NEC Nijmegen and the Left-Flank Hole: Can Free Agent Mitchel Bakker Patch a 5-0 Wound from Turin?

I rewound the first half of Juventus versus NEC Nijmegen three times in a single night, and only on the third pass did I stop at the twelfth minute. There was nothing dramatic about the moment: a long ball from a Juventus centre-back, a forward making a run, a twenty-year-old left-back turning half a beat too late. But the space behind his back was so wide that I had to measure it again on screen — nearly twenty metres of unprotected ground.

By the thirty-eighth minute, that same zone had been exploited in three different ways: a ball received behind the full-back, a centre-back dragged out to open the inside channel, and a diagonal switch of play to isolate the very same flank. At half-time the score was 3-0. At full-time it was 5-0.

I wrote two words in my notebook: structure.

After more than three decades in this trade, I have arrived at a rather uncomfortable rule: when a team loses heavily through the same zone over and over, the cause always sits on two levels — the tactical idea and the personnel. At NEC that evening, both levels failed at once. That is why every debate about a free-agent signing held immediately after this match is asking the wrong question.

Context: a mid-tier club thrown into Juventus' stadium

NEC Nijmegen are a mid-table Eredivisie club accustomed to living on limited resources: their academy, loan players, and free transfers. This season they entered European competition, and the draw sent them to Turin to face Juventus — an opponent in an entirely different class in squad depth and budget. Losing 5-0 away to Juventus, judged purely on level, was a predictable result.

The manner of the defeat was not.

Dick Schreuder, the NEC manager, is the type who dares. He chose to press high inside Juventus' stadium, pushed his defensive line close to the halfway line, and accepted the trade-off of space behind. After the match he admitted his team had played "with courage" and had left "huge spaces" behind the defence. The point is that on the left flank, that gap had stopped being a purely tactical matter. It had become a personnel matter.

Almugera Kabar, twenty years old, was thrown into Juventus' stadium at left-back. He arrived from an entirely new system, stood for the first time on a stage of that size, and came under heavy fire from the Dutch media afterwards. Behind him, both specialist options were in the treatment room: Deveron Fonville and Ahmetcan Kaplan. Schreuder said a sentence every coach understands instantly: he had nothing else.

Right then, two veteran De Telegraaf writers — Mike Verweij, a club watcher, and Valentijn Driessen, a senior editor — went on air on Kick-off and jointly floated one name: Mitchel Bakker. A twenty-six-year-old, a free agent since early September after a mutual termination at Atalanta. Verweij said that if NEC could pick him up for free, that could be interesting. Driessen agreed, recalling that Bakker had enjoyed some pretty good spells. Verweij added one warning that I consider the most interesting part of the whole segment: if things continue like this, it could become very unpleasant in the league as well.

Bakker's profile reads attractively. Ajax, Leverkusen, Lille, Atalanta. At Lille he scored four goals and provided three assists in thirty-five matches. Those are the numbers of an attacking full-back, not a conservative one. But last season, because of injury, he played exactly one game for Atalanta.

That is all the evidence I have. The rest is analysis, and I will split it into three layers: the tactical idea, the personnel, and the financial structure of a free transfer.

Layer one: high pressing is a trade, not a faith

High pressing is no invention. It is the common language of modern football, and every mid-tier club that wants to play the "brave" way is obliged to speak it. But it is a reciprocal trade: you win the ball earlier in the opponent's half, and you pay with a wide zone behind your defensive line. The trade only pays off when your defence is quick enough to cover, or when the system has a screener.

What is called "high pressing" is in fact the result of a thousand repeated training sessions — the distances between lines, the pressing angles, the timing of each individual's jump, and above all the retreat rhythm of the lower line. Without those repetitions, all that remains on the pitch is a few players running forward and a defence left wide open.

Tactics are what you use when the opponent thinks they have already read you. In Turin, Juventus did not need to read anything. They only needed to pass the ball into the zone NEC had willingly vacated.

I still use the old method from the France–Uruguay quarter-final at the 2026 World Cup in Russia, when Didier Deschamps dropped Griezmann deeper to form a variant 4-4-2 and held France's inter-line distances at around 19.5 metres — close enough to shut the inside channels, far enough not to be stretched. That World Cup taught me that attacking is a form of expression, while defending is the answer. NEC did the opposite: they expressed themselves enthusiastically and answered very little.

Based on my experience watching matches, a team that presses high without organising the lower line into a block will collapse inside the first fifteen minutes. NEC collapsed later, but on exactly that script. The three situations I logged share one geometric feature: the ball travelled into the space between the left-back and the left centre-back, and neither of them took responsibility for closing it. I call that a structural blind spot, because it does not depend on whether a player runs fast or slow — it depends on whether the system assigns anyone the job at all.

With three situations that repeat the same mechanism, my three-evidence rule is satisfied. This is a design problem, not an effort problem.

Layer two: the left flank is a three-layer crisis

The left side of NEC's defence carries three overlapping problems.

First, the personnel. Kabar is twenty, newly arrived, playing in a new system, and standing for the first time on a European stage of this size. Cultural barriers and tactical barriers are not removed by words, but by the first match — and his first match was in Turin. This is close to the worst possible script for a young player in the most delicate position on the pitch.

