113 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AZ lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
19 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.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. AZ will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Den Bosch waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AZ is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” AZ have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
127 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. AZ lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
18 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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Go Ahead Eagles waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AZ is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason AZ will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AZ hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Everyone has stopped pretending: Go Ahead Eagles will make the call about Amario Cozier-Duberry this week. AZ have a number in mind, and the number is not shy.
Senior shirt numbers handed to boys the coaches have known since they were twelve. Most will not make it and all of them have already done the hard part.
148 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AZ lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Almere City waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AZ is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Bones knit. That is the one merciful thing about this injury and the reason AZ will talk about it more openly than they would about a knee. He will be back, and roughly when they say.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Heracles had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
The rules permit it and it stings anyway. Georginio Blind has agreed terms with Telstar for the summer, and until then he pulls on this shirt as a player who has already chosen his next one.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
The last thing about a transfer that is still about the player is his signature on his own terms, and it is there. AZ have lost him in all but the paperwork.
The clubs have shaken hands with Ujpest; the player has not yet. Personal terms are next, and personal terms are where more deals die than anybody prints.
“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 AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. AZ have done the hard part with Feyenoord, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Nobody at AZ will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around AZ people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“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 AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
“I know what people will say. I know what I want, and it is here.” Heracles had the fee agreed and the shirt ready; they did not have the player, and now they will not.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Micky van de Ven is on it.
5 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The system has changed and his position has not. A footballer can improve his form; he cannot improve the manager’s formation, and that is the whole of the problem.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around AZ people have started saying his name in the past tense.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AZ can pretend not to have heard.
Position 3, 81 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
The most awkward business a club does is signing tomorrow's answer while today's is still in the building. Kevin Bizoza comes from Feyenoord for exactly that purpose, and the handover will not be discussed publicly by anybody.
Federico Valverde 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.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Kevin Bizoza has just signed for AZ, and for once the answer mattered.
The training ground goes quiet for a fortnight. 6 men have gone off to be somebody else’s players, and the manager is left with the ones nobody has called.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nick Woltemade was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AZ, and both men came out saying it was fine.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AZ hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nick Woltemade was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
10 appearances at Nottingham Forest and the goals have stopped going in. AZ lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
Not a new contract, not a new number: a new place in the manager’s thinking, which is the only promotion in football that actually matters. Liam van Nistelrooij has moved up it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Loum Tchaouna has written the date down.
400 games in this shirt, through managers and relegations and everything else. Service like it is disappearing from the game and the crowd knows what it is watching.
Nobody at AZ will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Ruben van Bommel 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nick Woltemade was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Amario Cozier-Duberry’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and AZ needing him to play as if none of it matters.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Skye Vink trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Federico Valverde 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.
He will play here until the summer and then walk out of the door for free, having already signed elsewhere. Supporters will manage the first part of that sentence; it is the second they will struggle with.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 7.87, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Two goals and a mark of 8.32 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.” AZ have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Match23 Feb 2036
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for AZ. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
AZ asked and Sporting CP said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around AZ people have started saying his name in the past tense.
The offer from Go Ahead Eagles for Lucas Jetten was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
He arrived for a fee and leaves for a fraction of it. $728.8K of what AZ paid for Youri Baas is money the club will not see again, and the boardroom will be asked about it for two seasons.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.03 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
“I want to win things, and I would like to do it here.” Nothing has been demanded and nothing has been threatened — but a boardroom at AZ hears a sentence like that exactly as it was built.
4‑0 against First Vienna, on a night that will be replayed at this club for a generation. Continental reputations are made in single evenings and this was the evening.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. AZ will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
8 call-ups is a compliment to the squad and a headache for the man running it. He will get them back in a fortnight, tired, in various states of repair.
2 goals inside twenty minutes with Matěj Šín in the middle of it, and First Vienna unable to get near the ball long enough to change anything. Some matches are won before the first drink.
Player ratings12 Nov 2035
Loum Tchaouna was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.45. There are performances a supporter describes to somebody who was not there and cannot quite convey; this was one, and the number does not help either.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what AZ can pretend not to have heard.
