NEC Nijmegen's 5-0 Defeat to Juventus: A Patched-Up Back Line, Schreuder's Confession, and the Youngster Left Behind

The ninth minute. A long ball was played from Juventus's right flank, so simple that some might have thought it harmless. No magical combination, no intricately rehearsed tactical manoeuvre. Just a long ball over the midfield, the kind any professional back line should handle. But I was sitting in row twelve, behind the touchline, close enough to see what television cameras would never patiently capture: the gap between NEC Nijmegen's two centre-backs stretching to nearly ten metres. A number that anyone who has stood in that position immediately understands.

Almugera Kabar turned, tried to reach it. The ball was in the net before he realised he had been left behind. I wrote in the small notebook I have carried in my coat pocket since my first days working at Belgrade Television in 2026: "9' — 1-0. Positioning error. Not a technical error."

Thirty-six minutes later, the score was 3-0. By the final whistle, it was 5-0. From that first moment, I understood that what I was witnessing went beyond a simple defeat. This is the story of a back line assembled from patches, and of a manager forced into choices he never wanted to make, who then said things he will perhaps regret.

The context of an unavoidable night

To understand what really happened that night, the match must be placed in its proper setting. NEC Nijmegen is a mid-table Eredivisie club, living in the shadow of Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord — clubs with superior academies and finances. For NEC, a European qualification is already an achievement, and when the draw paired them with Juventus, everyone understood this was a test at the highest level European football can offer.

Juventus is more than a strong opponent. It is a club that has won Europe, that has owned world-class players, and that maintains a tactical structure built over decades. The resource gap between the two sides — wage bill, squad value, historical depth — cannot be bridged by one night of determination. But a gap in class does not explain everything.

A small club can still organise disciplined defending, can still keep the score respectable, can still leave the pitch with heads held high. The way NEC collapsed — conceding in the ninth minute, conceding twice more before half-time, then a fifth — reveals a problem rooted deeper in the club's structure, not merely in the opponent's quality.

This is the point most match reports miss. NEC's defence that night was not the defence Dick Schreuder wanted, nor the one he had built in his mind. It was the defence he was forced to use. The distinction matters more than it appears, because it shifts the entire story from tactics to personnel, from capability to resources.

I have followed European football long enough to know that defeats like this rarely begin at kick-off. They begin months earlier, in budget meetings, in contract-extension decisions, in whether a club buys an attacking midfielder or a centre-back when both are needed. Defeats like the one against Juventus are the moment those decisions step into the light, no longer concealable.

Three unsynchronised decisions

The crisis began before the ball rolled. Bram Nuytinck, the experienced Dutch centre-back, and Perr Schuurs, once seen as one of Dutch football's most promising young defenders, could not play full matches. Both could only last twenty to twenty-five minutes — a limit any coach understands as a sign of unresolved fitness issues. Meanwhile, the backup options at centre-back lay on the injured list. Bischoff was out long-term.

The result: Schreuder had to start Almugera Kabar — a young loanee from Borussia Dortmund — at the heart of defence. This was not a tactical choice. This was forced attrition. And it came against an opponent where the smallest mistake is punished.

I know this logic well. Over years of watching mid-tier European clubs, I have seen coaches forced to field unprepared youngsters simply because those ahead of them had no legs left. The moment a young player is thrown in sometimes matters more than the player himself. Kabar did not fail because he lacks talent. He failed because he was placed in a context where even a seasoned centre-back would struggle to stand upright.

I watched Kabar in a few training sessions. He has pace, a certain calm on the ball, technical foundations from a top European academy. But those are qualities that need time, in lower-pressure matches, beside an experienced centre-back who can shout instructions when needed. Against Juventus, he had no such partner. He had to carry the whole back line, and he crumbled.

Most telling was the first goal. Schreuder described it afterwards in words I recorded verbatim: "I still remember that I would head that ball away... we simply do not have things right at the back." A coach saying he would have cleared a ball his player did not — that is a confession with weight. It speaks not of technique. It speaks of communication, of positioning, of who is responsible for which zone when the ball arrives.

A system collapses before an individual errs

At elite level, goals from long balls into the box are rarely one individual's fault. They are a system's fault. Usually three things must align: the goalkeeper decides whether to come, the near centre-back decides whether to mark or hold zone, and the other centre-back decides whether to step up or drop to cover. When those three decisions desynchronise, space appears — and sides like Juventus always know how to exploit it.

I rewatched the footage of the second and third goals. On the second, the space opened in the same zone — between the left and right centre-backs. On the third, before half-time, NEC's back line had completely lost its structure. Players moved as individuals trying to cover each other, no longer as a defensive block. For a side whose defensive foundation was already thin, losing structure in the thirtieth minute meant no possibility of recovery.

