Thursday, December 30, 2021 at 10:37 PM• Jeroen van Poppel • Last update: 22:42

Oussama Darfalou must provide PEC Zwolle with the much-needed goals in the second half of the season. The 28-year-old center striker will be rented from Vitesse for the rest of the season, it is assured The Gelderlander. It doesn’t stop there for PEC, because with Max de Waal, who is borrowed from Ajax, there will be another new striker. This gives Dick Schreuder the extra scoring ability that the trainer of PEC wanted.

The reinforcements are desperately needed, because PEC is having a hopeless season and is at the bottom of the Eredivisie. One of the major problems is the lack of scoring ability in the selection: the Zwolle residents only produced nine league goals, by far the lowest number of all clubs. PEC has to make a huge catch up after the winter break to maintain itself. The gap to the (safe) spot fifteen is ten points.

With Darfalou, PEC at least brings in a striker who has experience in scoring goals in the Eredivisie. The Algerian, who can be recruited transfer-free after the season, made sixteen for Vitesse and three on a rental basis for VVV-Venlo. In total he needed 83 games for this, although there were also 41 substitutes. This season Darfalou played a supporting role at Vitesse and scored only one goal.

In addition, PEC is therefore going into business with De Waal, who has been a fixed value for Jong Ajax since this season. Under John Heitinga, the youngster transformed from attacking midfielder to striker, which worked out well. In the Kitchen Champion Division, De Waal scored a respectable nine goals in twenty appearances this season, eight of which came on as substitutes. Last season he already scored two goals in the second division of the Netherlands.