Feyenoord have accepted the money. What Go Ahead Eagles do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Go Ahead Eagles they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“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 The request is on a desk at Go Ahead Eagles, and it is not being withdrawn.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Marco Speelman has agreed terms with Fortuna Sittard for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
Nassim Aït Mouhou 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.
Go Ahead Eagles offered $270.0K; Almere City said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Squad15 Jan 2035
Dean James 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. NEC have kept their man, and Go Ahead Eagles go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Go Ahead Eagles they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Go Ahead Eagles can pretend not to have heard.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dean James was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Interim Coach after 0‑1, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Cup ties wait for somebody to seize them, and Jim Koller obliged against NAC Breda. 2‑1 on the night, and the name in the next round’s hat is Go Ahead Eagles.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Go Ahead Eagles they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
A defender on the scoresheet, which happens rarely enough that everybody in the ground remembers who took the corner. 1 for him, and a mark of 7.68 for the rest of it.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
Nassim Aït Mouhou 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.
In brief
SquadDean James falls out with a teammate over standards
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Go Ahead Eagles is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Go Ahead Eagles can pretend not to have heard.
Jurgen Ekkelenkamp 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.
Marked 7.94. There is a kind of forward whose value only shows up when you count what he was involved in rather than what he finished, and this is the day that argument makes itself.
Squad6 Nov 2034
Dean James 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 at Go Ahead Eagles saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 37 the decline is real and measurable — 3 points — and the only question left is how the club handles somebody it owes a great deal to.
“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 Go Ahead Eagles, and it is not being withdrawn.
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $483.3K of what Go Ahead Eagles paid for Robert Henderson is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
Groningen wanted more than $4.2M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Boardroom4 Sep 2034
Deadline passes with 32 signed and 34 gone
That is the business done at Go Ahead Eagles until the window opens again. Whether it was enough will be answered on Saturdays rather than in a column, and the first Saturday is close.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Lévi Ntumba reports back to Go Ahead Eagles with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: AZ keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dean James 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.