Marked for Bruno Marchand
From our football correspondent
Steady
Match24 Oct 2026
0‑1 against Polissia. 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 31. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match26 Oct 2026
24 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Squad26 Oct 2026
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.
Match24 Oct 2026
Mouscron made KV Oostende work for it, but the scoreboard read 2‑1 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad26 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Mousa Batshuayi
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adnan Tielemans 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
A performance of 8.31 does not come along often, and when it does the rest of the team becomes scenery. He was magnificent.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Ninety minutes of Adnan Tielemans at his very best
Marked 8.05. Players have careers without a single afternoon like this in them, and he has just had one in front of everybody at KV Oostende.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 29. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad12 Oct 2026
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.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adnan Tielemans 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.
Match10 Oct 2026
KV Oostende hit back inside 2 minutes
KAA Gent held the lead for 2 minutes, which is not long enough to enjoy it. KV Oostende answered before the celebration had properly finished, and the shape of the afternoon changed with it.
Squad12 Oct 2026
5 new faces, and KV Oostende are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Laurent Meunier has become a man the manager trusts
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.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 43. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match3 Oct 2026
1‑0 against Keflavik, and a performance that will be described to people who were not there for the rest of the season. Yannick Mertens was at the centre of the description.
Match3 Oct 2026
There is no crueller way to lose a football match. KV Oostende scored in the 90th minute, the restart barely happened, and the away end was still standing when the whistle went.
Market5 Oct 2026
It is the most legitimate ambition in the sport and the hardest for most clubs to satisfy. Hans Vanaken wants continental football; whether KV Oostende can provide it is a question about the next two seasons, not about him.
Squad5 Oct 2026
He will be fined, he will apologise, and he will play on Saturday. The order of those three tells you everything about what a football club actually values.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Laurent Meunier 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 Oct 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Bruno Marchand commits to KV Oostende for another 1 years.
Squad5 Oct 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Triantafyllos Tsapras 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.
Player ratings5 Oct 2026
Marked 7.55 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, KV Oostende had the best player on the pitch.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market7 Sep 2026
“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.
Market7 Sep 2026
Add another name to the list: KV Kortrijk have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Bruno Marchand. The answer from KV Oostende has not changed — yet.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 23. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Laurent Meunier 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.
Match5 Sep 2026
3 matches without a goal for KV Oostende
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Match5 Sep 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager makes an example of Arne Cassaert
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Radja Onana 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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The plan did not have a place for Arne Cassaert
Nobody at KV Oostende is suggesting he is out of form. The manager simply wanted somebody with a different set of qualities for ninety specific minutes, and there is nothing a player can train to fix that.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 34. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match26 Aug 2026
KV Kortrijk ended it 0‑1. The season narrows to the league now, and everyone in the ground knew it before the final whistle.
Squad31 Aug 2026
There were 6 saves in it, and at least three that had no business being saves at all. The ten outfield players owe him a drink and they know it.
Market31 Aug 2026
KV Kortrijk come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and KV Oostende did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market31 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
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.
Match29 Aug 2026
Club Brugge left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Adnan Tielemans 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Yannick Mertens ran the middle of the pitch — 6.61
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 10 combined actions and a mark of 6.61, and not one of them will make a highlights package.