The NEC Chronicle
Match26 Dec 2026
8 matches without a win for NEC
The run now stands at 8, and the questions being asked around NEC are no longer polite ones.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Tempers go at NEC
Tjaronn Chery 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.
Match26 Dec 2026
NEC make home a hard place to visit
10 without defeat on their own grass. The pitch has not changed; the crowd has — louder earlier, and quicker to sense when the opposition would rather be somewhere else.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Bart Schenkeveld 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.
The terraces28 Dec 2026
NEC supporters have found a favourite in Kodai Sano
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 23-year-old it feels ownership of. Kodai Sano 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.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Kodai Sano was the difference for NEC
Marked 7.63. Ask anyone leaving the ground what settled it and you will get one name, which is the only award that has ever really counted.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
Nobody could get near Sami Ouaissa
Successful dribbles: 15. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Player ratings28 Dec 2026
The cruellest goal, and it is Timothy Fosu-Mensah's
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and NEC will not try tonight.
Squad28 Dec 2026
The manager makes an example of Thomas Ouwejan
“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.
In brief
- Match Kodai Sano rescues a point for NEC
- Squad Bart Schenkeveld left out for tactical reasons at NEC
- Market The Koki Ogawa talk will not go away