Marked for Jeremy Eilander
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Boardroom28 May 2029
Pressure builds in the Zwolle boardroom
The directors have stopped offering the manager public warmth. In football that is usually the stage before the short statement.
Match28 May 2029
Every point is an argument now for Zwolle
Position 16 and 27 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
Squad28 May 2029
103 days out for Axel Lindahl after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Zwolle will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market28 May 2029
“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 The request is on a desk at Zwolle, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad28 May 2029
A falling-out at Zwolle
Stije Resink and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 May 2029
Younes Namli 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.
The dugout28 May 2029
Tijs Velthuis knocks on the manager's door
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Zwolle, and both men came out saying it was fine.
The dugout28 May 2029
“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.
Market28 May 2029
The list is a quiet document with a loud meaning. Silvinho Esajas may talk to anybody who asks, and everybody at the club understands what that means.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Crisis
The terraces21 May 2029
Supporters organise against the Zwolle board
A bad atmosphere can be waited out. A group of people meeting afterwards to decide what to do about it cannot, and everybody in the building knows which stage this is.
Squad21 May 2029
111 days out for Axel Lindahl after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Zwolle will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Market21 May 2029
Bram Rovers 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 Zwolle can pretend not to have heard.
Squad21 May 2029
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zwolle this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad21 May 2029
Younes Namli 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.
Squad21 May 2029
“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; Zwolle are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad19 Mar 2029
Tempers go at Zwolle
Ro-Zangelo Daal 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.
Squad19 Mar 2029
Words at Zwolle training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Younes Namli 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 dugout19 Mar 2029
Stije Resink gets it from the manager
“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.
Match17 Mar 2029
A bad afternoon for Zwolle against Twente
0‑1 to Twente, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Looking ahead19 Mar 2029
Zwolle face Excelsior in the game that matters most
Two sides from the bottom of the table, three points, and an afternoon that will be described afterwards as a relegation decider by whoever loses it.
Squad19 Mar 2029
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Zwolle can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The dugout19 Mar 2029
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 0‑1 defeat, delivered by Denzel Klaassen to a room that had heard them before.
Player ratings19 Mar 2029
Successful dribbles: 11. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout19 Mar 2029
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match15 Apr 2028
No end in sight to Zwolle's wait for a win
8 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Zwolle has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Words exchanged at Zwolle
Stije Resink 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 dugout17 Apr 2028
The manager makes an example of Koen Kostons
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match15 Apr 2028
0‑2 to Sparta Rotterdam, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad17 Apr 2028
A row about effort at Zwolle
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Silvinho Esajas was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Player ratings17 Apr 2028
Nobody could get near Adam Sosna
Successful dribbles: 17. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad17 Apr 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Jeremy Eilander commits to Zwolle for another 4 years.
Squad17 Apr 2028
Zwolle are still strangers to each other
8 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout17 Apr 2028
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Denzel Klaassen after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match20 Nov 2027
No end in sight to Zwolle's wait for a win
7 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Zwolle has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings22 Nov 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Jeremy Eilander is a better footballer than he was
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.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Thijs Oosting 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.
Match20 Nov 2027
3 matches without a goal for Zwolle
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Market22 Nov 2027
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Zwolle, another week without a signature from Naj Lulić.
The dugout22 Nov 2027
It is not much of a headline and it is the reason players believe the next promise. Zwolle told Jasper Schendelaar something would happen and then it happened, which in this industry passes for remarkable.
Squad22 Nov 2027
Torben Bos in a row with a teammate
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Zwolle this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout22 Nov 2027
“It is not the end of the world and it is not good enough. Both of those are true.” The manager, after a 0‑0 draw, said the honest thing and then went to say it again inside.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad13 Sep 2027
11 saves, and a scoreline the ten men in front of him had no right to. Goalkeepers only get noticed on the bad days; this was one of the other ones.
Match11 Sep 2027
The 86th minute, half the ground already edging towards the exits, and Younes Namli decided nobody was going anywhere. Twente had no time left to answer.
Player ratings13 Sep 2027
Age has not caught Younes Namli yet — 8.28
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.28 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Squad13 Sep 2027
At 20 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.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Words exchanged at Zwolle
Thijs Oosting 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.
Transfer targets13 Sep 2027
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Match11 Sep 2027
It finished 2‑1, and it was Younes Namli’s afternoon: on the scoresheet when it mattered, and the reason the points belong to Zwolle.
The terraces13 Sep 2027
The crowd has taken to Naj Lulić
At 19 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.
Loan watch13 Sep 2027
“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 Zwolle, and 2 appearances in 11 say he has earned the hearing.
In brief
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The dugout
The manager’s verdict
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The dugout
No hiding place for Björn Mellema
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Squad
Ryan Thomas falls out with a teammate over standards