It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ADO Den Haag this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.81, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Words at ADO Den Haag training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Akaki Gogia 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.
9 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
7 without a win now, and the ground has developed the special quiet of a crowd that expects the worst. One scrappy 1-0 would cure most of it; that is the maddening part.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ADO Den Haag this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at ADO Den Haag, another week without a signature from Jari Vlak.
Ninety minutes of very little, and then everything at once. The winner arrived in the 86th, and Roda spent what remained of the match appealing to the referee rather than chasing the ball.
The hardest thing about being 20 in a senior side is that nobody makes allowances. Illaijh de Ruijter did not need any: 7.93, and he looked the most comfortable man on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ADO Den Haag this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 20 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
Roda made ADO Den Haag work for it, but the scoreboard read 1‑0 at the end and the table does not ask how.
Squad14 Sep 2026
Words at ADO Den Haag training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Akaki Gogia 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at ADO Den Haag 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.
A defender's mistake gets tidied up by somebody else; a goalkeeper's ends up in the net. He knew before the ball crossed the line, and so did everybody in the ground.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what ADO Den Haag can pretend not to have heard.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Yoram Boerhout has just signed for ADO Den Haag, and for once the answer mattered.
Matteo Waem 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.
The name of Finn de Bruin has come up in conversations ADO Den Haag were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Finn de Bruin 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.
In brief
Player ratingsPascal Mulder was on a different afternoon to everybody else
SquadEvan Rottier falls out with a teammate over standards