N.E.C. Nijmegen

Where they stand

• 2026/27 Eredivisie, Three matches played, six points: lost 1-2 at home to SC Telstar on 8 August, won 4-1 away at Willem II on 15 August, and WON 3-1 Away At PEC Zwolle on 29 August. The Underlying Profile Was The Same In The First Two And The Results Were Opposite; The Third Match Breaks The Profile And Keeps The Result, which is the part worth recording. Against Telstar: 71 per cent possession, 27 shots with 17 inside the box, roughly 2.5 expected goals, and a defeat. Against Willem II: 68 per cent, 21 shots with 12 inside, ten on target, 2.85 expected goals, and a 4-1 win. At PEC Zwolle: 48 Per Cent, Eight Shots With Six Inside The Box, four on target — a third of the volume of the opening match — and a win. The Scoreline Was Assembled From Set-Piece Routes Rather Than From Play: Tjaronn Chery converted penalties at 5 and 23, and Perr Schuurs headed the third at 83 having come on three minutes earlier. Raw Expected Goals Of 2.09 Are Almost Entirely Penalty Inflation — the non-penalty figure was 0.51, the lowest attacking reading this card holds. The Match Followed A Champions League Play-Off Second Leg Away By Three Or Four Days, and No Fitness Claim Follows From That In Either Direction: nobody has assessed the physical condition of a single player. Perr Schuurs, one of five players the head coach named as unavailable before the first leg, was among the substitutes and scored. Darko Nejasmic was absent from the matchday squad entirely, with no cause published. Table position is suppressed after three matches rather than shown.

League record

• 3 matches played · 6 points · 8 scored, 4 conceded.Limited confidence

Summer squad changes

9 in, 18 out. Where a move is reported rather than confirmed, or a player is not yet eligible to play, that is stated.

The coach

• Dick Schreuder (53) is head coach for 2026/27 — no coaching change. Appointed spring 2025 on a Three-Year contract to summer 2028, succeeding Rogier Meijer; 2026/27 is his Second season, with two years still to run — a structural contrast with PEC Zwolle's and Fortuna Sittard's coaches, both in their final contracted year. Confirmed in post at the evidence cutoff by his 3 August pre-Olympiacos press conference in Piraeus and by the club's own current team page.

Pre-season

Seven friendlies against opposition ranging from the Dutch third tier to La Liga, in one of which (Anderlecht) the entire starting eleven was changed at half-time, is NOT a form line and must Never be presented as league-form evidence for the Telstar fixture or any other Eredivisie match. The 7-0 win against Al-Fayha FC in particular must not be read as evidence of anything. Pre-season results in this card are used Only as evidence of current personnel, fitness and availability (e.g. the Sevilla-friendly injuries), never as a predictor of Eredivisie form.

• Seven friendlies, 2W-1D-4L, 16 scored, 11 conceded. Both wins came against non-European opposition (Japan, Saudi Arabia); all four defeats came against European opposition (Belgian top flight, German second tier, La Liga), and the two nearest the competitive start (Elversberg, Sevilla) both ended in defeat with only one goal scored across them. A second, cutting-the-other-way observation: N.E.C. scored in six of seven friendlies and conceded in six of seven — for a team that scored 77 and conceded 53 in the league, that is behaviourally consistent, not anomalous.Our reading of the evidence · Moderate confidence
• Sierhuis scored three goals in his first pre-season, the most of any N.E.C. player, against wildly uneven opposition. That is a pre-season return and is not read as more than one; the competitive question it raised has since been answered separately, by his 82nd-minute goal in the Eredivisie opener on 8 August 2026.Our reading of the evidence · Limited confidence

