Albania
Austria
Belgium
Bosnia
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Greece
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Netherlands
Norway
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Scotland
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Ukraine
Wales
World
Netherlands
Feyenoord – PSV; at last a top match again!
Comments(22)
At last Feyenoord – PSV is a top game again. And the Rotterdammers hope the Prague game is still in PSV’s legs. The second setback this week doesn’t ruin Mario Been’s optimism. Sekou Cisse is the second starter that is too injured to play. Dani Fernandez, Feyenoord’s right back, copped a serious knee injury last week against Willem II.
Been: “It seems now that Cisse has been playing with this injury for weeks. But we didn’t know because he didn’t tell us! He might be playing with an injection, but if not I’ve got Diego Biseswar. No problems.”
Typical Been-style. No problems. He likes to down play events and they like it in Rotterdam. Against PSV, the new coach will have his first classic as a coach. “Well, the game against FC Twente was a top game too, but maybe not so much for the outside world. I don’t really mind. We highly look forward to the PSV-game.”
The fact that PSV had to fight till the end last Thursday is an advantage for Feyenoord. Or is it? Been: “I can tell you after the match, but I don’t think it’s a disadvantage. They must be a bit more tired than us. We don’t have that problem this season, hahahaa… Unfortunately.”
Skipper Gio van Bronckhorst understands the type of preparation PSV will have to go through. “When you play three games in 7 days you need to focus on one match at a time. They’ll start to think about the Feyenoord game about now. That can be a disadvantage to them, depending on their rhythm and the tactical plans of Rutten. But the 2-2 was a good result, so they will have some confidence. But travel costs. It takes energy.”
Gio did this himself too a lot, when he started at Feyenoord and later with Rangers, Arsenal and Barca. “But with these clubs, you had 20 equal players. The coach was always able to rest the big guns without weakening the team too much. And at those clubs, players are used to the rhythm.”
Mario Been considers to take Babovic into the selection for the match. The 22 year old Serb should be fit for the bench. “He has surprised me again, this new kid. I might just add him to the list.”
PSV hopes to be able to use Afellay again, who was out with a groin injury against Sparta Prague. Rutten: “It doesn’t look bad at all, but I’ll await the last training session before I decide.”
Nordin Amrabat won’t be ready for Feyenoord. The winger also has a groin injury. Rutten: “Nordin has been out longer and will need more time to catch on. Apart from a number of little pains, all the players returned match fit.”
Rutten doesn’t see it as a disadvantage to play another top match within three days. “If you’re ambitious, this is the rhythm you want. Being a top player at a top team, means you do this. I can’t see any of our players complaining.”
Rutten isn’t surprised with Feyenoord’s comeback this season. “Not at all. I told everyone before the competition already. Feyenoord is a serious contender. The stats never lie.”
Jonathan Reis was the big man last Thursday, but he won’t be starting. Rutten wants to bring him cautiously. Officially, he’s still a Young PSV player. “But he did show himself in Prague and he’s coming, I can tell you that.”
BTW In a way I have the feeling Feyenoord have a good chance of winning from PSV.
Posted from 
Netherlands
This suggestion is just in the region of, always look out for players.Don’t think i’m saying Brouwers should be included immediately, he’s our missing link or that he’s worldclass, but it’s interesting to see what happens.
Posted from Netherlands
Watching Arsenal and Im realizing that van Persie cannot really play in the lone striker role. On Arsenal they play a 4-3-3 but all the players move around so much that he most of the time is getting the play deep and moving forward. This could be the solution for us. We could play 4-3-3 like Arsenal or Barcelona and the players just are constantly moving and switching.
the Midfield and attack could be
VBommel or De Jong(I prefer De Jong)
Sneijder Van der Vaart
Robben Elia(or Kuyt or Van Persie)
Van Persie(Huntelaar or Kuyt)
Posted from 
United States
If possible I’d love to see the following midfield/forward line-up against a lesser team.
-V.Bommel-V.d.Vaart
Robben-Sneijder-Elia
——V.Persie
Posted from Netherlands
Babel back on the bench for Liverpool. I guess that can be called an improvement…
Varmaelen becoming a cult hero at the Emirates already. 2 goals today. Wish Ajax could have kept him for another season.
my prediction: psv 1 1 feyenoord
feyenoord outplays psv but afellay does something special
with marcellis
afellay
amrabat
de guzman
fer
vlaar
biseswar
and wijnaldum there is planty to get excited about this game
After making a dog’s brekfast for a bit after coming on for Kuyt, Babel all of a sudden plays the perfect cross to Torres who scores to make it west ham 2 – Liverpool 3.
I didn’t even know Babel could cross properly. Must have been a fluke.
Yeah, seen it before from him. Very occasionally.
Posted from Netherlands
I watched the Arsenal game and Robin’s touches were horrible. He played an ok game – missed three big opps – but his skill let him down. He forgot the ball a couple of times and misses beats. Don’t know why, but in this game he wasn’t the graceful ballet dancer like Van Basten was, but a tad clumsy Rene Eykelkamp style. Or Adabayor style 
. Shit, maybe that kick last week by Ada moved a bit of Adabayor’s spirit into Van Persie… Hmm….
