Of course, Julius Dirksen (20) was disappointed with his second yellow card, which suddenly turned Helmond Sport-FC Emmen (1-2). But he prefers to look at all the positive things that the match in Brabant FC Emmen brought.
“Three points, a team that really went deep to get this win over the line, that we were all there for it, that feeling is great,” said the central defender immediately after the match.
Dirksen had watched the last 20 minutes of this from the catacombs. He had received a yellow card early in the first half for a seemingly unnecessary foul in the center circle.
When he received his second yellow card from referee Laurens Gerrets in the 65th minute, he first had to process it. “I stayed in the dressing room for about 5 minutes and then I saw the rest, as best as it could be, from the players’ tunnel.”
By far the strongest team
There the former Ajax player saw that the match had completely turned around. While FC Emmen was by far the strongest team, certainly in the first half and a large part of the second half, until his referral from the field, the Emmen team was hardly able to attack after Dirksen’s red card and it was all hands on deck. .
With sometimes some trickery, the all-important eighth victory of the season was achieved. Goalkeeper Jan Hoekstra had to work a few times in those last 20 minutes, Jeff Hardeveld threw himself in front of a Helmond shot and Michaël Heylen headed a (too weak) effort out of the goal mouth.
‘The first one was a severe punishment’
And so the logical question to Dirksen after the match was whether he blamed himself. “Well, of course I’m disappointed that I got two yellow cards, that’s clear. The first one was, in my opinion, a somewhat severe punishment. I thought I should tackle that boy, because he could walk freely. But I don’t think that was yellow, he said so himself later.”
Exactly halfway through the second half, the defender from Amersfoort received his second yellow card after he knocked over striker Anthony van den Hurk. “That Van den Hurk did that smartly,” Dirksen analyzed. “He crossed me with a hard, tight cross. I tried to avoid him, but it barely worked. I don’t think I could do much about that. When I heard the whistle, I knew: this is going to be red. What I can blame myself for is that early yellow card in the first half. Although it is also part of me: I have poison in my game.”
No, Dirksen would rather talk about the 25 minutes after that red card and the accompanying penalty, which was shot impeccably behind Jan Hoekstra by Martijn Kaars, top scorer of the Kitchen Champion Division. “That was so great to see,” Dirksen said. “This team fought great, they went for every ball, every game to the max. They fought for each other and also for me, that’s what it felt like. Afterwards they also said: that red card, that can happen. It’s nice that red card didn’t cost us the win.”
‘Now everyone knew what to do’
And that was mainly due to the scenarios that coach Fred Grim went through with the team last week, says Jari Vlak. “We trained exactly for this scenario,” said the midfielder, who played an excellent match. “Going into the last fifteen minutes with a goal lead and with one man less. Pure coincidence. But you saw that there was organization, that it was clear what was required of everyone in this scenario. That’s because of that training. We recently had the same thing at FC Dordrecht and everyone just did something.”
What were those agreements? Vlak didn’t want to say that. “Then I would also make the opponents unnecessarily wiser, of course. But you have seen it: it mainly has to do with the fact that we are not going to collapse completely, but can also switch dangerously. That now worked perfectly. Although it didn’t go wrong either. I believe Jeff had the best save by suddenly throwing himself in front of a ball.’
Same with Roda JC
The score remained 1-2 and because of that victory, FC Emmen is now in shared second place. Former leader Roda JC has a (much) better goal difference, but the same number of points and the same number of games played. Moreover, Dirksen and his teammates saw competitors such as De Graafschap and ADO Den Haag drop valuable points.
“This is pure profit,” said Dirksen. “Not just the three points, but especially how we performed as a team.”