How they play

• N.E.C. play with a back three. That is now observed rather than reported: in the Champions League third qualifying round first leg away at Olympiacos on 4 August, Voetbal International rendered the side positionally as a 3-1-4-2 — Crettaz; Storm, Sandler, Fonville; Nejašmić; Ouaissa, Bischoff, Monteiro, Lebreton; Chery, Linssen — with the two widest of the four ahead of the pivot operating as the width providers, since a back three leaves nobody else to hold the touchline. The specific mechanisms that make the system work are reported rather than observed and stay at hypothesis level: wing-backs held very wide as the sole source of width, the outside centre-backs positioned narrow in the half-space to compress the opponent's first line of pressure, and those same outside centre-backs carrying the ball forward. Schreuder's own framing fits it — he has said publicly that his system is not personnel-agnostic and that he needs specific types of players for it.Moderate confidence
• The one competitive performance available shows a side that can defend a European away leg without collapsing: 0-0 at Olympiacos, with the opposition dominating possession in the first half and N.E.C. taking control in the second, and with both teams reducing risk in the closing stages. The back three did not concede, and the defensive line was not settled personnel — Sandler had been reported fit for roughly an hour, and Nejašmić moved from the pivot into central defence during the match. Olympiacos's own coach said afterwards that his side had been outmatched in many areas, which is an opponent's judgement rather than a mechanism, but it is an unusually direct one.Limited confidence
• N.E.C. progressed through Tjaronn Chery finding space between the lines — at 38, repeatedly free in the space the two forwards and the four ahead of the pivot opened up. They created several dangerous situations at Olympiacos and consistently lacked the final ball, which is the specific shape of their problem rather than a general one: the side got into promising positions and did not finish the move. That is consistent with a team whose 77 league goals last season came from a squad that has since sold its record earner and is trying to replace him.Our reading of the evidence · Limited confidence
• A Back Three In Every Competitive Match Of The Season — now four of four, and the most stable structural fact this card carries. The Label Put On It Is Still Not Agreed, and Matchweek 2 made that worse rather than better: the provider published 3-1-4-2 with the confirmed matchday squad on 15 August, corroborated name-for-name by an independent operator capture across all 45 names, and then published 3-4-2-1 for the same match after it was played. Neither Label Is Adopted Here and no arrangement in front of the back three is asserted from this fixture. The Distinction Is Deliberate: the number of defenders in the first row is what the conflicting records agree on and what independent evidence across four matches supports; the arrangement ahead of it is precisely what they disagree about. Darko Nejasmic, a midfielder, again occupied the centre of the three, with Gabriel Brás named in the squad and unused — one more observation of an arrangement this card already describes as makeshift, and not a permanent centre-back preference.Moderate confidence

Players who matter most

• Kodai Sano's departure is complete, and this card no longer carries him as an N.E.C. player. PSV announced the transfer officially and presented him on 8 August 2026 — the same day N.E.C. played their Eredivisie opener without him — on a contract to mid-2031, for a reported fee of roughly EUR 14.5 million plus bonuses, N.E.C.'s largest outgoing transfer. He appears in neither the Matchweek 1 eleven nor its bench, and not in the 11 August European squad. What that removes is specific: a 22-year-old first-choice central midfielder with 98 N.E.C. appearances, 12 goals and 13 assists since 2023. The fee is reported rather than club-disclosed; the completion is not in doubt.
• Kaj Sierhuis has now scored in competitive football for N.E.C.: the 82nd-minute goal, as a substitute, in the 1-2 Eredivisie home defeat to SC Telstar on 8 August 2026. That supersedes this card's earlier framing of his case as pre-season output only — three goals in seven friendlies, which remains true and remains a friendly return. His European contribution three days later was real but substitute-tier and mixed: introduced at roughly 88 minutes, a goal disallowed deep in stoppage time for an offside earlier in the move, a deflection credited by one aggregator as the assist on the winner, a close-range chance missed in extra time, and a caution. Two Substitute Appearances Do Not Make Him A Starter, and nothing here says they do — his place in the forward line is exactly as open as it was.
• Dusan Tadic has started and completed both of N.E.C.'s competitive matches since this card's previous cutoff — the full ninety in the Eredivisie opener and all 120 minutes of the Champions League second leg — and produced measurable creative output in each. In the opener he recorded 8 key passes and 2 Big Chances Created, the highest creative return of any player in the round; three days later he supplied the cross for the 70th-minute equaliser. This is a Participation And Output record, and it is not a claim about hierarchy, indispensability or a defined role: his own minute pattern across the eight-day block is uneven rather than simply heavy (a short substitute appearance in the first leg, then 90, then 120), and the position he actually occupied on 11 August is described differently by different outlets and is not settled here.Moderate confidence

