At the end of December, Peter Bosz takes the time to look back on the year 2024. What follows is a conversation about the person Peter Bosz. About how a comment from Kenneth Perez made him genuinely angry and the difficulty he sometimes has in enjoying games on the bench, such as against Shakhtar for example: “When I looked back at that, I thought for a moment: that’s strange.”
It is March 30, 2024 when Peter Bosz, white-hot with anger, tells us that his players have shown a haughty attitude. PSV had lost for the first time in the season just before. Not much later it is Kenneth Perez who accuses the PSV coach of acting and playing a game.
“Oh Perez, please…”, the coach looks back on that comment at the end of March. “I really hated that comment. I can’t stand that. Then you don’t know who I am.”
“The people sitting in the stadium are not retarded after all.”
The word ‘honest’ is mentioned regularly during the conversation that lasted more than an hour. It has everything to do with the fact that in the past, as a player, the trainer was often confronted with lies from his trainers. “Then I resolved never to lie. Then I would have to remember all my lies. I don’t want that.”
He is honest with his players, with the media and especially always after matches. “Good is good and bad is bad,” he says. Or maybe he shouldn’t respond in a more nuanced way? “The people in the stadium are not retarded after all. Why wouldn’t I say honestly what I saw?”
The singer Bosz at work after winning the national title:
It characterizes the person Peter Bosz. The trainer who finally gave PSV a national title again after six years. 2024 was a top year in that respect. Because even during the winter break, the Eindhoven club led by the man from Apeldoorn is the proud leader. But that doesn’t mean everything went to a crescendo in the past year.
The trainer jokingly mentions Excelsior away as the most exciting match of the championship year. “That match came three days after the defeat against NEC. Then we could definitely have given the competition hope again.” He specifically compliments Mauro Júnior for this, as he also helped the trainer out when Veerman and Schouten were injured. “That was also a difficult moment. It kept me awake for a while about how to solve it.”
“When I saw the images of Shakhtar, I was a bit ashamed.”
But above all, 2024 was a year in which the trainer could especially enjoy his team. At least when he was sitting on the couch at home with a cigar and a glass of wine. “During the matches I always forget to enjoy myself. Then sometimes my assistants really have to say: ‘Peter, sit down and enjoy what is happening around you’. But even then I am still afraid of conceding a goal.”
“Only when I sit at home on the couch and smoke a cigar with a glass of wine do I enjoy it. Then I often watch the match quietly.” That’s how it went at the end of November after the insane match against Shakhtar Donetsk. When PSV turned a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 victory in the final phase. Everyone went crazy in the stadium except: Peter Bosz.
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“My mother always used to say that I should laugh more often on TV. “It makes you look much nicer,” she would say. She’s right about that. When I looked back at those images of Shakhtar, I felt ashamed of it. I thought: that’s strange. But I have no explanation for that. This is who I am and this is how I will always be.”
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