If you’re looking for artistry, elegance, or a showcase of the future Dutch national team, you might want to wait for Ajax–Feyenoord. But if you crave a match soaked in raw nerves and the slow-burn tension of a proper relegation scrap, then Sunday’s date at De Adelaarshorst between Go Ahead Eagles and Excelsior is the hidden gem you never expected to need.
Someone’s future is about to change—though you might not know it from the league table, where Go Ahead Eagles sit 11th on a wobbly 10 points and Excelsior, in 17th, look up from the bottom rungs with just 6 points from 8 matches. There’s no such thing as a “must-win” in October, you say? Tell that to the fans who know exactly where this road leads if they don’t start collecting points soon. In the Eredivisie, the trapdoor is always open and the fall is long.
Go Ahead, coming off a gritty yet fruitless 1-2 loss at Eindhoven, have felt more heartbreak than triumph lately. Their last five? Defeat, draw, unlikely European win, backslide, and another defeat—averaging a meager 1.1 goals per game in their last 10. It’s not often you see a Europa League scalp in the middle of such mediocrity, but that’s Milan Smit for you: a striker whose boots catch fire exactly when you expect him to misfire. Smit, with recent goals at Panathinaikos and Telstar, is the Eagles’ not-so-secret weapon, and how he fares against a creaking Excelsior backline could decide the entire afternoon.
Excelsior’s form, though, tells an even stranger story. Six losses in eight, but peppered with sudden away wins and the stubborn sense that they might just be better than the sum of their parts. Gyan de Regt’s early strike against Fortuna Sittard provided their lifeline last time out, and Szymon Włodarczyk’s knack for poaching goals is the sort of thing Go Ahead will have circled in red ink on the tactics board. Still, with half a goal a game on average, you’re more likely to see fog in July than an Excelsior scoring spree.
So where do these teams find their edge? Tactics. For Go Ahead, it’s the high pressing that has at times caught bigger clubs off guard—the kind that forces errors and lets Smit gobble up loose balls in the box. But that same risk leaves them open for counters, and Excelsior’s best hope is to soak up the early storm and steal one on the break, with Włodarczyk and Yegoian ready to pounce if the Eagles overcommit.
There’s more on the line here than just three points. The psychology of survival is a cruel thing: win, and you get air, belief, and breathing room. Lose, and the whispers start—about managers, about missed chances, about whether this squad really has what it takes to survive the winter intact. Go Ahead’s recent 3-0 trouncing of Excelsior the last time these teams met serves as both comfort and a dangerous invitation to complacency. The visitors will know that pain—and maybe, just maybe, they remember how to flip the script.
Keep an eye, too, on the men in midfield: for Go Ahead, Gerrit Nauber, who’s shown a taste for late heroics, and for Excelsior, Lewis Schouten, whose late-game goal at Volendam may have been the only bright spot in a season otherwise best forgotten. In matches like this, it’s the grinders and the spoilers who shape destiny.
So what are we staring down? A match with all the makings of chaos: two desperate teams, one raucous home crowd, and the sure knowledge that dropped points here don’t just sting—they scar. The oddsmakers give a slight nod to Go Ahead at home, with a 43.5% chance of victory, but no one’s running to the window on either side. Even probability hedges its bets on a sleepless Sunday.
If you love football for the moments when fear and hope intertwine, for the wild swings that can launch a season or doom it before autumn’s chill has even left the pitch, then block out your Sunday. De Adelaarshorst awaits. Something’s gotta give—and as always, the margins are about as thin as a striker’s patience when he hasn’t scored in four weeks.