What they do well

• A genuinely elite attacking output at competitive level, over a full season: 77 league goals in 2025/26, second-most in the Eredivisie behind only PSV, ahead of Feyenoord, Ajax and FC Twente, delivered by a squad valued far below all three. N.E.C. finished 3rd on attacking output, not on defensive solidity — 53 conceded is worse than four of the five clubs immediately below them.Our reading of the evidence · Moderate confidence
• Coaching continuity and total staff alignment: a head coach in year two of three, with an entire technical staff on contracts to the same date, three of whom worked with him at his previous club. The most contractually aligned coaching group of any club in this production run.
• An unusually complete and Current club-published squad record: 30 players with shirt numbers and position groups, no duplicate numbers, all eight 2026 summer arrivals present (including a player signed 27 July, eight days before retrieval), and every departed player correctly absent. The best club squad page encountered across six TeamCard research passes to date.
• Real experience added at low or zero transfer cost, funded by outgoing sales: Tadić (111 Serbia caps), Monteiro, Mor and Sierhuis all arrived free; Schuurs arrived free from Serie A. Five free transfers, one loan, and two fee-bearing deals, against an outgoing window headed by the club transfer record (Önal, €12.5m) and, in progress, a new record (Sano, ~€14.5m) — a heavily positive financial balance even before the Sano deal completes, though no fee is club-disclosed for any 2026 transfer.Our reading of the evidence · Moderate confidence
• A club that has just proved it can beat the champions in a knockout tie: N.E.C. 3-2 PSV in the 2025/26 KNVB Beker semi-final, partially anchored at official-primary level by the club's own departures release, which states in terms that Eli Dasa scored in that win.Moderate confidence
• This squad can compete at a level above the one it was assembled for. N.E.C. drew 0-0 away at Olympiacos in a Champions League qualifier, in a match VI describes as a battle in which they matched a good opponent's intensity, and Olympiacos's own coach said his team had been outmatched in many areas. They did it without Kodai Sano, with a centre-back reported fit for only an hour, and with a summer free transfer, Jamiro Monteiro, dropped straight into the vacated midfield role — which is also the first evidence that the internal answer to Sano's departure works.Moderate confidence

Where they can be got at

• The centre of defence is a documented, multi-source crisis, and it is the position a back-three system (if the reported shape is right) would load hardest. Confirmed at four independent levels: the head coach said publicly on 27 July he wants two more defenders and a goalkeeper and has not seen them arrive; the permanent signing of last season's most-used centre back (Kaplan) collapsed on 28 July; the one centre back N.E.C. did sign (Schuurs) is unavailable to roughly mid-September on his own club's account; and three defenders' availability changed in the final pre-season friendly (Sandler, Ouwejan, Moslih). Counter-evidence, stated: N.E.C. still named seven defenders in a 22-man UEFA list; Sandler was reported fit to play roughly 60 minutes on 4 August; Nuytinck is in the UEFA squad; and regional reporting notes N.E.C. will have real depth once Nuytinck and Schuurs recover.Our reading of the evidence
• 53 goals conceded in a 3rd-place season is a structural exposure, not a footnote: N.E.C. finished third despite a defensive record worse than four of the five clubs below them in the top seven. A team whose league position is built on scoring 77 is structurally more exposed to losing attacking personnel than a team built on conceding few — and N.E.C. have sold or are selling Önal (record sale) and, in progress, Sano, while adding a 37-year-old and a 28-year-old free transfer among the replacements.Our reading of the evidence · Moderate confidence
• A record sale in progress four days before matchweek 1, with no replacement signed: the Sano departure was agreed on this card's own evidence-cutoff day, he left the Olympiacos squad mid-tie for a medical, and he was a first-choice central midfielder in a system reported to use only a two-man pivot. If completed, this removes the slot four days before the Telstar opener.Our reading of the evidence · Moderate confidence
• A pre-season record of 2W-1D-4L, with both wins against non-European opposition (Japan, Saudi Arabia) and the two matches nearest the competitive start (Elversberg, Sevilla) both lost with only one goal scored across them. Counter-evidence, and it is strong: friendly results are not a form line; the entire starting eleven was changed at half-time in at least one match (Anderlecht); two arrivals (Tadić, Mor) had barely joined by the final friendlies; and N.E.C. scored in six of seven friendlies.Our reading of the evidence · Limited confidence
• UEFA squad-quota pressure is a structural constraint, though not in the way this card previously stated it. N.E.C. registered 22 players rather than the permitted 24, and the reason reported by Voetbal International is deliberate flexibility, not exhaustion: the club held two places open hoping to register a new signing the day before the match, and when none arrived it used them on Freek Entius and Willum Willumsson. What remains true is that the club-trained-player requirement constrains who can fill those places, that named squad members are outside the list on registration grounds — never an Eredivisie suspension — and that selling Dirk Proper, a fifteen-season academy product, eleven days before matchweek 1 removes a club-trained body from a list that has to satisfy that requirement for the rest of the European campaign.Moderate confidence
• Public, on-the-record tension between the head coach and the technical director over unfilled defensive recruitment, ten days before the season. No source characterises this as a crisis and neither does this card — Aalbers's own reply frames it as a normal difference of institutional interests in a market described as more expensive and harder for a Dutch club.Moderate confidence

