Marked for Adnan Chadli
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad29 Mar 2027
Leander Alderweireld 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.
Market29 Mar 2027
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Kevin Mignolet’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
Squad29 Mar 2027
Adnan Chadli 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad8 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Michaël Heylen commits to KV Oostende for another 2 years.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leander Alderweireld 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Michaël Heylen 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.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
7.95, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
Market1 Feb 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.
Player ratings1 Feb 2027
Successful dribbles: 21. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Market1 Feb 2027
Sint-Truiden pay $360.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Laurent Batshuayi 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.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Adnan Chadli gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad1 Feb 2027
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
Match30 Jan 2027
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad1 Feb 2027
The captaincy has been taken off Thorgan Castagne. KV Oostende will call it a decision about the team; a dressing room reads it as a verdict on a man.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match9 Jan 2027
2 goals to the good, and then a slow surrender of everything that had been earned. Youri Castagne will not be the one blamed for it, but nobody at KV Oostende escapes the conversation that follows a collapse like this.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Adnan Chadli: that is not what I was promised
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” KV Oostende have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Match9 Jan 2027
No end in sight to KV Oostende's wait for a win
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at KV Oostende has to find a result from somewhere.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Up for the corner, and Thorgan Castagne delivers — 7.84
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Thorgan Castagne scored, was marked 7.84, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Market11 Jan 2027
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Leander Alderweireld 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.
Match9 Jan 2027
It finished 3‑3, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
Player ratings11 Jan 2027
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad11 Jan 2027
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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market28 Dec 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.
Match28 Dec 2026
KV Oostende are in real trouble now
Position 14, 24 points, and a fixture list with fewer games left in it than excuses. The arithmetic is not cruel yet, but it has stopped being kind.
Squad28 Dec 2026
“I was told what my role would be, and I signed on that basis. It has not happened.” A grievance with a date attached is the hardest kind to settle.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Thorgan Castagne 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.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at KV Oostende training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Leander Alderweireld 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.
Match26 Dec 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market23 Nov 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.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.83 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Match21 Nov 2026
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.
Match21 Nov 2026
Whatever happens, KV Oostende do not lose
8 games unbeaten now. Some were earned and some were survived, but a habit is forming — and habits are the hardest thing in football to play against.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Laurent Batshuayi 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.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Leander Alderweireld 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.
Match21 Nov 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Racing Genk leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Player ratings23 Nov 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Adnan Chadli 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
Steady
Squad26 Oct 2026
A fracture rules Thorgan Castagne out for 39 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason KV Oostende will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Market26 Oct 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Laurent Batshuayi 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.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Leander Alderweireld 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
2‑2, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
Squad26 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Adnan Chadli
“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.