Dutch Dreams | English Enemies

Welcome back to Dutch Dreams!
This time I’ll guide you through the 2027/28 season at FC Volendam and take a closer look at our background story with one particular, English club.

Expectations:
This seasons expectations were fairly similar to last season. Domestically, we’re supposed to win both the league title and the cup. On the international stage however, the board want us to at least reach the Champions League semi finals.

Transfers:
Sales:
Overall, this seasons transfer business was decent.
We only lost one key player, two backup players, three B-Team players, some players from our loan system and made 512M€ from those sales.
All of those numbers are great, especially if you consider that pretty much our whole first team was approached by big European clubs in both transfer windows.
Still, there’s the elephant in the room. The key player we lost this season was our Brazilian central defender Marcos Paullo (23) who was unsettled by Arsenal. He ended up joining them for 101M€ in the summer of 2027.

Due to the success we had last season when we internally replaced our Arsenal-bound star striker Sebastien Chaput (22 y.o., 107M€) with Juan Guillermo Paez (21), I thought replacing Paullo internally would be a sensible idea. What shall I tell you, I was wrong. The Argentinian central defender Tomas Cabral (22) had spend the last two seasons out on loan in the top flights of Belgium and France after joining us for 5M€ from Boca Juniors in the summer of 2025. He did well there and my coaches rated him highly, so I decided to give him the chance of replacing Paullo. He did well in the league but was a worry in his first starts in the Champions League. Those performances saw him lose his status as my second choice CB to his countryman Gaston Avila (26), who joined us for 7.25M€ from Boca at the same time as he did. Cabral still got regular play time domestically due to the high amount of fixtures we had. Both didn’t do badly but I still feel like they didn’t really replace Paullo.

Soulyman Allouch (26) and Nathanael Mbuku (26) were important players when we first won the Eredivisie title back in 2022/23 but have had very different careers ever since. Mbuku went on to join PSG for 54M€ following the title win and returned for 15.75M€ in 2024/25 whilst Allouch remained our the club. During the last two seasons, both saw their squad status decrease.
Mbuku still put up great numbers which have now earned him another big money move to France. This time, he joins Lyon for 51M€.
Allouch didn’t do as well and ended up joining German side VfL Wolfsburg for 24M€.

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Eight years ago, at the end of season one, I explained my vision for Jong Volendam – our B-Team. For one, I wanted to give young players the opportunity to gain experience in senior football without having to loan them out or worrying about results too much. But despite that, I also wanted to provide a pathway to the first team for the standout performers. By looking at the status quo, it’s clear to see, that the latter part didn’t really work out (not yet). Still, the first part seems to work better than ever before. Jong Volendam keeps ruling the second division (6 league titles in the last 7 seasons), which in turn leads to great player ratings.

A few years ago, the key performers started to attract the interest of Eredivisie clubs. This season however, we sold three B-Team regulars for a combined fee of ~90M€. Polish wonderkid P. Maliszewski (20) joined Watford for 35M€, French dentral defender J. Boyer (22) went to Bayern for 32.5M€ and Lille OSC paid 16M€ for DR Congolese winger S. Nsiala (22).

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As expected, all of them impressed at their new clubs. This is not something I worry about. To me, it’s a win-win-win situation; we increase our clubs finances, the player (usually) gets a big payrise and the buying club receives a great player. In case I feel like the player could be of use for us in the future, I try to negotiate a reasonably priced buy back clause with no expiry date, which works most of the time. This scheme of buying low, developing and selling high without negatively affecting the first team seems like a decent business plan to me, so I’ll try to keep it going for now.

Signings:
When I opened my inbox on the first day of the 2027 summer transfer window I was cought off guard. I got flooded with newspaper articles about FC Volendam spending a club and domestic record fee. At first I thought my board had done something stupid but then I realised that it was my fault. Back in January 2027 I decided to go all out for the Champions League title. Despite the signings of V. van Dijk and M. Ter Stegen, I also agreed a deal worth 42.5M€ with Liverpool for Dutch striker Muhammad Sujana (23). He didn’t join us immediately as he was on loan at Juventus and I had forgotten about him since. When he joined us, he wasn’t as highly rated as he was before but A. Dekkers (23) was struggling to regain his old form, so he made the most of it and ended up as the leagues top scorer with 18 goals.

His status as the clubs record signing didn’t last long. Holland international and Real Madrid regular Ryan Gravenberch (26) became available towards the end of the summer transfer window. In the end, his ability, versatility and nationality convinced me to sign him for 47M€ (potentially rising to 59M€).

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To keep the Jong Volendam scheme going, we also signed a number of youngsters this season. Some went straight back out on loan and some either joined the U19s or the B-Team. In total, we spend 184M€ on new players this season.

Domestic Competitions:
Domestic football is just far too predictable at this stage. We won the Johan Cruijff Schaal, the cup and the league title. We lost one domestic game all season. Once again local rivals AZ prevented our first domestic unbeaten season. In the league, we won 32 games, drew one and lost one. This lead to another record points total in the league, with the new record standing at 97 points from 34 games.

Champions League:
This season our group stage opponents were AS Monaco, FC Porto and once again Atalanta. On paper, this should have been easy. But football isn’t played on paper. A dominant 5-0 win against Monaco in our first game was followed by a terrible 4-0 loss away against Porto. Luckily, we managed to recover from this and ended the group in first place, but things could’ve ended very different as most of the following four games were decided by individual class rather than good team efforts.

We were drawn against Liverpool in the first knockout round. The first leg away in England ended 0-0, which meant that we had everything to play for at home. We dominated them in the first half of the second leg but only took the lead seconds before half time. The second half was basically like the first half but with better chance conversion on our end. In the end, we won the game 4-0 thanks to goals from M. Baronas, M. Beutel and a brace by JG Paez.