What NEC's defence lacked was not individual talent, but time playing together. Nuytinck, Schuurs and Kabar had never played enough together to form shared reflexes. In a back line, shared reflexes matter more than individual skill. You do not need to think "I will drop" — you must drop before that thought forms, because the centre-back beside you has already started moving. That kind of coordination cannot be created in a single training session before the biggest match of the season.

This is what those who only read scorelines cannot see. Look at the 5-0 and you see a weak team crushed by a strong one. Look at how the goals unfolded and you see a back line unprepared for the situation it faced. Those are two different stories, and the second is the true one.

Twenty-five minutes — the real number of the match

Now we must talk about the number. Not the 5-0 — that is merely the result. The number that truly matters is twenty to twenty-five. That is how many minutes the two most experienced centre-backs at NEC can play. A defence depending on players who can only last twenty-five minutes is not a defence built to compete in Europe. It is a defence built to survive a domestic season, hoping fitness issues resolve before big matches arrive.

They did not resolve. And the way a club lets this situation persist says something about its operating model. NEC does not buy centre-backs. They loan youngsters. They rely on veterans who can play at some level. It is a financially safe but competitively fragile model. One injury, one suspension, one fitness slump — and the whole system collapses.

Kabar arrived from Dortmund on a development loan. Financially, a sensible deal for NEC: no large transfer fee, possible wage sharing, and a quality youngster from a top European academy. Sporting-wise, however, it is a gamble. A loanee carries no resale value for the loaning club. His development value belongs to Dortmund. NEC bears the sporting risk — that he fails, gets injured, or burns out — while the potential upside belongs to someone else.

This time, that risk materialised in the worst possible way. Kabar was thrown into the biggest match of the season, broken mentally, then publicly named by his own manager as proof of the squad's shortfall.

I have seen similar loans throughout my career. The 2026 winter market in Marseille began with a training session at seven in the morning, when no one was watching, and I learned that a young player's value lies not in how many matches he plays, but in which matches. A youngster with twenty second-tier appearances may develop better than one with five in Europe. Timing and context create development, not quantity.

When a sporting crisis becomes a relational one

That is when the story changes nature. After the match, Schreuder said at his press conference: "Why do I keep starting Kabar? Because I have nothing else." There are many ways to read this, and each leads to a different conclusion about the man behind it.

The first reading — the easiest, and the one the press chose — is a ruthless manager pushing a young player into public scrutiny to explain his own defeat. This reading spreads because it has a clear character: the abandoned boy. And in the social-media age, personal stories always travel faster than systemic ones.

But there is a second reading, less noticed but truer in my view. Schreuder's words may not have been aimed at Kabar. They may have been aimed at the board, at the recruitment staff, at those who failed to sign enough centre-backs to rotate through a European season. When a coach says "I have nothing else", he is not merely describing his squad. He is sending a message.

I have seen this kind of message many times. It appears when internal pressure is unrelieved, when a coach feels alone in covering gaps the club should have filled. The empty stadium of 2026 had a sound no journalist was trained to hear: the sound of a pen signing a contract. But it also taught me to hear another sound — the voices of coaches left alone with squads too thin to sustain. Whatever the intent, the effect is the same: a young player hears his name in that sentence.

A broken generational pipeline

Here we must ask about generational transition. In a healthy club, a nineteen-year-old centre-back should not be thrown into a match against Juventus as the main character. He should develop gradually — coming off the bench for the last twenty minutes when the team leads, starting against mid-table sides, placed beside an experienced centre-back who can shield him. That is the standard development path for a young defender in any league.

Kabar had no such path. He was plunged straight into the biggest match. And when he failed, that failure was not placed in context. It was presented as a fact about his ability.

A club that does not invest in its defence pays in three ways: in points, in a player's confidence, and in its reputation in the loan market. Dortmund sent Kabar to NEC expecting him to be developed. If he returns damaged and less confident, Dortmund has reason to reconsider the relationship. And in the loan market — where reputation is a precious asset — a partner judged unable to protect its players will struggle to attract quality loanees in future.

This is an overlooked dimension. The loan market runs on trust, like any relationship network. Big clubs like Dortmund are not merely looking for a place where their youngsters can play. They are looking for a place where their players are protected, guided, developed in a professional environment. When a loan partner lets a youngster be burned and then publicly criticised, the relationship is damaged.

I have watched such relationships over the years and know they can be broken by small things. An unanswered call. An unverified article. A youngster abandoned in a match too big. A mid-tier club like NEC does not have much capital to build quality loan relationships. When they lose one, the cost of replacing it is high.

Where NEC sits in the Eredivisie picture

Now let us consider the wider Eredivisie picture. Where does NEC sit in the league's hierarchy? At the top are Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord — clubs with elite European academies, European revenue, and the ability to retain or sell players at high value. Below them is a tier including AZ, Twente, Utrecht — sides with European ambition but insufficient resources to sustain it consistently. And below that, mid-table clubs like NEC — where European qualification is the ceiling, and survival in the league is more realistic than any grander ambition.

