0‑2 against FC Copenhagen. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at KV Oostende is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
Squad22 Mar 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.
Hérold Goulon and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
The dugout22 Mar 2027
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 0‑2 Hans Nainggolan left the room before anybody could ask which.
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.
He is the name in every column and on every phone-in, which is a heavy thing to carry at any age. Some footballers thrive on it; others are quietly finished by it.
“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 The request is on a desk at KV Oostende, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
Dedryck Lukaku 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.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. KV Oostende have done the hard part with Club Brugge, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Charleroi have kept their man, and KV Oostende go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Adnan De Bruyne was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Boardroom4 Jan 2027
Nobody left the KV Oostende dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
0‑1 against Willem II. Continental football is unforgiving about the things a domestic league lets a side get away with, and this was a night spent finding out which of those the club still has.
Match26 Nov 2026
After 12 games, KV Oostende finally taste it again
The first defeat in 12 matches. The manager will say it had to come; the dressing room will say it did not have to come against Willem II; the supporters will say both, in that order, all week.
Dedryck Lukaku 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.
Squad30 Nov 2026
Josué Kongolo 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.
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.
The dugout30 Nov 2026
Somebody else is better right now than Jason Meunier
The team sheet says it in public every week until it changes. The only version of being dropped a footballer cannot argue with, and the one he takes hardest.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. KV Oostende know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
A brace, and Eden Carrasco takes the afternoon — 7.97
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Eden Carrasco provided it, and the 7.97 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
Player ratings2 Nov 2026
Jasper Hartog, 20, plays like he has been here for years — 8.02
A mark of 8.02 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 20-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
At 20 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
8 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Squad2 Nov 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adnan De Bruyne 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.
Successful dribbles: 16. 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.
2‑1 against NK Varazdin, under lights, against people who do not speak the same language as the crowd. These are the evenings a club measures its decade in, and there are never as many of them as anybody expects.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 8 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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 KV Oostende, and it is not being withdrawn.
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.27 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
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.
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 Josué Kongolo.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Radja Kompany is on it.
Dedryck Lukaku 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Adnan De Bruyne was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Everybody at KV Oostende saw it before anybody said it, which is how this always goes. At 38 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.
7 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.
Nobody at KV Oostende 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.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Radja Kompany signs something — a contract at KV Oostende or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.