Pinzend Peter Bosz runs for the dug-out on the castle. Arms over each other, not yet at a happy ending due to the minimum lead over Sparta. He coaches irritated to his midfielders when they lose a mutual game occasionally. “Really!” The message: we can’t relax for a moment.
A year ago, the national title was his first Grand Prix, as a result of which PSV coach Peter Bosz settled with the Stigma that he never wins. This championship, after the 1-3 victory over Sparta Sunday, is valuable in a different way. For the first time he conquered a sporting slump and worked back at the top of the Eredivisie – helped by his old club Ajax.
The intervention
It does not often happen that the PSV management addresses the players’ group. But in the first week of March, managing director Marcel Brands and Earnest Stewart, the technical man, arrived for a consultation with the selection and the trainers staff, several stakeholders confirm NRC. It is crisis, the drivers are worried about the mental vulnerability and focus of the team.
Just before the meeting, PSV lost at home with 1-7 from Arsenal in the eighth final of the Champions League. The shocking defeat followed an extremely weak series in the competition, in which the club won only one of the seven games.
It also went wrong in the cup, against Go Ahead Eagles. Not only are the results poor, but also the way in which PSV loses, the management is convinced that something is wrong in the selection. Often things go wrong in the last fifteen minutes, against Go Ahead, six players from PSV are interpreted in a counter by three opponents.
Bosz says it has no explanation for the sudden decline. “Even at my age I sometimes think: how can this be?” He says at a press conference. “I prepare them the same for every game, and one time it turns like a tierelier, so why not now? The answer is, I think: we are dealing with people.”
Nevertheless, management and staff behind the scenes do get signals that some players do not have “PSV on one”, as a person involved puts it. They are busy with transfer wishes, busy with their personal guidance team or with other peripheral issues. There would also be gossip, the selection in ‘islands’ had fallen apart. The mental guidance with the first team could be better, has concluded the management, but that will be something for the coming season.
Now the message of Stewart and Brands is: talk with each other, not about each other. Operate as a collective, then this season is not lost. Bosz calculates his team that they still have 72 days until the end of the competition. “I then set requirements,” he said later. “I said: I don’t know if we’re going to be champions, but if we do everything for 72 days, we still have a chance.”
It is difficult to say to what extent the meeting makes a difference. But from that moment PSV only loses again: at home from Ajax. Furthermore, everything is won, often with large numbers. Not everything is perfect. Bosz holds important away games both Ismael Saibari and Malik Tillmann on the couch because they arrive late during discussions. But PSV has so much quality in the selection that the team hardly suffers from it.
High ball pace, flowing combinations, beautiful actions, breaking constant lines and immediately puting aggressive pressure on the loss of ball. The total dominance in the first half against Sparta is exactly as Bosz wants to play. PSV prevails, gets a chance after chance. A pike dive from Ivan Perisic on a cross from Olivier Boscagli, the Croatian puts his head against it: 0-1 after 27 minutes. But PSV fails to take further distance. Five minutes after the break, Sparta midfielder Gjivai Zechiël just escaped from Boscagli’s back and shoots the 1-1 in the far corner. Yet again that changement. For the first time this afternoon, Bosz is sitting in his chair for a long time. Is it still going wrong?
Faith
Only a week before the last game round returns to the A16 between Dordrecht and Breda, PSV that the championship is within reach. Usually it is quite quiet in the bus after a competition, is the experience of the regular driver Stefan Slegers. But if the players see that NEC scores twice after each other against Ajax, it will go loose. Cheers, shouting, banging on chairs and windows. In the back in particular, a lot of noise sounds around the table where Noa Lang, Ryan Flamingo, Ismael Saibari and Johan Bakayoko are.
Photo ANP / Robin van Lonkhuijsen
In the three rows behind Slegers, the places in front of the staff, the race gradient in Amsterdam is celebrated more modestly. But Bosz makes no effort to temper the euphoria behind him. He trusts that the concentration returns quickly enough. Moreover: Bosz is also in a good mood, mainly due to the comeback of his team earlier in the day against Feyenoord (2-3). A token of resilience that the team missed a few months earlier.
Bosz was regularly criticized because he would only have one plan. Often that works great, also in top matches, such as this season in the home games against Feyenoord (3-0) and FC Twente (6-1). But it went wrong twice against Ajax. The home defeat (0-2) in particular was painful. Ajax succeeded in a good deal from the kick -off in the PSV attack game, including by positioning the midfielders and backs slightly different than usual. “Francesco Farioli is smarter than Peter Bosz,” concluded Vithat it was about a tactical master class of the 25-year-younger Ajax coach.