In that picture, facing Juventus is a test few clubs at that level can pass. What stands out is not the defeat, but how it happened. A side knowing it is weaker can usually organise defensively to limit damage. NEC could not, and the reason lay not in tactics but in personnel.

One thing I want to make clear, because it is often misunderstood. Mid-tier clubs like NEC do not fail in Europe because they lack talent. They fail because European football's hierarchy forces them against sides superior in every respect, while their squad is built to survive at a much lower level. This is a structural problem, not an individual one.

The Juventus match was a test at the highest level. NEC entered it with a patched-up defence, and they paid the price. But the price was not only three points or a bad result. It was also the confidence of a young player, their reputation in the loan market, and the supporters' faith in a project under construction.

The week ahead and signals to watch

Now look at the week ahead. NEC's next match is a milestone — not because of the opponent, but because it will show how far pressure on Schreuder has spread after the 5-0. Schreuder himself admitted uncertainty over Schuurs's availability for that game. A sign the defensive crisis will continue.

If NEC suffer another heavy defeat, pressure on the manager's seat will rise. Not because the board misunderstands the class gap with Juventus, but because another defeat would deepen the problem they failed to solve in the transfer window.

There are three signals I will track. First, whether Kabar continues to start — and how Schreuder speaks of him in media appearances. Second, whether Nuytinck and Schuurs return fit enough to play ninety minutes. Third, whether Dortmund send any message about how their player is being managed.

These signals interconnect in complex ways. If Kabar keeps starting, it means NEC truly has no other option. If he is dropped, it may mean Schreuder has heard the backlash and is trying to repair. If Schuurs returns, the next question is whether his return is enough to mask the deeper problem, or merely delays a crisis that will recur next month.

A contrarian view: the story is being told in the wrong direction

There is a story being told about this match, and I believe it is being told in the wrong direction. That story says Schreuder is a manager who cannot protect his players, that he betrayed a young pupil's trust, that this reveals weak leadership. Those telling it have evidence — verbatim quotes, clear nuance — and they are not wrong on the facts.

But that story ignores something fundamental: if Schreuder did not field Kabar, whom would he field? No better answer exists. Nuytinck and Schuurs can only last twenty-five minutes. Bischoff is injured. Other centre-backs are absent from the squad. The team entered the match without enough centre-backs for ninety minutes. That is not a one-night problem, but the consequence of a process.

The real issue is not the decision to start Kabar. It is the chain of prior decisions — the decisions that brought NEC to a state where only one unprepared young centre-back stood between them and Juventus. And those decisions were not made in a press conference. They were made in transfer negotiations, in budget plans, in how a club decides its priorities.

What the press calls "the manager's ruthlessness" may in reality be "the desperation of a man left alone". When Schreuder said "I have nothing else", perhaps he was not attacking Kabar. Perhaps he was speaking to those who should have heard it long ago.

The blind spot of the official story lies here: it turns a systemic problem into a personal narrative. And when a systemic problem is reduced to a personal story, it becomes easier to consume but harder to solve. NEC will not solve their defensive problem by criticising Schreuder. They will solve it by buying a centre-back, or by changing how they build their squad.

I have witnessed this many times in my career. When a small club faces crisis, the media always tend to find a figure to blame. Sometimes that figure is the manager. Sometimes a player. But the true cause usually lies where no one wants to look — in structure, in budget, in long-term decisions deferred.

In NEC's case, the Kabar story is a symptom. The disease is a thin defence. And that disease cannot be cured by criticising the one bearing the symptom.

What happens next

So what happens next? The coming fortnight will answer. I will track three signals: whether Kabar continues to start — and how Schreuder speaks of him — in the next match; whether Nuytinck and Schuurs return fit enough for ninety minutes; and whether Dortmund send any message about how their player is being managed. In modern football, loan relationships are sustained by trust. And trust, once damaged, is hard to restore.

A mid-tier club like NEC survives by managing its own limits. They cannot compete with Ajax or PSV on money, cannot compete with Juventus on class. What they can do is manage risk wisely — protect their young players, build sustainable loan relationships, and avoid gambles that can destroy a season. The Juventus match showed they failed to manage that risk, at least in this moment.

But football does not end after a defeat, however heavy. What shapes a season is not one night's result, but how a club responds to it. NEC can choose to blame a manager or a young player — easy and cheap. Or they can choose to look at their own structure, at the gaps in their squad, at the decisions that led to that night in Turin. The second choice is far harder, but it is the only one that can change anything.

From the stands at Luzhniki, I learned that football's decisive moments are not goals. They are the moments before the ball rolls — when someone decides where to place trust, and someone decides what to take responsibility for. In Turin, those moments happened long before Almugera Kabar walked onto the pitch.