It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Vitesse have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse 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.
In brief
Boardroom113% of the income goes out in wages at Vitesse
Position 18 and 6 points, and the table gets read bottom-up in this part of town. The calendar has stopped being a schedule and started being a countdown.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Vitesse have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
4 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.
Hans Hateboer 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.
Player ratings26 Oct 2026
Maxim Dekker was on a different afternoon to everybody else
9.03. 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.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Vitesse training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Solomon Bonnah 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.
In brief
Player ratingsNaoufal Bannis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 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.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Vitesse can tell you which week it ends in.
18 defensive actions and a clean sheet at the end of them. A defender's afternoon can only be told by what did not happen, which is why nobody makes a highlights package out of one and every manager in the division would take it.
“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 Vitesse, and it is not being withdrawn.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Maxim Dekker is 22, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
A first appearance Ibrahima Camara will want to forget — 5.43
Everybody's debut is one of two stories and this was the other one. 5.43, and the only consolation available is that nobody's career has ever been decided by ninety minutes in a shirt he had just been given.
Hans Hateboer 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.
0‑4 to De Graafschap, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
The instruction has come from upstairs rather than from the dugout, which is the version of this conversation no manager enjoys. Somebody in that squad is now available whether the man who picks the team thinks so or not.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 19 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.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Hans Hateboer 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. João Pinto 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.
Squad28 Sep 2026
Words at Vitesse training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Solomon Bonnah 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.
The run now stands at 6, and the questions being asked around Vitesse are no longer polite ones.
Player ratings21 Sep 2026
Noah Tamsamani, 17, plays like he has been here for years — 7.96
A mark of 7.96 means one thing beside a twenty-nine-year-old's name and something else entirely beside a 17-year-old's. Nobody at the ground needed telling which this was.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Rafik el Arguioui is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 6 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
11 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
In brief
Player ratingsAn afternoon João Pinto will want back
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vitesse can pretend not to have heard.
Hans Hateboer 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.
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.
In brief
SquadWords at Vitesse training over how hard people work
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Two or more conceded in each of the last 4 matches. It is not one mistake repeating itself, which would be the easier thing to fix; it is a different one every week.
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
SquadIbrahima Camara falls out with a teammate over standards
5Edition
The Vitesse Sentinel
31 Aug 2026
From our football correspondentUneasy
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
A brace, and Maxim Dekker takes the afternoon — 8.75
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Maxim Dekker provided it, and the 8.75 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Vitesse and Heerenveen in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Player ratings31 Aug 2026
Naoufal Bannis was on a different afternoon to everybody else
8.47. 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 Vitesse can pretend not to have heard.
At 36 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.14 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
Naoufal Bannis 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.
9 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Wouter van der Steen knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
0‑4 to AZ, and it was every bit as bad as the number suggests. There are defeats you argue about and defeats you apologise for; this was the second kind.
Player ratings17 Aug 2026
Nino Zonneveld could not have asked for more on his first appearance — 7.25
Debuts are survived rather than enjoyed. This one was enjoyed: 7.25, 0 goals, and a manager already being asked whether he starts again next week.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
There is a version of every career where the player ends up somewhere he chose rather than somewhere that chose him. Tijn Smolenaars is living that version at Vitesse, and it tends to show in the first month.
An error at the back is a moment; an error in goal is a goal. Wouter van der Steen knows it, the crowd knew it instantly, and there was nobody behind him to make it anything else.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Vitesse this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
2 boys move up, and somewhere in the building the people who coached them at twelve are quietly having the best morning of their working year. Nothing about this shows up in a result and it is why the academy exists.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Denzel Blind is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Patrick Simons is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Football clubs borrow; that is not the story. Borrowing more than the facility allows is, because from here it is the owner's money or somebody else's decision, and neither of those belongs to the board.
48 months to run and not a word offered. A club that lets the calendar negotiate for it usually ends up losing to the calendar.
Squad10 Aug 2026
Words at Vitesse training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Lugene Arnaud 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.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Mathijs Marschalk has his answer from Vitesse; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Vitesse can pretend not to have heard.
Naoufal Bannis 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.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Vitesse, another week without a signature from Nino Zonneveld.
Still no offer on the table, and Naoufal Bannis’s deal keeps shrinking. In boardroom language, silence this long stops being an oversight and starts being an answer.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Words at Vitesse training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Chiel Olde Keizer 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.