Marked for Charles Openda
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match26 Aug 2026
A 3‑2 win over KV Oostende, and the draw for the next round can be watched with some interest for once.
Match26 Aug 2026
KV Kortrijk win it in stoppage time
The board had gone up, the arguing had started, and then the ball was in the net in the 102th minute. KV Oostende will replay every second of the added time for a week.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
No sign of nerves from Charles Openda at 18 — 7.79
The hardest thing about being 18 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Charles Openda did not need any: 7.79, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
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 The request is on a desk at KV Kortrijk, and it is not being withdrawn.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Gilles Dewaele 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.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at KV Kortrijk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Boris Lambert 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.
The terraces31 Aug 2026
At 23 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.
Match29 Aug 2026
0‑1 to KV Mechelen, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.14, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Squad17 Aug 2026
Marko Ilić 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.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Ken Masui runs at them all day
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Words at KV Kortrijk training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Ken Masui 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.
Market17 Aug 2026
He is 18, and nobody at KV Kortrijk signed him for this season. Deals like this are judged in four years, by people who may not still be in the building.
Squad17 Aug 2026
5 new faces, and KV Kortrijk 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Luis Solignac dropped after a run of poor form
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.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 47. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Market17 Aug 2026
Utrecht come back empty-handed
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.
Squad17 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.
Market17 Aug 2026
KV Kortrijk paid $380.0K 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Mousa Vertonghen 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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“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.
Squad17 Aug 2026
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Axel Openda commits to Mouscron for another 3 years.
Match15 Aug 2026
A 1‑1 draw with Lokeren leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
Market17 Aug 2026
Mouscron have made Dries Chadli available for transfer. A career at this club is over in all but paperwork.