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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Aymen Sliti was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Excelsior are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Guilliano Cairo 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 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.
In brief
The dugoutJordy Bruijn knocks on the manager's door
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.
6 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Aymen Sliti 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.
Nemanja Milojević 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.
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Excelsior told Denso Kasius something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Arnaut Dijks chose the glass-half-full version of 0‑0; the supporters left with the other one.
21 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Excelsior lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Successful dribbles: 23. 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.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 11 actions, 7.05, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
Something was said to Jordy Bruijn and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
At 19 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Excelsior training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Szymon Włodarczyk 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.
Successful dribbles: 18. 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.
Jan Plug 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.
“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.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Arnaut Dijks to a room that had heard them before.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Willem II.