Two goals and a mark of 8.45 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” RKC Waalwijk have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Henk Veerman 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.
He is 22 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Harrie Kuster. 2‑0 against FC Eindhoven, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Squad11 Jan 2027
Loek Postma 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.
RKC Waalwijk have made the call to FC Midtjylland. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
A loan enquiry to Greuther Fürth: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
There are footballers who have a good season and footballers a season is remembered for, and the second kind get their names read out in a hall in the summer. RKC Waalwijk will be quietly delighted and privately nervous.
Jean-Paul Boëtius 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.
Nothing happens for months and then he simply arrives, at no cost, having signed a pre-contract while still turning out for somebody else. It is the least dramatic way to sign a footballer and frequently the shrewdest.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. De Graafschap have kept their man, and RKC Waalwijk go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Niek Schiks has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
Position 9, 32 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Berkay Dabanli and RKC Waalwijk agree another 1 years.
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at RKC Waalwijk, and 1 appearances in 21 say he has earned the hearing.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason KV Kortrijk will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
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.
Gilles Dewaele 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.
Eupen next, and one man in the KV Kortrijk dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at KV Kortrijk, another week without a signature from Jonathan Afolabi.
James Ndjeungoue has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
3 goals in 9 games at US Orleans — numbers that travel home faster than he does. Somebody at KV Kortrijk updates a spreadsheet every Monday, and it makes better reading each week.