Marked for Sam van de Camp
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match25 Sep 2027
The run at home goes on for PSV
29 matches unbeaten here. Every visiting manager is asked about it in the week before, which is precisely why it keeps going.
Match25 Sep 2027
A derby is never about the football alone, but the football helped: 4‑1, and the away end emptied early. Bragging rights renewed for another season.
Match25 Sep 2027
PSV make it 13 in a row
Momentum is a hard thing to buy and an easy thing to lose, and right now PSV have 13 straight wins of it.
Player ratings27 Sep 2027
There are goals, and then there are goals against that particular opponent. The PSV support have their bragging rights for a year and they know exactly whose name is on them.
Squad27 Sep 2027
3 goals in one game. The first was taken well, the second was taken greedily, and by the third the crowd were simply waiting for him to get the ball.
Squad27 Sep 2027
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Kodai Sano and PSV agree another 5 years.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Jerdy Schouten 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.
Squad27 Sep 2027
Nick Olij 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 PSV this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
The dugout27 Sep 2027
Ivan Perišić has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at PSV 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match11 Sep 2027
PSV cannot stop winning
10 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
The dugout13 Sep 2027
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” PSV have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match11 Sep 2027
PSV are at home on the road
6 straight away victories. Sides that win away are usually sides that can defend and can counter, and the table has begun to reflect what those journeys have earned.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Yarek Gąsiorowski is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 22 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.
Market13 Sep 2027
So close: Nick Olij’s move dies late
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. Zenit moved on, Nick Olij reports back to PSV, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Words exchanged at PSV
Patati 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.
Market13 Sep 2027
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Words at PSV training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sam van de Camp 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.
Squad13 Sep 2027
Armando Obispo has improved at 28, 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.
From our football correspondent
Triumph
Match4 Sep 2027
PSV make home a hard place to visit
26 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Match4 Sep 2027
PSV cannot stop winning
9 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
Match4 Sep 2027
Some goals win a match and some take one off somebody else. Kodai Sano scored in the 88th minute, Vitesse had already begun thinking about the journey home, and PSV took the lot.
Market6 Sep 2027
“I listened, I thought about it, and I am staying. That is the whole story.” The clubs had agreed a fee. Liam van Nistelrooij had not agreed to go, which turned out to be the part that mattered.
Player ratings6 Sep 2027
Nobody could get near Patati
Successful dribbles: 25. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad6 Sep 2027
Sam van de Camp is a better footballer than he was
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 18 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.
Boardroom6 Sep 2027
Window shuts: 8 in, 20 out at PSV
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 8 arrived, 20 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Market6 Sep 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market6 Sep 2027
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at PSV heard it as anything else.