Expectations are high in Eindhoven for Friday’s match against Fortuna Sittard. This after the victories over Napoli and Feyenoord. Coach Peter Bosz believes that PSV is on the right track. “But we are not going to keep this up for the entire season. Nobody plays 34 good games,” he said at the press conference on Thursday in the run-up to Friday’s match.
However, the trainer and his team will do their utmost to maintain the current level for as long as possible: “You shouldn’t panic if things aren’t going as well, but you shouldn’t give up if things are going well either.” For the time being, the match against Fortuna is the last home match for PSV. The next meeting for the Eindhoven team in their own stadium will not be until November 30.
Ismael Saibari
The man of the moment at PSV is of course Ismael Saibari. After his hat trick against Feyenoord in De Kuip, he can’t go wrong anymore. According to Peter Bosz, he is not missing out: “Ismael is still training hard, as he always does. He also knows that the comments could be different tomorrow.”
The coach is referring to the comments from a few weeks ago about Saibari. When the Moroccan midfielder regularly had to suffer in the media. When asked whether the journalists in the Netherlands are that bad, he answers: “Apparently. One moment you are being written to pieces and the next moment there is no one better than you. It is not that at one moment he cannot do anything and that he is now the new Messi. Somewhere in between is Ismael Saibari.”
Bosz even goes a step further: “I even read a piece by someone who said that the difference between Feyenoord and PSV was Saibari. That makes it nice and easy to do your job.”
Another striker?
In recent weeks we have seen Guus Til take on the striker position at PSV. Not without success. But Ricardo Pepi is longing for playing minutes. “The hunger to play is good and those moments will come,” Bosz says. But he does not want to say whether that moment will come for Pepi this weekend. To use Pepi, he must break up the Til-Saibari tandem. But that’s not the problem. “I certainly dare to take them apart,” he emphasizes.
The opponent
Friday’s opponent is no stranger to Bosz. He once worked with the coach of the Limburgers, Danny Buijs. He even brought him to Feyenoord as a player, when he worked there as technical manager. “I think Danny Buijs demands the maximum from his players. And you also clearly see his hand in Fortuna’s game.” The PSV coach is therefore on his guard: “It is very clear how Fortuna plays. They concede one goal less than us. They do that very well.”