Marked for Patrick Hateboer
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Squad7 Sep 2026
19 days out for Patrick Hateboer after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Heracles will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
Window shuts: 19 in, 1 out at Heracles
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 19 arrived, 1 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. ADO Den Haag have kept their man, and Heracles go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Transfer targets7 Sep 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Empoli keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad7 Sep 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 Heracles this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Match5 Sep 2026
Beaten 0‑1, and beaten fairly. The manager kept his words short afterwards, which was probably wise.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 18. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout7 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Alexandre Guedes, and the manager let it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Alec Van Hoorenbeeck has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Squad31 Aug 2026
A fracture rules Patrick Hateboer out for 27 days
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason Heracles will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
Squad31 Aug 2026
Kevin Paredes 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.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 16. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Squad31 Aug 2026
8 new faces, and Heracles 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.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Marked 7.54 on an afternoon he ran from the first whistle to the last. Whatever else went wrong, Heracles had the best player on the pitch.
Transfer targets31 Aug 2026
Empoli have been asked whether they would lend him. Loans are agreed quickly or not at all, and this one will be one or the other by the weekend.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
Thomas Bruns 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.
The dugout31 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Rick Van Dijk was not hiding it after 0‑0, and nobody in the Heracles dressing room was either.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Two goals and a mark of 9.14 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Squad24 Aug 2026
34 days out for Patrick Hateboer after a fracture
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. Heracles will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Player ratings24 Aug 2026
Successful dribbles: 26. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad24 Aug 2026
The medical room confirms 61 days on the sidelines for Kevin Paredes, and a plan built around him now has to be rebuilt.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Alverca keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Words exchanged at Heracles
Kevin Paredes and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Match22 Aug 2026
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Mario Engels. 3‑1 against Willem II, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Transfer targets24 Aug 2026
The approach was made and the answer came back in a sentence. There is no number on the table because there was no number that would have been enough.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Erik Ahlstrand 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.