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.
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.
Squad25 Dec 2028
Words at Excelsior training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rayane Bounida 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 paperwork is done long before the player is. Siegert Baartmans has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Excelsior have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
3 games without scoring. Strikers stop looking up, midfielders take the extra touch, and every shot that clears the bar is followed by a groan that has been building since the last goal.
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.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andrea Natali, and the manager let it.
The dugout25 Dec 2028
Somebody else is better right now than Robert Skov
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
“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 The request is on a desk at Excelsior, and it is not being withdrawn.
Rayane Bounida 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.
100 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Lewis Schouten was one of the reasons people came, and $22.6M does not replace that by itself.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sem Steijn was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Add another name to the list: Zwolle have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Nick Olij. The answer from AZ has not changed — yet.
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.
37 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Excelsior lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Excelsior will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Excelsior had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Ajax, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Rayane Bounida 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 have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Excelsior can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Excelsior asked and Ajax said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The words a physio says slowly. 46 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.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Excelsior will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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.
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.
Excelsior asked and PSV said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The name of Calvin Raatsie has come up in conversations Excelsior were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
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.
In brief
The dugoutKoen Jansen asks for a word with the manager
“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.
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.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. PSV moved on, Wesley Hoedt reports back to AZ, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
The offer from Zwolle for Andrea Natali 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.
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.
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 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 watch every AZ game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Sturm Graz runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“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.
“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.
He left as a boy and has come back still knowing where the away end is. Most signings have to be explained to a town; this one needed a photograph and nothing else.
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Yoël van den Ban had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
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 have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at AZ can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
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.
The offer from ADO Den Haag for Peer Koopmeiners 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 AZ can pretend not to have heard.
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: Nikola Vlašić from Torino for $55.8M, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
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.
Andrea Natali 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.
“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.