Football Season Guide

ADO Den Haag endured another season of high expectations and ultimately failure at the end as they came up short in the play-offs for a third season in a row. It was not against Excelsior this time but they still got beaten by a team they are much bigger than in Telstar, that made them look staid and predictable, holding on for a 1:0 win in the away game to secure a deserved win. ADO were actually excellent for the majority of last season as they got consistently excellent results after a difficult start and competed for automatic promotion spot for a fair while. But they could not quite sustain and now have to reset again after waving goodby to Darje Kalezic, who was a likeable but ultimately ineffective coach. The choice of the management for a replacement was an interesting one as they hired Robin Peter, who was at Emmen last season but got sacked midway through the campaign due to poor performances and lack of consistency. Yet the belief is that he is a young and promising coach who has the background of working in the Red Bull system and should make ADO a more energetic, high-pressing side that is able to dominate games. They still have some very good players in the ranks at the start of the season in the face of Matteo Waem, Daryl van Mieghem and young Luka Reischl, who stays on a permanent deal after arriving on loan from Salzburg in the winter, while the most significant departure was that of Alex Schalk. There has been notably little transfer action for ADO this summer and of yet but they tend to bring a few players late in the window and the squad should get a few reinforcements before the end of August as it is thin, especially defence and in the number 9 position. This looks like a competent and pretty decent team that has every chance to make the play-offs again but the big issues remains whether they are actually ready to compete for a top-two place and at the moment there are a few too many teams that have better squads on paper than them.