The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Molde people have started saying his name in the past tense.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Petter Berg With will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Molde the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The offer from Kongsvinger for Hugo de Lisle 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Molde this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Valerenga have kept their man, and Molde go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Henrik Skogvold 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.
Rosenborg will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Evan Rossier has pre-agreed a move to Molde, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
Ajax go through and Volendam go home, 0‑3 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
The terraces18 Dec 2034
A cup hiding at Ajax leaves Volendam explaining themselves
0-3, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Volendam is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
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.
Squad18 Dec 2034
Words at Volendam training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Bielica 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.
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Volendam can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
3 kept out in the shoot-out, and a stadium that will still be describing them in twenty years. A goalkeeper only needs one of these to be remembered forever.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Volendam they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Leon Smars 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.
Squad13 Nov 2034
Raphaël Sarfo 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.
Go Ahead Eagles will keep picking him until June and will get nothing for him after it. Tobia Mogentale has pre-agreed a move to Volendam, and the only people who lose in that arrangement are the ones who let the contract run down.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Volendam is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Leon Smars 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.
Squad16 Oct 2034
Words at Volendam training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Daniel Bielica 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.
“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; Volendam are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Squad16 Oct 2034
5 new faces, and Volendam are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Saverio Domanico trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.25 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Volendam they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. James Lewis has agreed terms with Almere City for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Daniel Bielica 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.
Squad18 Sep 2034
Raphaël Sarfo 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.
Everybody saw it before anybody said it. At 37 the numbers say 3 points down on what he was, and the question for Volendam is how to handle a man they owe a great deal.
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.
“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 Volendam, and it is not being withdrawn.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Volendam is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Amadou Ba 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Pablo Silva has just signed for Volendam, and for once the answer mattered.
Squad11 Sep 2034
Raphaël Sarfo 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.
Volendam 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.