Friday night at the Fortuna Sittard Stadion sets the stage for a genuinely tight relegation-zone scrap, as two sides separated by goal difference and nothing else collide on Matchday 24. Both Danny Buijs's Fortuna Sittard and Ruben den Uil's Excelsior sit on 26 points with identical records of 7 wins, 5 draws, and 11 losses — meaning three points here could shift the entire lower-table picture. Fortuna hold the home advantage and score seven more goals than their visitors on the season, making them narrow favourites on the night.
Fortuna arrive in poor shape, taking just one point from their last three matches. A 4–1 thrashing away at Ajax on February 14 was the low point — the heaviest defeat on their recent record — following a 1–2 loss at Heracles a fortnight earlier. Their lone bright spot in five games was a 1–2 win at FC Groningen in January, though a 2–2 home draw with Sparta Rotterdam offered at least some defensive resilience before the Ajax collapse. Buijs's side have scored 8 and conceded 9 in their last five outings, a return that reflects a team struggling to impose itself against top-half opposition. Facing Excelsior at home, where Fortuna have scored in 78% of their league fixtures, gives them a better platform to return to winning ways.
Excelsior have not lost in four of their last five matches, but winning remains just as elusive — three of those results were draws. Their most recent outing, a 1–2 home defeat to AZ Alkmaar on February 14, snapped a three-game unbeaten run that included a 2–2 draw with Ajax and a 2–0 win at NAC Breda. Den Uil's side have kept their goals-conceded column lean in this stretch, shipping just five in five matches, but scoring only 6 in return speaks to a team that lacks punch in the final third. Excelsior average just 1.08 goals per match in 2026, the lowest of any side in the bottom half.
The head-to-head record across 21 all-time meetings leans firmly in Excelsior's favour — they have won 10 compared to Fortuna's 5, with 6 draws. However, the most relevant slice of that history involves the Eredivisie meetings since both clubs returned to the top flight, where the ledger is much tighter. Fortuna recorded 4 wins from the last set of competitive matchups between the two, and crucially won the reverse fixture earlier this season at Woudestein. That recent momentum at home adds meaningful context heading into Friday.
My prediction is Double Chance 1X & Over 1.5 at 1.72. Fortuna's home advantage, their superior goal output this season (34 to Excelsior's 25), and their recent head-to-head success make a home win or draw the most defensible call. Excelsior's attacking struggles — just one goal in their last two away fixtures combined — only strengthen the case for Fortuna to protect their record at Sittard. The xG projection (1.97–1.49) supports a 2–1 finish.
