
“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.
$9.7M on the table at Utrecht. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Groningen paid $15.5M and PSV took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Mateo Chávez has, at PSV, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $9.2M — a club that wants Jordan Bos enough to be asked twice.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Bendegúz Kovács from AZ for $30.7M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
The clubs have shaken hands with Feyenoord; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
18 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AZ lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The offer from PSV for Matěj Šín 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
$7.9M on the table at Heracles. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
$6.5M on the table at Cambuur. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
AZ have gone to Utrecht with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AZ hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
$26.4M settles it between the clubs for Mateo Chávez
AZ have accepted the money. What PSV do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
PSV have gone to Utrecht with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
“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.
The offer from ADO Den Haag for Liam van Nistelrooij 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.
35 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. AZ lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Qualification is secured, and next season the big floodlit nights are continental ones. For the players it is a stage; for the accounts it is a lifeline; for the supporters it is passports.
Not a month, not a run of form — a whole season of being the best 21-year-old anybody in this division could put on a pitch. This is the honour that gets mentioned for the rest of his career.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. AZ will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bendegúz Kovács is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Nobody at AZ 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.
9 clean sheets from 21 appearances at Fehervar. 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 words a physio says slowly. 43 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.
Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“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 AZ, and 12 appearances in 48 say he has earned the hearing.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Mateo Chávez is on it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Hessel de Wit was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The words a physio says slowly. 53 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.
A season average of 7.42 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. AZ know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ro-Zangelo Daal was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Nikola Vlašić is on it.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. AZ know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 24 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and AZ know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ro-Zangelo Daal 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.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Oussama Targhalline is on it.
21 appearances at Fehervar and the goals have stopped going in. AZ lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AZ, and both men came out saying it was fine.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. AZ will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Player ratings21 Feb 2028
A brace, and Nikola Vlašić takes the afternoon — 9.31
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Nikola Vlašić provided it, and the 9.31 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
11 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
16 games, 3 goals, and a squad option that has arrived without a fee attached. The interesting question at AZ now is not whether he plays but who he displaces.
In brief
Player ratingsMateo Chávez was on a different afternoon to everybody else
The dugoutThe team sheet said everything about Ro-Zangelo Daal
Albirex Niigata have accepted the money. What AZ do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 95 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AZ can pretend not to have heard.
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.
9 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
The offer from PSV for Matěj Šín 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
$4.7M was the most the club would pay and Zwolle were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
4 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AZ heard it as anything else.
Calvin Stengs 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.
Position 2, 38 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
The offer went to Twente this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Bendegúz Kovács did not need any: 8.56, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
AZ have gone to Zwolle with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and AZ have had the benefit of it.
Two goals and a mark of 9.01 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 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.
Bart van Rooij 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.
“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.
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.
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.
A goalkeeper's career is counted in the games nobody scored in, and Rome-Jayden Owusu-Oduro now has 24 of them across 143 appearances. Nothing about that number was luck.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Bendegúz Kovács is 20, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Bart van Rooij 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.
“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 AZ, and 4 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. AZ told Isak Jensen something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Calvin Stengs is on it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mateo Chávez signs something — a contract at AZ or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at AZ would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Bendegúz Kovács did not need any: 7.93, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
Marked 8.07 — 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.
“I watch every AZ game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at De Graafschap runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. AZ told Lewis Schouten something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
“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.
Calvin Stengs 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.
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 am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at AZ, and 3 appearances in 17 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at AZ 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 have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one AZ will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Rome-Jayden Owusu-Oduro signs something — a contract at AZ or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Bart van Rooij 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 23 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.
Marked 8.21 — 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.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
Nobody at AZ 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.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $15.8M has been paid because Bart van Rooij is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Bart van Rooij has, at AZ, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 14 arrived, 46 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AZ heard it as anything else.
Calvin Stengs 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.
A deal that was a phone call from completion at lunchtime was dead by midnight. AZ will try again when the window opens; Utrecht may not be selling by then.
“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 AZ, and 0 appearances in 13 say he has earned the hearing.
Heerenveen have accepted the money. What PSV do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
PSV asked and Young Boys said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
$7.1M was the most the club would pay and AZ were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
He is 23 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.
“I was told straight, and I would rather have it straight.” The manager at PSV has been clear about where Sergiño Dest stands, which is more than many ever get.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and AZ know it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ro-Zangelo Daal was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Andrea Natali 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.
Nobody at AZ 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.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at AZ. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
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 AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
13 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“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 AZ, and 1 appearances in 5 say he has earned the hearing.
Nobody at AZ 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.
This is the season the town will measure the next twenty against. The trophy travels home with the squad, and the route through the streets was agreed days ago.
Qualification is done, and next season the floodlights come on for something bigger. A stage for the players, oxygen for the accounts and a passport for everybody else.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. AZ will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
A season average of 7.22 at an age when most of his year group are still in the youth team. AZ know what they have, and so, by now, does everybody else.
Successful dribbles: 35. 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.
Calvin Stengs 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.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether AZ can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ro-Zangelo Daal 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.
Loan watch26 Apr 2027
Kiyani Zeggen’s loan is measured in nothing happening
13 clean sheets from 37 appearances at Stockport County. 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.
“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 AZ, and 0 appearances in 12 say he has earned the hearing.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and AZ know it.
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.