The words a physio says slowly. 87 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“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.
Baixinho 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.
Squad21 Dec 2026
Lois Boyata 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.
Youri Hazard wins it after the whistle should have gone
94 minutes played. Youri Hazard found the finish in time that only existed because of earlier delays, and Waasland-Beveren went from a point to nothing inside one movement.
Two goals and a mark of 8.87 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
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.
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.
Nobody at Lokeren 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.
Chances created: 6. Not on the scoresheet and not remotely anonymous — a passing performance that pulled a defence apart without leaving a mark on the column that gets read.
“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 The request is on a desk at Lokeren, and it is not being withdrawn.
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.
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.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 6 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
“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.
Thomas Breton 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
Words at Lokeren training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lois Boyata 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.
Racing Genk go through and Lokeren go home, 1‑4 the scoreline that did it. The dressing room will call the league the priority now, because that is what dressing rooms say.
1-4, and long before the end the away end had switched from encouragement to something considerably more pointed. Nobody rings a phone-in about losing narrowly.
“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 Lokeren, and it is not being withdrawn.
Centre-halves are allowed forward twice a season and are judged on what they do when they get there. Simon De Bruyne scored, was marked 7.17, and got back before anybody noticed he had gone.
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.
KV Kortrijk paid $300.0K and Lokeren took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.