What we think happens

Each reading is shown with the evidence for it and the evidence against it. Where those pull in different directions, that is the honest state of the picture.

Squad and club news

• N.E.C. confirmed four contract expiries, all formally terminated 1 April: Eli Dasa, Jetro Willems, Virgil Misidjan and Rijk Janse. The same release independently dated three further, later-resolved situations as then "under discussion": Bram Nuytinck (extended), Jasper Cillessen (left) and Danilo Pereira da Silva (loan ended).
• N.E.C. sold Dirk Proper (24), a 185-appearance homegrown midfielder who "frequently wore the captain's armband" and was the longest-tenured player in the squad, to sc Heerenveen — eleven days before matchweek 1 and seven days before a Champions League tie. This simultaneously removes a leadership figure and a club-trained-quota body from the UEFA registration list.
• N.E.C. lost 1-2 to Sevilla FC at the Goffertstadion in their final, best-attended pre-season friendly (31 July) — but the most consequential thing about the match was not the result. Three defenders' availability changed during it: Philippe Sandler left injured, Yassin Moslih left injured, and Thomas Ouwejan sat it out with a minor injury. This cost N.E.C. defensive availability four days before the Champions League tie and eight days before matchweek 1.

• N.E.C. lost the 2025/26 KNVB Beker final 5-1 to AZ, Sunday 19 April 2026, at De Kuip, Rotterdam, having beaten holders PSV 3-2 in the semi-final at Nijmegen (Eli Dasa among the scorers). AZ's cup win took the Europa League berth attached to it, so N.E.C.'s European entry for 2026/27 came entirely from the league finish. The final scoreline rests on a single Omroep Gelderland headline at LOW-Medium confidence; az.nl's own match report was surfaced but not opened in the underlying research pass.
• Bram Nuytinck (36) extended one year, announced 18 June 2026, described by the club as fit and having "fought back" from a cruciate-ligament injury. Nineteen days later, 7 July 2026, he suffered an ankle injury in training, ruled out for "several weeks". Both facts are true and neither cancels the other — a dated contradiction preserved, not smoothed.
• Ahmetcan Kaplan's 2025/26 loan from Ajax expired; a permanent move was agreed in outline, he underwent a medical at N.E.C.'s facilities, and the deal then Collapsed at the last moment for an undisclosed reason. He remains an Ajax player and does not appear anywhere in this card's squad, transfers, or depth modelling — N.E.C. must find an alternative centre back.
• Head coach Schreuder publicly stated he wants at least two more defenders and a goalkeeper and has not seen them arrive, naming Nuytinck (injured), Kaplan (returned to Ajax), Sandler (limited minutes) and Schuurs (not fully available until September) as the defensive context. Technical director Aalbers publicly replied that a technical director sometimes has different interests than a coach, in a market described as more expensive and harder for a Dutch club. No source characterises this as a crisis.
• N.E.C. submitted a reduced 22-player UEFA Champions League squad list on 31 July rather than the permitted 24, omitting Koki Ogawa, Adam Tahaui, Willum Willumsson and Vito van Crooij on registration and selection grounds, with Perr Schuurs separately unavailable through injury. The reason for naming 22 is the club's own, and it is not a shortage of club-trained players: Voetbal International reports that N.E.C. deliberately reserved two places so that a late signing could still be registered the day before the match, and when no signing arrived those two places went to Freek Entius and Willum Willumsson on 3 August. What the club-trained-player requirement does constrain is which players are able to fill such a place, and it is retained on that narrower basis only. This is a UEFA-competition registration matter; it is not an Eredivisie suspension and not an Eredivisie eligibility restriction.
• N.E.C. added Freek Entius and Willum Willumsson to the UEFA squad list, taking it to 24, having deliberately kept two spots open "hoping to sign someone over the weekend". Ogawa, Van Crooij and Tahaui remained excluded. The same report is the closest available club-adjacent statement on travelling-squad availability, and it is explicitly scoped to the 4 August fixture only.
• N.E.C.'s UEFA Champions League third-qualifying-round tie against Olympiacos Piraeus is confirmed: Leg 1 away, Tuesday 4 August 2026, 20:00 CEST; Leg 2 home, Tuesday 11 August 2026, 19:30, Goffertstadion — with the Eredivisie opener against SC Telstar (Saturday 8 August, 16:30 CEST, also at the Goffertstadion) sitting exactly between the two legs. The club has itself warned that European participation may still move surrounding fixtures.
• PSV and N.E.C. reached an agreement in principle over Kodai Sano, reported at a fee of roughly €14.5m plus bonuses — N.E.C.'s outgoing transfer record if it completes. Sano left the N.E.C. squad hotel in Greece to travel for a medical scheduled for 5 August, the day after this card's own evidence cutoff, and did not play the 4 August first leg. At This Card's Cutoff The Transfer Had Not Completed: he remains on N.E.C.'s own squad page and UEFA list. See transfers[trf-out-sano] and oq-sano-completion.