Italian giant Inter were our opponents in the quarter final. We won the first leg 1-0 at home thanks to a great strike by M. Beutel. Even though we lost the second leg 2-1, we still went trough on away goals. This time C. Breton stepped up and saved the day.

Machester United would be our opponent in the semi final. The first leg away at the Old Trafford ended 1-1. It was a boring game with few highlights in which our Brazilian winger T. Carioca scored the equaliser for us after 85 minutes. He also was the decisive figure in the second leg at home. His brace and a goal by M. Baronas secured our 3-1 win on the night, leaving the aggregate score 4-2 in our favour.

We made it to our first ever Champions League final!
From a narrative point of view, there couldn’t have been a more suitable final opponent than the one we got – Arsenal.
They were the first club to offer me a job interview back in the summer of 2022, which I rejected for a number of reasons.
Ever since I rejected that interview, they tried to unsettle my key players with mixed results.
In 2022/23 they bought our then star CB Vandinho (25) for 60M€, in 2026/27 they bought our main striker S. Chaput (22) for 107M€ and this season they bought key CB M. Paullo (23) for 101M€. The latter is by now considered to be their key player.
Even though we got fair prices for those players, it’s undeniable that they have weakened our squad like no one else.
During pre-season, I arranged a friendly against them as they were the current Champions League title holders and we smashed them 4-0, so I was confident ahead of the biggest game in the history of FC Volendam.

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Looking at the starting elevens, neither side could really describe themselves as the clear underdog or favourite.

Then the game kicks off and Arsenal just tear us apart in the first minutes. It felt like disaster waiting to happen – and it happened. In the 14th minute, G. Leotta crosses the ball into our box and no one else than our ex-player S. Chaput rises highest and heads it in to give Arsenal the lead. To make things worse, G. Avila, my internal replacement for M. Paullo was the one to lose the aerial duel against Chaput.

I immediately decided to change formations because the current one didn’t seem to work at all. It paid off. 26 minutes into the match winger M. Beutel takes on four Arsenal players all by himself and then squares it into the middle of the Arsenal box where JG Paez does what he’s best at – he scores!

Four minutes later, there is some VAR action happening. Our Brazilian wing-back Edson was tackled by O. Zinchenko in the Arsenal box. The referee reviews the footage…

…And awards a penalty!
JG Paez steps up and scores his second of the night! 2-1 in favour of FC Volendam!

It’s time to get excited, right?! No, it’s not.
Roughly a minute later our midfield orchestrator P. Bodin surrenders possession, Arsenal Brazilian winger Everton is quickest to react. He plays a great trough ball to S. Chaput, who shoots through Ter Stegens legs and levels the score… 2-2.
Once again, G. Avila isn’t anywhere near him.

Half time.
Ter Stegen hasn’t been great so far and his 6.4 rating worried me. What do I do? Do I keep him on and watch him throw away our chances of Champions League glory or do I bring on academy graduate H. van der Geest who lost his starting spot to Ter Stegen last season and hasn’t played a single game this season?
That’s the dilemma of the manager. Let’s try to ignore the fact that we’re playing a Champions League final right now for a second… Have you ever seen a goalie getting substituted for any other reason than an injury?!
Naturally, I decided to bring H. van der Geest on.
Talking about controversial decisions, I also decided to bring on R. Gravenberch for club captain M. Caqueret for the second half.

No captain, no reliable goalie and a formation that was actively used for the last time when most of our current players didn’t even know the club existed… Surely nothing can go wrong from here!?

Bring on the second half!

We had three major chances in the second half but each one was denied by a last second tackles from the Arsenal players.

We also lost G. Avila trough injury in the 84th minute. He was replaced by R. Lucas.

Full time. Another 30 minutes to be played. No changes are made.

Three minutes after the kick off of extra time, Arsenal get themselves a corner.
Tielemans hits it into the box where M. Diaz rises highest. 3-2 Arsenal.

We go all out attacking, I once again change formations and replace a poor R. Gravenberch with academy garduate M. Postma.

Then the final whistle goes and our dream of lifting the Champions League today bursts into pieces.
Heartbreak, disappointment and the question what could’ve been if Arsenal hadn’t unsettled Marcos Paullo at the start of this season.

With no real competition domestically, it seems like Arsenal are becoming our first fierce rivals – or in other words our English Enemies.

International:
This season T. Cabral made his debut for Argentina and O. Keenleyside started for England for the first time.

Awards:

The team of the season seems fine but I honestly don’t know how a 24 year-old J. de Louw got his hands on the young player of the year award.

On another note, our star midfielder Christophe Baron (23) won the FIFA Best Men’s player award. Interestingly he didn’t win the Ballon d’Or, which was won by Best Men’s player award 3rd place Pierre Dauphin (Barca).

Breakout Star:
This seasons breakout star is academy graduate Maikel Postma (19). He made his first team debut in the Dutch cup in the 2025/26 season and made 4(5) appearances in the following season. The sales of N. Mbuku and S. Allouch assured that he’d be able to get more play time than before. He made the most of it by scoring 14 goals and assisted 13 in 24(6) appearances (7.64 avg. rating).

Dutch Dreams:

Integrating Youth:
As you’ve just read, M. Postma (19) is the latest academy graduate who made it into the regular first team setup. Despite that not much happened this season. The youth intake was decent but no one really stood out. Depending on the transfer business in the upcoming summer transfer window, we may see some more academy graduates in the first team setup next season.

Winning the Champions League:
We went sooo close this time but close wasn’t close enough. Let’s hope we’ll be able to go one step further next year!

That’s it for the season.
As always, thank you so much for reading! See you next time 😉

Feedback is always welcome, so please get back to me by writing a comment or give me a heads up on the FM Slack ( #oaky-fm ) !