A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Sonny Stevens: 1 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
“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 The request is on a desk at Dewa United, and it is not being withdrawn.
5 matches now without a victory, and the excuses have worn thinner than the patience. Somebody at Dewa United has to find a result from somewhere.
Squad24 Aug 2026
Noah Sadaoui 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.
Dewa United asked and FC Eindhoven said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Dewa United this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Add another name to the list: PSM have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Muhammad Natsir. The answer from Dewa United has not changed — yet.
It is a specific kind of quiet, a ground watching a winning position dissolve. Maluku Utara United kept coming because nothing stopped them, and Dewa United will be asked about the last half hour all week.
The bid was some way short and Dewa United did not need long over it. Nobody in the game reads a first refusal as the end of anything.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Noah Sadaoui 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.
Alexis Messidoro 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.
It finished 2‑2, and it somehow always looked like it would. One of those afternoons where the table moves less than the tempers.
The dugout17 Aug 2026
The manager’s verdict
“I am frustrated, honestly. We did enough to win and we did not win.” Egy Wibowo was not hiding it after 2‑2, and nobody in the Dewa United dressing room was either.
Successful dribbles: 13. 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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Persijap waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Dewa United is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Everything was agreed until it was not, and Yofandani Pranata reports back to Dewa United with a summer to forget. Neither club is saying who walked away from the table.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Ricky Pato has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
Every long career reaches the week the player starts thinking about the last one. He would like it to be at the club that first put him on a pitch, and Dewa United now know that too.
It is not a grievance and it is not a demand: he wants to play continental football, and he has stopped hiding it. Whether Dewa United can give him that is a question about the club, not about him.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Sonny Stevens and Dewa United agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Noah Sadaoui 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.
Nick Kuipers 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.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Ivar Jenner 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.
Add another name to the list: Persijap have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Muhammad Natsir. The answer from Dewa United has not changed — yet.
Minute 90, against PSIM, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.