Who is available

• As The Head Coach Gave It On 4 September, With The Provider Record Beside It. OUT: Deveron Fonville for several weeks (the coach says a shoulder injury from the PEC Zwolle match; the provider records an ankle injury from 30 August — Conflicting On The Nature, agreed on the absence); Philippe Sandler, "not yet fit enough" (provider: unknown injury open since 12 August; no cause or return from anybody); Ahmetcan Kaplan (no cause on any approved source); Emre Mor (light training injury, 3 September). Substitute Only: Perr Schuurs, not fit to start. Available But Managed across Saturday and Tuesday: Darko Nejasmic (in principle not a full match; the provider still carries a head injury open since 26 August beside the coach’s more recent statement) and Bram Nuytinck. The coach is reported naming Four Fit Senior Defenders — Nuytinck, Tobias Storm, Gabriel Bras, Almugera Kabar — Which Is A Count And Not A Back Four. Yassin Moslih: nothing said by the club or coach since 19 August; the provider carries an unknown injury open since 31 July, and that provider record is the only evidence there is. Of The Five Players The Coach Named Unavailable On 19 August, Two Have Since Left The Club (Ouaissa, Ogawa). No Suspension: the provider’s team-level check on 4 September returns none of any category, and the coach mentioned none.Moderate confidence
• Four Competitive Matches In Eleven Days, Across Two Competitions: Olympiacos away on 4 August, Telstar at home on 8 August, Olympiacos at home on 11 August lasting 120 minutes, and Willem II away on 15 August. All Six Players Who Completed The Full 120 Minutes On 11 August — Crettaz, Storm, Fonville, Nejasmic, Tadić and Chery — Started Again Four Days Later, and Chery, Tadić and Crettaz completed ninety more. These Are Exposure Figures And A Selection Fact, Nothing More. No source assesses the physical condition of any N.E.C. player, none is inferred here, and no rotation intention or fatigue effect is claimed in either direction — including from the fact that this side won 4-1 while carrying that load.
• The Champions League Play-Off Is Lost And The Europa League League Phase Follows. N.E.C. lost the tie to Bodø/Glimt (1-3 at home on 19 August; the second leg away on 25 August) and open the Europa League away at Juventus on Thursday 17 September, confirmed by the club’s own ticketing release. No midweek match was played between the Matchweek 4 win at PEC Zwolle on 29 August and Matchweek 5. The Load That Is On Record Is Domestic: the postponed Matchweek 3 fixture, N.E.C. v Excelsior, was rescheduled by the competition organiser for Tuesday 8 September, three days after Matchweek 5, and the head coach has said Nejasmic and Nuytinck will be managed across the two. That Is A Coach’s Stated Intent, recorded as such; it is not a rotation projection and No Fitness Conclusion Is Drawn From Any Fixture Interval. SC Cambuur v N.E.C. moves to Saturday 12 September.Moderate confidence

