Marked for Erick Abundiz
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match7 Nov 2029
A European night to forget for Sint-Truiden
0‑3. Noah play this football every year and it showed in every part of the pitch. The lesson is expensive and, for a club at this stage, probably necessary.
Player ratings12 Nov 2029
Successful dribbles: 26. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad12 Nov 2029
Andrés Ferrari 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.
Squad12 Nov 2029
Ryotaro Ito 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 dugout12 Nov 2029
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Andréa Librici, and the manager let it.
Boardroom12 Nov 2029
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Squad12 Nov 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; Sint-Truiden are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
The dugout12 Nov 2029
Andrés Ferrari has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Sint-Truiden 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 dugout12 Nov 2029
“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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout5 Nov 2029
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Sint-Truiden have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The dugout5 Nov 2029
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Market5 Nov 2029
Ilias Sebaoui wants to know where this is going
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at Sint-Truiden hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Squad5 Nov 2029
Ryotaro Ito 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.
Squad5 Nov 2029
Words at Sint-Truiden training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ilias Sebaoui 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.
Match5 Nov 2029
Position 7, 19 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
Squad5 Nov 2029
A place in the month's best eleven for Andrés Ferrari
Four or five weekends of consistency, judged against everybody in the division doing his job. Andrés Ferrari has come out of that comparison in the side, and Sint-Truiden have had the benefit of every one of those afternoons.
The dugout5 Nov 2029
Ryotaro Araki has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Sint-Truiden 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.
Match3 Nov 2029
A 1‑1 draw with Racing Genk leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match19 Sep 2029
Sint-Truiden do the business in Europe
1‑0. Continental football is where a club finds out what it actually is, and Sint-Truiden came through the finding-out well against Radnicki 1923.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Ryotaro Ito and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Words at Sint-Truiden training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ilias Sebaoui 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.
Match22 Sep 2029
0‑1 to KV Oostende, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings24 Sep 2029
Arbnor Muja beats them one at a time
Successful dribbles: 18. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Player ratings24 Sep 2029
Ninety minutes of Andrés Ferrari at his very best
Marked 8.01. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at Sint-Truiden.
The dugout24 Sep 2029
The team sheet said everything about Shogo Taniguchi
Warm-up bib, ninety minutes of watching, and a handshake at the end that fooled nobody. Big matches tell you who a manager trusts; this one told Shogo Taniguchi.
The dugout24 Sep 2029
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Adnan Alderweireld left the room before anybody could ask which.
Squad24 Sep 2029
Leo Kokubo wants out of the spotlight
The ambition story running the other way, and the one nobody tells: a footballer asking for a smaller stage, fewer cameras and a crowd that does not turn. It is not weakness and it is very rarely reported as anything else.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market16 Jul 2029
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Westerlo waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Sint-Truiden is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Transfer targets16 Jul 2029
The deal with Lokeren died in the treatment room. Nobody will say what was found and everybody in the game will find out by Friday.
The dugout16 Jul 2029
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Market16 Jul 2029
Erick Abundiz 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 Sint-Truiden can pretend not to have heard.
Transfer targets16 Jul 2029
Sint-Truiden asked and Westerlo said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad16 Jul 2029
Ryotaro Ito 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 Jul 2029
At 23 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.
Squad16 Jul 2029
At 27 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.
Squad16 Jul 2029
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ilias Sebaoui was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market2 Jul 2029
Only the photograph left for Joedrick Pupe
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Joedrick Pupe will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around Sint-Truiden the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Transfer targets2 Jul 2029
Everything agreed with Standard Liege, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Market2 Jul 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 Sint-Truiden, and it is not being withdrawn.
Transfer targets2 Jul 2029
Sint-Truiden had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Swansea City, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Squad2 Jul 2029
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Shogo Taniguchi and Sint-Truiden agree another 2 years.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Ryotaro Ito and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad2 Jul 2029
Alouis Diriken has improved at 25, which nobody expected
Careers are supposed to plateau and then decline, and the players who ignore that are always the ones who were listening on the training ground. 3 points of it, over months, at an age where the direction normally only goes one way.
Squad2 Jul 2029
At 23 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.
Boardroom2 Jul 2029
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad12 Mar 2029
Ryotaro Ito 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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Ilias Sebaoui 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.
Market12 Mar 2029
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Sint-Truiden, another week without a signature from Ryan Merlen.
Squad12 Mar 2029
Sint-Truiden are still strangers to each other
5 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.
Squad12 Mar 2029
“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Sint-Truiden can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
The dugout12 Mar 2029
Ryan Merlen knocks on the manager’s door
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Ryan Merlen trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.