Stengs, the Number 10 Void, and AZ Alkmaar's Unanswered Question

In the 67th minute at AFAS Stadion, AZ Alkmaar led Willem II 1-0. Calvin Stengs received the ball at the edge of the box, turned past a defender, and struck with the inside of his boot. The ball sailed into the twelfth row. Twenty minutes later, Willem II equalised. The match ended 1-1, and on the bench, Lee-Roy Echteld stood motionless, eyes fixed on the stand where the ball had flown.

That night, on Dutch ESPN, Kenneth Perez rewound the moment three times. He called Stengs "a wonderful footballer", then, in a voice close to regret: "But his finishing is among the worst I have seen at this level." That love-hate framing is not an off-the-cuff remark. It is a map pointing at AZ's sorest spot right now.

Based on my experience of tracking matches, moments like this rarely stand alone. They are the head of a longer thread, and in Alkmaar that thread begins in midfield.

Context: a club rearranging itself

This season AZ entered with remarkable depth in central midfield. Jordy Clasie returned as the veteran metronome. Kees Smit is injured but still regarded as a strategic link. Dave Kwakman emerged over three or four matches and, according to Marciano Vink, "he really belongs in the AZ first team". Add Teun Koopmeiners to the personnel picture Dutch analysts keep invoking, and you have four central midfielders competing for starting spots.

The problem lies elsewhere: none of them is a genuine number 10. Clasie is a deep-lying distributor. Koopmeiners is a box-to-box profile. Smit and Kwakman are runners and ball-winners rather than creators. The only player with the instincts of an advanced playmaker is Stengs, and he is precisely the most contested figure.

The Eredivisie is a league where clubs outside the big three of PSV, Feyenoord and Ajax must live inside a narrow budget corridor. AZ were once a regular European qualifier, but that status is no longer guaranteed by money. In a league where the financial gap between the top group and the rest keeps widening, every wasted starting slot is a double loss. You lose points, and you lose the chance to sell a player at peak value.

The draw against Willem II is therefore more than a forgettable result. Willem II sit in the lower half of the table. Dropping a lead against an opponent of that calibre, early in a season when everything can still be shaped, is the kind of signal a coaching staff must read before it becomes a habit.

Core analysis: the 2-0 effect and the cost of one skied shot

Perez's argument rests on a solid tactical foundation few notice. In football, 2-0 is not simply 1-0 plus one goal. It changes the opponent's entire risk calculus. At a one-goal deficit, the underdog still harbours hope of equalising from a set piece or a flash of brilliance, so they keep a low block and wait. At two goals down, they must push the line up, send full-backs high, and open space behind.

In other words, Stengs' miss in the 67th minute did not merely cost a goal. It preserved the match state unfavourable to AZ, forcing the hosts to keep grinding against a crowded defensive block, and ultimately paying for it with Willem II's equaliser.

On the individual technical level, the repeated description of "blazing high over the bar from close range" suggests a deeper issue than carelessness. Players who repeatedly miss from short distances usually have a flaw in their striking mechanics or their standing-foot placement, not in their attitude. Under time pressure they tend to overhit the ball to compensate for hesitation, and the ball rises. That distinction matters, because if the cause is technical the corrective drill is entirely different from a psychological cause.

Perez also mentions a detail many overlook: injuries have set Stengs back. A player returning from injury often loses his sense of timing. He still sees the gap, still picks the right position, but his feet no longer arrive when his mind thinks they should. At 27, for a creative midfielder, the recovery window is narrowing. That is a datum worth noting, not an excuse.

Behind Stengs, Echteld's selection puzzle is even harder. Vink frames it clearly: if Stengs occupies the number 10 role, one of Clasie, Smit or Kwakman must sit out. This is not a question of "picking the best three". It is a positional-role mismatch. You have four players sharing the same strengths and the same zone, but only two slots in the spine if you play a back four.

Kwakman's case makes the situation more delicate. Vink says that when Smit returns, Kwakman may be the one to make way, and calls it "an eternal shame". That phrasing shows the analyst community rates Kwakman's current form more highly than the pecking order the coaching staff may apply. In a dressing room, such decisions leave marks. A young player performing well, praised in the media, then pushed aside because someone else recovered from injury, will remember it for a long time.

Contrarian angle: the problem is not Stengs' level

The story Dutch media have built is appealing and easy to believe: a player of a class above the league he plays in, stuck at AZ, who only needs a bigger environment for everything to click. Perez says it outright, arguing that a player of Stengs' calibre should not be at AZ at 27.

But that narrative obscures a more uncomfortable truth. If AZ genuinely have no number 10 other than Stengs, then the issue is not that Stengs is playing at the wrong level. The issue is that AZ built a squad off its axis. A club with four good central midfielders but only one natural creator has prioritised wrongly across several consecutive transfer windows. That is a strategic-layer error, not an error in one man's feet.

Amid the noise of the transfer market, some contracts are signed only with trust and a handshake. But some gaps are overlooked simply because nobody looked at the squad map long enough. Alkmaar are paying for that gap in points.

This also raises a question about the club's economics. A team in AZ's financial position cannot carry four players in the same role without selling anyone. Squad value is concentrated in one place while the creative position is thin. When the market opens, selling pressure comes from the surplus, not the shortage, and the result is that the club loses good players while still failing to solve the core issue.

For Stengs, things are far more complicated than the label "a star misused". He is simultaneously the only tactical solution at number 10, the team's biggest finishing weakness, and an asset depreciating with age. Those three roles overlap into a knot a coach cannot untie simply by substituting.

The 90+2 goal does not come from a script, but from those who refuse to leave the pitch when the lights have gone out. AZ's problem is the reverse: they let matches drift while men are still on the pitch.

Where the crux lies

Crowding in midfield is not a sign of strength if the players occupy the same space. It is a sign of a squad not yet fully drawn. Echteld can take the safe route, keeping the shape and rotating on form, or the harder route, adjusting the structure to create a second creative role. The second takes time, but it solves both the personnel problem and the space problem.

The pulse of a match never stops; it only waits for someone who knows how to listen to tell it. In Alkmaar right now, the listener must be the coaching staff, and they must listen faster than the speed of public opinion.

The next signal to watch

The next three matches will answer two questions. First, will Stengs be given the number 10 role consistently, or pulled wide to make room for a crowded midfield. Second, when Smit recovers, who leaves the starting eleven. If the answer is Kwakman, AZ have chosen a priority order based on seniority rather than form, and they will pay for it in dressing-room atmosphere.

A club does not grow from a budget, but from the nights the whole squad stays awake for a shared belief. AZ are missing exactly such a night.