• SuspensionsChecked — nothing outstandingNo Suspension Of Any Category Is Recorded As Current by the team-level provider control run on 4 September 2026, and the only suspension-category history entries this season are "No Eligibility" records that are All Completed, the last ending on 26 August. The head coach mentioned no suspension on 4 September. Graded on the same basis and the same retrieval as the Cards check.
• Playing eligibilityReported but unconfirmedOne New Arrival With No Registration Confirmation: Delé Thomas signed from RB Leipzig on 1 September, and a club announcement is not a registration record. Every other current squad member with 2026/27 competitive participation is treated as eligible on that participation. The earlier-recorded Ogawa and Van Crooij items are moot — both have left the club — and Tahaui’s position is unchanged: named on a bench, never used. The UEFA-list findings on this card remain UEFA-scoped and are NOT read as Eredivisie ineligibility for anybody.
• InjuriesConfirmed issueFour Players Out, One Substitute-Only, Two Managed, One Unknown — as the head coach gave it on 4 September, with the provider’s team-level record beside it. Fonville out for weeks (coach: shoulder; provider: ankle from 30 August — Conflicting nature, agreed absence). Sandler out, not yet fit (provider: unknown injury since 12 August; no cause from anybody). Kaplan out (no cause on any approved source). Mor out (training injury, 3 September). Schuurs available as a substitute only. Nejasmic and Nuytinck available and load-managed for the Tuesday fixture; the provider still carries an open head-injury record for Nejasmic from 26 August. Moslih: nothing from the club since 19 August; the provider carries an unknown injury open since 31 July. Two long-open provider records for Bryan Linssen are contradicted by his selections and are treated as stale.
• Squad and transfer statusConfirmed issueThe Window Closed On 2 September With Six Departures And One Arrival Since The Last Card. Out: Sami Ouaissa to PSV (1 September, both clubs’ releases), Vito van Crooij to Willem II, Brayann Pereira to West Bromwich Albion and Thomas Ouwejan to FC Machida Zelvia (all 1 September), Koki Ogawa to FC Machida Zelvia (24 August, previously unrecorded). In: Delé Thomas from RB Leipzig (1 September). No Tactical, Role Or Structural Effect Is Drawn: N.E.C. have not played since any of the seven, and Thomas has no observed minutes. The earlier-recorded Sano and Cillessen items are unchanged; the Kaplan item is now an injury matter, above.

What we still do not know

This profile records 40 points that available sources did not settle. The questions below are the ones that most affect how N.E.C. Nijmegen are read; the rest are held open rather than filled in with assumptions.

• Why is Koki Ogawa outside N.E.C.'s UEFA squad list — a registration-quota/selection judgement, or an undisclosed injury?

  The two explanations imply materially different availability pictures for the rest of the season: a selection judgement says nothing about his Eredivisie fitness, while an injury (if real) could affect the Telstar fixture too. Neither is currently established at registry standard.

Matches

• N.E.C. Nijmegen v Telstar — Sat 8 Aug, 16:30 CEST · Matchweek 1 · Played · Read the analysis
• Willem II v N.E.C. Nijmegen — Sat 15 Aug, 16:30 CEST · Matchweek 2 · Kick-off passed · Read the analysis
• PEC Zwolle v N.E.C. Nijmegen — Sat 29 Aug, 21:00 CEST · Matchweek 4 · Kick-off passed · Read the analysis
• N.E.C. Nijmegen v Feyenoord — Sat 5 Sept, 16:30 CEST · Matchweek 5 · Kick-off passed · Read the analysis
• SC Cambuur v N.E.C. Nijmegen — Sat 12 Sept, 21:00 CEST · Matchweek 6 · Kick-off passed
• N.E.C. Nijmegen v Go Ahead Eagles — Sun 20 Sept, 16:45 CEST · Matchweek 7 · Kick-off passed · Read the analysis
• Ajax v N.E.C. Nijmegen — Sat 10 Oct, 21:00 CEST · Matchweek 8
• N.E.C. Nijmegen v Excelsior Rotterdam — not currently scheduled · Matchweek 3