A bone, which is the one injury with a calendar attached. AZ will name a return date and, unusually for this business, will probably be right about it.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AZ heard it as anything else.
Ruben van Bommel 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Nick Woltemade was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
34 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. AZ lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Antwerp waiting with a shirt. Nobody at AZ is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
7 wins on the spin now, and the question has changed from whether the run ends to who ends it. Confidence like this cannot be bought; it has to be earned exactly this way.
13 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Micky van de Ven 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.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Teun De Ligt has, at AZ, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
The words a physio says slowly. 34 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.
The offer from PSV for Youri Baas was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AZ heard it as anything else.
Federico Valverde 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.
Add another name to the list: Heracles have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Stanis Idumbo. The answer from AZ has not changed — yet.
The enquiry everybody at AZ was hoping would not arrive has arrived. He has never pretended he did not want to go back, and now there is somewhere to go back to.
The offer from Feyenoord for Sami Bouhoudane was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
AZ have gone to Ajax with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
The offer went to Feyenoord this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
Micky van de Ven 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $2.4M — a club that wants Adamo Nagalo enough to be asked twice.
The new man at AZ has worked with Kees Smit before and it went well. He arrives with a view of the player already formed, which is worth more than any pre-season.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Niek Schiks 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sami Bouhoudane 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.
29 appearances and 1 goals away from here, and a player the manager did not have in August. Loans are sent out hoping for exactly this and most of them do not deliver it.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Mateo Chávez signs something — a contract at AZ or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and Niek Schiks has written the date down.
100 graduates, from a department now rated 15 out of 20. Nothing about the academy appears in a result, and nothing about the club’s future exists without it.
Done, and with games to spare. Next season has floodlit nights against clubs from other countries in it, and the accounts have a line they did not have last year.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
An individual honour is a strange thing in a team game, and the best of them are never argued with. He has had the sort of year that ends with his name being read out, and AZ have had the benefit of it.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sami Bouhoudane 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.
Nobody at AZ will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AZ, and both men came out saying it was fine.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.34 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“I want to be playing for trophies while my legs still let me.” Nothing in that sentence is a transfer request, and nobody at AZ heard it as anything else.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Sami Bouhoudane was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at AZ, another week without a signature from Niek Schiks.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Niek Schiks trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
There were 86 minutes on the clock and Excelsior had all but banked the point. Football rarely reads the room, and AZ did not stop to explain themselves.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” AZ have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
At 34 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.05 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; AZ are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Nikolas Polster 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.
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.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Sami Bouhoudane 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.
Position 2, 73 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at AZ this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lucas Jetten 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.
Nobody at AZ will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
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.
A month is long enough that nobody gets in by accident. Aymen Sliti is in the division's best eleven for it, which is a quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at AZ, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Another week, another link, another denial nobody quite believes. AZ know the market decides these things, not the back pages — but the back pages are louder.
“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 AZ, and it is not being withdrawn.
4‑0, and Wilson Odobert took the headlines on an afternoon when everything AZ tried came off. Days like this are retold all winter.
Player ratings1 Jan 2035
A brace, and Mexx Meerdink takes the afternoon — 8.99
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Mexx Meerdink provided it, and the 8.99 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
The kind of year that ends with a name being read out in a hall. AZ had the benefit of it every week and now have the problem of everybody else knowing.
Fee agreed, terms agreed, medical booked. Alexandre Penetra will be somebody else’s player by the weekend, and around AZ the goodbyes have quietly begun.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.87 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
150 for the club now, each one filed in somebody’s memory with a date and a scoreline. Numbers like this are what supporters argue about in twenty years.
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.
6‑1 against Tammeka, and a performance that will change how the rest of the competition talks about this club. Reputations in continental football are built in single evenings and this was one.
19 home matches unbeaten. Visiting sides arrive already talking about the atmosphere, which is usually the sign that they have half-lost before kickoff.
Position 2, 32 points, and the result everyone checks first is now theirs. The word is still not being said around the ground, which is how you know everyone is thinking it.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Matěj Šín provided it, and the 8.47 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.47 at 36, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around AZ they have already started talking about him in the past tense.