Marked for Zinho Alderweireld
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad15 Mar 2027
“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.
Squad15 Mar 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Mouscron this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad15 Mar 2027
Eden Hazard 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.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad12 Oct 2026
Jason Onana breaks a bone — 91 days out
Brutal, unambiguous and, for all the horror of the moment, usually less career-shaped than the ligament everybody fears more. 91 days, a clean timeline, and a return date somebody can actually plan around.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 28. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
At 33 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 7.87 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Zinho Meunier goes up and wins it — 7.82
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 7.82 for the rest of it.
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 Mouscron this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad12 Oct 2026
David Bates 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.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Match26 Aug 2026
The cup run ends for Mouscron
0‑1 against Club Brugge, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Market31 Aug 2026
The bid was some way short and Mouscron 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 Mouscron, and it is not being withdrawn.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
Mouscron sell a favourite for $1.2M
The accountants will call it good business and they will be right, which is not the point anybody outside the boardroom is making. Romelu Batshuayi was one of the reasons people came, and $1.2M does not replace that by itself.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
The ground has had enough
“We travel everywhere and we get this.” 6 of the 25 senior players heard it walking off, and the ones who did not hear it were not playing.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Up for the corner, and Zinho Alderweireld delivers — 7.15
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Zinho Alderweireld scored, was marked 7.15, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
Match29 Aug 2026
4 matches without a win for Mouscron
The run now stands at 4, and the questions being asked around Mouscron are no longer polite ones.
Market31 Aug 2026
Lokeren paid $1.2M and Mouscron took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Market3 Aug 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market3 Aug 2026
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at Mouscron heard it as anything else.
Squad3 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 Mouscron this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
The manager makes an example of Youri Mignolet
“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.
Market3 Aug 2026
The interest is real enough to have reached print. Mouscron have said nothing, which in a transfer window is its own kind of answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Zinho 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.
Squad3 Aug 2026
“The easiest signature of my career.” Zinho Courtois and Mouscron agree another 1 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Market3 Aug 2026
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Lois Alderweireld has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Mouscron.
Match1 Aug 2026
It finished 1‑1, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.