Also in Rotterdam, against Feyenoord, Bosz seems to be tactically beaten by an inexperienced coach. Within ten minutes, Robin van Persie’s team is 2-0 ahead. Feyenoord puts high pressure and manages to bring his offside players into a promising position with long balls. PSV suddenly looks just as vulnerable again as in the 7-1 defeat against Arsenal.
But this time Bosz knows how to tilt the game with an procedure. After 25 minutes he changes right back Richard Ledezma and brings Sergino Dest, who goes into the ball in midfield. For example, Bosz creates a surplus there and his team suddenly manages to play out with relative convenience under the pressure of Feyenoord and create opportunities. PSV finally won 3-2. The fact that a opposite of Van Persie is not included is a bonus. Just like the fact that the match in Rotterdam is closed before the Ajax game starts, so that the result works mentally in Amsterdam.
When the player bus returns to Eindhoven that evening, it is quiet at De Herdgang training complex. Slegers sees one car at the entrance, of a mother with two daughters who wave a PSV flag. No mass fanatic fans, no fireworks. Rest has also returned to the bus, to Bosz’s satisfaction. He knows: nothing has been won yet.
Photo ANP / Robin van Lonkhuijsen
Luuk de Jong is at the forefront of the last warm-up, twelve minutes before the kick-off at the castle. Thumb to Boscagli, who leads another group. Now, a few bright sprints. Just the look from De Jong to the branch, thumb up – as the only one. Just an arm around the shoulder of defender Flamingo when they walk to the dressing room. He is the one who keeps a cool head in the emerging euphoria. And is decisive. It is De Jong who taps the 1-2 shortly after the equalizer, after Noa finds the opening for a long time. And five minutes before time, De Jong with difficulty keeping the ball in, while the cramp shoots in his leg. Seconds later, Malik Tillman rams the liberating 1-3.
The leader
Players will run wild in the field on Wednesday evening when they see on a screen that Ajax will get a goal goal at FC Groningen – which makes PSV after the victory over Heracles. It seems as if the title is in, it is celebrated that intensely. Luuk de Jong is more protected, shortly after ESPN. “We are not there yet,” he says cool. “Out at Sparta is not an easy competition.”
It is exemplary for the leading role of De Jong, the 34-year-old captain of PSV. He is very structured in his approach to continue to perform at the top level, says a staff member. In terms of routines in his training sessions, in his competition preparation, in his running actions. In a team with a variety of personalities, he therefore not only provides stuck but also ‘sobriety’.
After four national titles with PSV, De Jong knows what is being asked to get the fifth. He is the symbol of undisturbed, while Ajax with the championship in sight perished. With De Jong in rush hour, PSV can handle the pressure, Sunday at the castle, if it has to happen.
Although he, too, could not prevent PSV from swalking in the Eredivisie for a while. De Jong was the first to mention the problems, well before the implosion started. In the Johan Cruijff Scale against Feyenoord at the beginning of August-4-4 against Feyenoord, which won after penalties-he already spoke about ‘laziness’. A shortcoming that would chase PSV until the end of the season.
The mental capacity “to give everything every match” had just mentioned De Jong at the end of last season as the power of this PSV. “That sounds easy,” he said in a conversation with the press. But it’s about those “few percent” that make the difference. If PSV does the maximum, the team is virtually unbeatable in the Netherlands, proved last season.
This became the year of a few percent less – resulting in the malaise after the winter break. With defender André Ramalho and keeper Boy Waterman, De Jong last season had teammates who are also extra sharp on discipline and professionalism and were important for the team. They left, making De Jong as ‘mental’ leader more often alone.
As a striker, De Jong is not running a bad year with 18 goals and 13 assists (all competitions), but he does not excel as last season – 38 goals and 18 assists. He is less often decisive. For someone who calls himself a perfectionist, that is difficult.
He went ‘disappointed’ for the rest of his life of missing this title, he said mid -April. Because he knew they had given it away, in possibly his last season at PSV. That is why the discharge is so great, Sunday at 4.48 pm, when he is handed over the scale from club icon Phillip Cocu. Still PSV. Yet again Luuk de Jong.