“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Anderlecht can pretend not to have heard.
Anderlecht have gone to RFC Liege 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.
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. Anderlecht will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
The offer went to RAAL La Louviere 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 rules permit it and it stings anyway. Michiel Haentjens has agreed terms with Charleroi for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
At 24 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
Going 2 down does something to a side, and what it usually does is finish them. Not here. Anderlecht rebuilt the afternoon goal by goal, and Westerlo had no answer to any of it.
The hardest thing about being 19 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Enzo Sternal did not need any: 7.65, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
“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 Anderlecht, and 2 appearances in 9 say he has earned the hearing.
The hardest thing about being 21 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Cedric Hatenboer did not need any: 7.60, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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.
KV Kortrijk held the lead for 4 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. RSCA Futures answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Gassimou Sylla and RSCA Futures agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Cedric Hatenboer and RSCA Futures agree another 5 years.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cedric Hatenboer was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ibrahim Kanaté 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 supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 1‑3, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
“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.
Nobody at RSCA Futures is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
Ibrahim Kanaté, 19, plays like he has been here for years — 7.79
A mark of 7.79 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 19-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
He is 19 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.
2 goals before the ground had finished arriving. RWDM spent the rest of the afternoon playing a match that had already been decided, and everybody in the stadium knew it.
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 dugout3 Aug 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Kevin Nainggolan, on a 2‑1 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
“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 RSCA Futures will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
In brief
The dugoutAnas Tajaouart asks for a word with the manager