Vermaelen is hailed as the new hero. The Fox Sports commentators couldn’t stop talking about him. Fearless as a defender, strong header, scoring goals and pretty darn good with the left foot. Two massive goals and a perfect game for him. He reminds me of Beckenbauer a bit.
I had actually never heard of Roel Brouwers before your comment here…
Interesting…
Lads, I’ll see the Fey-PSV game delayed so I won’t be posting until tomorrow.
AZ lost the third game in a row to NEC. Koeman was livid. Threatens to replace some players. The downward slope so typical for Koeman has started .
i mention brouwers name many time in this blog
Posted from United States
Watched Vermaelen score his second and switched to the bayern game to see Van Buyten score, virtually minutes apart. Belgium have some great players and dont understand why they cant put it together?
Posted from 
Singapore
Van Hanegem wrote a column on that topic in the AD a week ago or so. He was present at a youth game once and was appalled by the behaviour of some of these youngsters.
Belgium is a quaint country, you know? It’s next to Holland so you’d assume they’re similar culturally but they’re not .
Depends on where you live really, close to Belgium it isn’t all that different. Amsterdam culture vs Breda culture is equally different as Breda vs Brussel.
Posted from Netherlands
@Jan: vPersie always is a bit all or nothing, sometimes he has a great game, sometimes a lousy one. I’ve noticed that against weaker teams he often plays worse than against the big teams. It’s like he needs to be able to get some glory to be at his best (no glory against West Ham, but against Manchester United and Manc.City he was much better, it isn’t the first time he’s been better at the big games).
vPersie is a bit like Zlatan (what we talked about earlier), he can force a goal when the chance really isn’t there initially because of his skill on the ball. But his positioning is not as good as someone like Kuyt or Huntelaar, therefore you can’t really rely on him for the easy tap-ins.
For example, against West Ham he once showed up in the penalty box and got the pass just a little bit too far behind him otherwise it would have been an easy tap in. You can say it’s the fault of the guy who gives the pass, but a good positional striker can make an adjustment at the right time to still be able to shoot a pass like that (I think they slow down just a bit the last few steps making it easier to make the adjustment, just like a tennis player who plays Serve-Volley and does the split-step at the exact time his opponent is hitting the ball so he can move in both directions and won’t be caught on the wrong leg).
Sneijder had the exact same situation at Inter against Barcelona (or was it the game against Parma before that?). Now I DO think in both cases it was a little bit the fault of the one giving the pass and a little bit the fault of the one who was making the run. But it’s hard to tell exactly. I just think someone like Adebayor, Drogba, Villa would have timed his run better and still get a good shot on goal from a bad/inaccurate pass like that. Just look at Adebayor’s positioning with the countergoal against Arsenal.
Posted from Netherlands
Oh, btw, Zlatan’s positioning is pretty good, the way I just commented it looked like I was comparing vPersie’s positioning with Zlatan’s, which was not the case cause they are not similar in terms of positioning, just in terms of goal “forcing”.
Posted from Netherlands
And if you want to know what I mean with forcing a goal when the chance isn’t there intitially. Just look at Torres first goal against WestHam (OK, just found out it was Arsenal against Wigan and Liverpool against West Ham, got them mixed up in my previous post).
I would nominate that goal for best goal of the season. It’s the best I’ve seen so far, even better than Robben’s goal against France.
This video doesn’t do the goal justice, the first second is cut off, now it almost looks like there was a chance, but there was really no chance at all and no reason to expect a goal from that situation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z74hanuNDRg
Posted from Netherlands
Jan: did you see his through ball for eboue though, wow he is so composed.
he missed some chances but im not worried about that. look at his goal against japan, absolute beuty.
i was thinking against smaller teams than us we could play
—–huntelaar
robben-sneijder-rvp
and then against better teams(if there are any
——-rvp
robben-sneijder-kuyt
kuyt’s effort will slow them down and rvp can score won of his goals out of nothing.
won-one
Taking into consideration Sneijder’s and Hunter’s current form, at this moment I would play with:
—–Kuyt—–
Elia-vPersie-Robben
Robben is way more dangerous on the right then on the left, and since we do have such an excellent player for the leftwing in Elia, I’d always put Robben on the right.
Robben had some nice moves on the right this weekend including an excellent assist. Sneijder and Hunter didn’t produce.
I hope some players pick up their form before the worldcup cause this isn’t a formation I’d like to trust on.
Posted from Netherlands
Naturally they can all switch around during the game cause they can all play eachother’s positions (except perhaps vPersie or Kuyt on the left).
Posted from Netherlands
Comments are closed
MORE EUROPE BLOGS
CATEGORIES & ARCHIVES
For CB, we’re all still mostly talking about Ron Vlaar, and return to form of Khalid Boulahrouz and John Heitinga. How about Roel Brouwers(27), 1.90 tall, strong player, from Borussia Munchengladbach, he’s making an impression there, often scoring headers and doing well defensively. Might be interesting to watch.
Posted from
Netherlands