Marked for Yannick Lukaku
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 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.
Market7 Sep 2026
The offer was not close and it was refused without much discussion. Whether the second one is refused as quickly is another matter.
Market7 Sep 2026
The general version of this complaint is that a player wants more. The specific version names the thing: he wants to walk out under floodlights against clubs from other countries, and he has stopped pretending otherwise.
Squad7 Sep 2026
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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Sander Coopman 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
“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.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Vinícius Farias named in the team of the month
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Vinícius Farias is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 14. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Match5 Sep 2026
Nil-nil, and few chances worth the name. KAA Gent came to defend and left with exactly what they came for.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Aug 2026
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Mathieu David: 3 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Match26 Aug 2026
The cup run ends for Lokeren
1‑1 against Racing Genk, and the road stops here. Cup exits are quick deaths — no second leg, no next week, just the league from now until May.
Market31 Aug 2026
Lois Onana hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Lokeren can pretend not to have heard.
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 Lokeren this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match29 Aug 2026
OH Leuven left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Market31 Aug 2026
The name of Yannick Lukaku has come up in conversations Lokeren were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Words at Lokeren training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sander Coopman 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
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.09, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
It was his to settle and he did not settle it. A long walk back to the halfway line, and a considerably longer week.
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Player ratings3 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 35. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Match1 Aug 2026
Beaten 0‑3 by KV Oostende, and beaten everywhere it matters. The inquest starts on the training pitch on Monday morning.
Market3 Aug 2026
Benevento come back empty-handed
The bid was some way short and Lokeren did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Market3 Aug 2026
“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.
Market3 Aug 2026
Add another name to the list: Ipswich Town have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Kevin Castagne. The answer from Lokeren has not changed — yet.
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 Lokeren this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Vinícius Farias 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
“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.
Boardroom3 Aug 2026
Nobody left the Lokeren 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.