It is the cool, down-to-earth approach that is characteristic of the PSV management top. Even when things are going well, everyone must “stay sharp” and “achieve their goals,” says general manager Marcel Brands. Not only in the football department, but also in commerce and ticket sales. According to him, the risk is that success is quickly taken for granted. “That everything is going well. No, it doesn’t happen automatically, you have to pull hard every time.”
Brands is therefore not part of the project group for the organization of the festivities surrounding the 27th national title. “I can’t stand that,” he says in a conversation with various media at his office in the Philips Stadium in the run-up to a championship that PSV can hardly miss. “I’m too much of a sportsman, I have to win the prize first, then the party will come.”
That party is here now. After defeats in the league matches against NEC and Telstar, PSV recovered at home against FC Utrecht on Saturday with a 4-3 victory. Standout Ismael Saibari corrected an early 2-0 deficit with two nice goals and provided Guus Til with the assist for 3-2. After Jesper Karlsson’s equalizer, substitute Couhaib Driouech fired PSV to victory in injury time. A downer was the withdrawal of international Jerdy Schouten with a serious knee injury, which means he will also miss the World Cup. But when pursuer Feyenoord failed to win at Volendam (0-0) on Sunday, the title for PSV was a fact five games before the end of the season.
Lots of changes at the top
It has never really become a title battle since PSV won at Feyenoord at the end of October, which was still the leader. The relationships at the top become clear on that cold autumn afternoon, so dominant is PSV. Ajax has already collapsed, Feyenoord follows not long after, while PSV remains very consistent. It is even one of the fastest – i.e. earliest in the season – national titles in the Eredivisie.
This underlines PSV’s domestic superiority and shows the failure of traditional competitors Ajax and Feyenoord. Brands drily notes that Ajax – at the time of conversation – has won twelve of the 27 matches. “That is of course below top club level. I always say: you have to win 25 or 26 games to become champion.”
Decisive in this success are PSV’s managerial experience, decisiveness and continuity compared to the sometimes chaotic developments in the boardrooms of Feyenoord and Ajax. Ajax in particular has had many changes at the top – four different technical directors in the last four years alone.
Success does not come easy, you have to work hard every time.
The craftsmanship of Peter Bosz, the coach who until his appointment at PSV had the reputation of almost never winning anything, is also elementary. Now his third national title in a row with PSV. He transformed from a coach who always puts on a show to a trainer who also wins prizes – although he will say himself that he has not started working fundamentally differently.
You wonder where Ajax would have been if they had also gone for Bosz in the summer of 2023. It was Maurice Steijn. Although it is also questionable whether Bosz could have honed his risky, offensive playing style in Amsterdam as undisturbed as he now does at PSV, in the often praised tranquility of the wooded De Herdgang. One fact is that in the three PSV seasons under Bosz, Ajax, including interims, had seven different head coaches.
‘The ranks closed’
Such unrest was hard to find at PSV, no matter how low the club fell at the start of the second half of last season. A nine-point lead was lost to Ajax, the near-champion. “When the grumbling in some quarters due to disappointing sporting results assumed large proportions, we managed to keep the ranks closed and maintain the peace with the management and technical staff of PSV,” the supervisory board wrote in the latest annual report. The “trust” in people in “relevant positions” remained.
“There has not been the panic here that you would have elsewhere,” says Brands.
Bosz was thus given the opportunity for the first time to avert a sporting crisis at a top club – where he did not get that time at Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Olympique Lyon after a bad series. Looking back now, Brands says that the management had already informed Bosz in that precarious phase, at the beginning of April 2025, that they wanted to extend his contract (which also happened recently).
It illustrates the constructive cooperation. “The lines are short and pleasant,” says Brands. Within his own management – “we share everything”. Between Brands and the supervisory board. Between Brands, Bosz and technical director Earnest Stewart – Bosz often emphasizes the good mutual relationships.
There is consistency at all levels. Bosz is in office until 2028, Brands until 2029, supervisory board chairman Robert van der Wallen until 2028. “What is important: we have no egos,” says Brands. “There is no one who feels more comfortable or wants to be in the foreground.”
Paul Wanner, Dennis Man, Guus Til and Ivan Perisic (from left to right) celebrate PSV’s third goal.
Photo Tobias Kleuver / ANP
Good people – clear organization. The directors of the PSV Voetbal foundation, which controls 99.9 percent of the shares, stand at an appropriate distance. “I deal with this four times a year, which is a good relationship,” says Brands. The club is organized particularly efficiently compared to the competition – according to Brands, PSV has “the simplest governance” of the top three.
They also see that at Ajax. A former commissioner of that club mentioned earlier in conversation with NRC the structure of PSV as an example. The listed company is now investigating the management structure, after a conflict between the supervisory board and the association’s board of directors, which holds 73 percent of the shares. The board of directors is often accused of interfering too much with policy.
