Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dedryck Lukaku 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.
Eden Onana 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.
Everybody at KV Oostende saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 35 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.
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.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at KV Oostende, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Adnan De Bruyne will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around KV Oostende the goodbyes have quietly begun.
The unbeaten run reaches 7. Some of them were wins and some were escapes, but a side that refuses to lose is a side other dressing rooms talk about.
Squad22 Feb 2027
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Dedryck Lukaku 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at KV Oostende this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Every run ends on an afternoon somebody had marked down as routine. This one went 5 matches, which is long enough that a town had stopped counting, and short enough that it will remember exactly who stopped it.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Dedryck Lukaku was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 13 combined actions and a mark of 7.28, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Something was said to Christian Meunier and then it happened. In this industry that passes for remarkable, and the dressing room noticed faster than any supporter could.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
6 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 one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
“It was not right for me. I am not going to explain why to anybody except the people I owe an explanation to.” A deal agreed between two clubs, and a player who declined to be part of it.
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 93th minute. Club Brugge will replay every second of the added time for a week.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what KV Oostende can pretend not to have heard.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Eden Onana, 21, plays like he has been here for years — 7.62
A mark of 7.62 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 21-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.09 at 35, and nobody on the pitch was better.
The fee was agreed and the flight was looked at — and then the phone stopped ringing. KAA Gent moved on, Hans Carrasco reports back to KV Oostende, and everybody pretends Monday is just Monday.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. KAA Gent have kept their man, and KV Oostende go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
18 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. KV Oostende lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what KV Oostende can pretend not to have heard.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. KV Oostende have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The offer from Racing Genk for Christian Meunier 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.
Mouscron did not want to sell and the number is why they did. $7.5M for Eden Carrasco, and the expectation that arrives with him is the kind no amount of settling-in period softens.
He is going to Twente, the club has $7.7M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
KV Oostende offered $2.3M; Club Brugge 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Standard Liege have kept their man, and KV Oostende go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
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.
In brief
The terracesThe town asked, and KV Oostende paid $7.5M