Second, the cover. Fonville and Kaplan, the two specialist options, are both injured. When both backups for one position are simultaneously in the treatment room, the club is no longer facing a positional crisis. It is facing a risk-management crisis.

Third, the public statement. Schreuder's remark that he had nothing else is an honest admission, but it is also a signal to the board: the problem lies in recruitment, not in coaching. That kind of honesty can generate a transfer, but it also pushes a twenty-year-old out in front of the media pressure alone.

The year 2026 taught me that a team stands on its system, not on its lineup. NEC are doing the opposite — letting one twenty-year-old carry the risk that the system should have distributed.

On profile, Bakker is an attacking wing-back: four goals and three assists in thirty-five Lille matches. For a team that presses high and leaves space behind, an attack-first wing-back can make things worse unless the system compensates for him — a covering midfielder, or a back three that shifts across. In other words, Bakker is a solution only if the systemic problem is solved first. Otherwise, NEC is swapping an inexperienced player for an attack-minded one inside the same hole.

It is worth adding that Bakker has played in several different systems — Ajax, Leverkusen, Lille, Atalanta. That can be read as adaptability, or as a sign of a career that has never settled. Both readings are legitimate, and I do not have enough data to choose.

Layer three: the financial structure of a free deal

On the balance sheet, this deal looks beautiful. The transfer fee is zero. There is no amortisation, and no sell-on obligation to a former club. A twenty-six-year-old at peak age arriving for nothing can generate a resale profit if he performs. Verweij's "free equals interesting" logic holds if judged on this axis alone.

But cheap to acquire is not cheap to own.

The real cost of a Bosman deal concentrates in three places: wages, a signing-on fee, and agent fees. None of those three numbers has been disclosed. When a club is in crisis at one position, the agent holds a large negotiating advantage — and the wage expectations of a player who has just left Atalanta tend to be calibrated to a top-league salary. That is a gap NEC must pay for with something other than a transfer fee.

The greater risk is availability. One single appearance for Atalanta across an entire season, because of injury, is the heaviest data point in the whole file. A multi-year contract for a player with a thick injury history, at a club whose problem is precisely a lack of fit players, is risk stacked on risk. If NEC cannot tie wages to appearances, they may turn a short-term solution into a deadweight contract.

And there is an administrative question nobody has answered: whether NEC can register a free agent outside the transfer window. Many leagues permit it, but it is not automatic, and it depends on registration rules and the current state of the squad list. If the window is shut and there is no free-agent exception, this entire debate becomes moot at the procedural step.

The contrarian angle: this is opinion, not a transfer report

The two De Telegraaf writers did not report that NEC had approached Bakker. They floated a suggestion on a commentary show. That is a large difference, and I am surprised how little it is mentioned.

Immediately after a free agent is named publicly on a programme with a large audience, negotiating leverage shifts toward that player's representatives — entirely independent of whether the club is genuinely interested. I have no evidence of any relationship between the agent and that commentary panel, and I will not speculate. But I always tell my students one thing: when a transfer story appears exactly when a club is panicking, check who benefits from the information spreading.

Second, the "bargain" framing is selling half the truth. Bakker's file is attractive in age and attacking output. It is worrying in availability. Selling an injury-prone player as a free bargain is the fastest way to turn a financially sound deal into a sporting disappointment.

Third, and most important to me: an attacking wing-back cannot fix a structural problem in a defensive line. NEC conceded because of the space between full-back and centre-back, because the lower line was not organised into a block, because nobody was assigned to screen. Bakker is at his best in a collective that covers for him. Putting him into the very place where that collective is broken is hard to call an upgrade.

Fourth, a problem of people rather than tactics. Kabar has just been heavily criticised after a match he was thrown into because there was nobody else. Whether or not Bakker signs, that psychological damage does not go away. A twenty-year-old turned into a scapegoat in a match where the whole system collapsed is the kind of loss that is very hard to recover from, and it rarely shows up in the scoreline. I saw similar cases in the Chinese second tier in 2026, when I had to redraw fourteen passing sequences just to show that the fault belonged to no individual. My conclusion then still holds here: when the whole block is out of position, the most visible man is the lowest man in the block.

What to watch from the next round

I will not close with a summary. I will close with three verifiable signals.

The first is the medical. If NEC genuinely move, how they structure the contract — short term, appearance-based wages — will say more than any statement.

The second is the registration rule. Until someone confirms NEC may register a free agent outside the window, the name Bakker remains a television suggestion.

The third is the domestic table over the next four rounds. If NEC keep sliding, pressure will turn a sensible deal into a panicked one, and panic is the fastest way to sign the wrong player at the right moment.

If you ask me what NEC should do, the answer does not lie with Bakker. It lies in whether the lower line can be reorganised into a block with someone accountable for each channel. The left flank is merely where the wound shows first. The wound is deeper: this is a defence designed to attack, not to protect.

Open Doubts

Three questions I have no data to answer. One: why did Atalanta and Bakker reach a mutual termination — injury, or something else? Two: does NEC genuinely have interest, or is this purely media commentary? Three: what is the current state of the Eredivisie's free-agent registration window? Until those three are answered, any conclusion about a "bargain" is speculation, and a responsible analyst should say so rather than sound certain.