“We want to achieve a more efficient way of working together and a lower turnover of supervisory directors,” said Dirk Anbeek, vice-chairman of the supervisory board, recently at an Ajax shareholders’ meeting.
“Ajax has become too much of a democracy. Too many bodies,” said former technical director Alex Kroes in the magazine of the supporters association in October. “Too much uncertainty makes Ajax ungovernable.” He recently left, as did four commissioners, including chairman and former councilor Carolien Gehrels.
It is interesting that the new chairman of the supervisory board, the Amsterdam real estate man Lesley Bamberger, has a similar profile as PSV chairman Van der Wallen: both billionaires are well-known, influential entrepreneurs in the region where their club is located. The Ajax supervisory board, Anbeek said, was looking for a chairman “who radiates decisiveness”. There is a parallel in this with the entrepreneurial spirit that Van der Wallen, founder of BrandLoyalty, brings to PSV. “He sees opportunities everywhere,” says Brands.
That administrative influence is undeniable at PSV. It was Van der Wallen who convinced Brands to return in 2022 after his previous period as technical director at PSV. In turn, Brands later brought Stewart (after the turbulent departure of ‘td’ John de Jong) to his management. It was Brands and Stewart who first spoke about a possible appointment at Bosz’s home in Apeldoorn in May 2023. Retrospectively, the foundation for the current supremacy was laid there.
PSV runs further away
It can “of course” happen that Ajax or Feyenoord “someday become champions”. Such as in the situation that they have “a good trainer” or a “good selection”, said Van der Wallen in mid-January The Red White Podcastaimed at PSV fans. But they do not come close to the “stability” that PSV has. “That is mainly because the governance here is extremely well organized. I don’t think Feyenoord and Ajax will ever be able to achieve that.”
Because just like Ajax, Feyenoord also has a complicated administrative and ownership structure. Through the many bodies and foundations, several dozen people (in)directly participate in discussions about the club’s policy. It A.D wrote a year ago that the supervisory board had the organizational structure examined, although a club spokesperson now tells NRC that no such investigation has been carried out.
Of course it may happen that Ajax or Feyenoord become champions
Yet it is evident that Feyenoord is trying to simplify the organization. The club is working on buying out the Friends of Feyenoord, a prosperous group of entrepreneurs who have owned almost 49 percent of the shares (and thus two members in the supervisory board) since they saved the club from financial collapse in 2010. In addition, the club is close to a long-cherished unification with the stadium company; that is still a separate entity, the professional club is the tenant.
Due to these developments, the Feyenoord top management hopes to be able to manage the club more easily and effectively in the future. The reality is that PSV has already taken many steps further. The club management has been working fairly quietly with the municipality for some time on a plan for a major stadium expansion, which was recently completed. presented. PSV is the only one of the three top clubs to own the stadium and can therefore act faster.
PSV fans during the 4-3 home match against FC Utrecht.
Photo Tobias Kleuver / ANP
The club wants to start the renovation in 2027 and grow to 52,000 to 58,500 places, compared to more than 35,000 now. A permit will be applied for soon, delivery is scheduled for 2030. The estimated costs, the financing of which has yet to be arranged, are 350 to 450 million euros. “It may be a start to a new era of PSV,” said Brands in December on the club channel.
“The region is growing, the business community is growing,” he says now. “In recent years we have tried to add a chair or build a skybox in every corner. There is so much demand.” The waiting list for season tickets is 22,000. Due to the expansion, PSV (171 million euros in turnover last season) will make a financial leap to a turnover of “200 million plus”, Van der Wallen predicted in the podcast.
Still ‘sick to death’ of loss
This development is a big contrast with Feyenoord, which has seen various stadium plans – new construction or renovation of the Kuip – passed or failed in recent decades. The maintenance backlog in De Kuip has now increased to such an extent that as soon as the club takes control of the stadium, 69 million will have to be invested (until 2034) just to “maintain it”. said financial director Pieter Smorenburg in the AD. So there will be a standstill, because there will be no major improvements or expansion for the time being.
This way, PSV has the momentum, while the competition is vulnerable. It is still unclear who will be coach at Ajax next season, while Robin van Persie has been under pressure at Feyenoord for months. Although Brands knows how quickly things can turn over. “If Ajax starts doing things right again, they can be where they want to be very quickly.”
And there is still plenty of room for improvement, Brands sees. He mentions the flow from youth training, which is lagging behind. And the narrow elimination in the competition phase of the Champions League and the loss against NEC in the semi-final of the KNVB Cup still hurt him. “We damn well should have reached that cup final.”
And mention Volendam away, PSV lost there out of nowhere in mid-February, and Brands sighs. He is still “deathly ill” from that. To quickly add that it will subside once the title is received.
