In the summer of 2024, after his first major prize as a trainer, Peter Bosz had difficulty enjoying himself. On the field, his team had had a “unique year”: PSV achieved 91 points in the Eredivisie, a club record, and more than enough for the national title. And with his wife he had moved into their new house in Apeldoorn, the city where the former football player grew up.
Yet Bosz (62) “couldn’t switch off” during those summer months, he said last July at his club’s training camp in Germany, in conversation with a group of journalists. “I didn’t sleep well at night, I was exhausted.” He constantly worried whether his club would succeed in keeping the successful team together from the previous season. Ultimately, they decided to flee the country for a week, to relax in the sun.
What he realized all too well during that period: his second year in Eindhoven would inevitably be more difficult than his first. “That’s just a law,” said the trainer. Upon entering he found a club that had not become champions for five years, everyone was willing to follow him in search of success. Once that price is there, the need for proof often diminishes slightly. And opponents will adapt their tactics to you; the surprise is gone.
So even when PSV started the 2025 calendar year as the leader, six points ahead of Ajax, Bosz was not confident. He missed the “sharpness” during training, and saw the “slack” in his team from the first round of play. These were signs of an unprecedented sporting dip, immediately after the winter break. In the first seven competition matches of this year, PSV lost a total of 14 points. A second title seemed out of sight.
It means that Bosz is by no means going into the winter break this year complacent, he said on Sunday afternoon after a tight away win over FC Utrecht (1-2). The lead over the chase may be a lot bigger (eleven points after a 1-1 draw by Feyenoord against FC Twente on Sunday), but “we have all experienced this year how quickly things can change.”
Add freshness
Nevertheless, he can now see the positive side of it, Bosz said at the summer training camp. The free fall at the beginning of 2025 forced him to innovate, both in his approach to players and in the way he plays. In retrospect, he might have warned too often how tough a season after that first national title would be, he thinks. It was intended to protect his players from the high expectations. “But you might also blame yourself. That when things don’t go so well, boys think: you see, it’s true.”
This summer, Bosz decided to take a different approach. He now saw introducing “freshness” into his group of players as an advantage. Six of his permanent employees found another club. Goalkeeper Walter Benitez, defender Olivier Boscagli and captain Luuk de Jong because their contracts expired and they did not want to renew. A generous offer was made for midfielder Malik Tillman and attackers Noa Lang and Johan Bakayoko.
Bosz noticed the difference already in the first training sessions after the summer. After the first championship year, it took until late autumn before he was satisfied with the level he saw in practice, the PSV coach said earlier. But in the preparations for the current season with ten new players in his selection, he immediately saw “a lot of sharpness” on the field. That gives “zero guarantee,” he noted at the summer training camp, “but that is the way I want to see it.”
Ivan Perisic celebrates the 1-2 in the match against FC Utrecht – it would turn out to be the winning goal.
MAURICE VAN STEEN/ANP
This largely new group of players also required adjustments to the way they played, as became apparent this autumn. Initially, Bosz tried to fit them into the existing framework so that he could continue to play as in his first two seasons. He kept the defense largely unchanged with only Yarek Gasiorowski in Boscagli’s place. In principle, every acquisition had to be able to fill the gap left by a departure.
But the first months of the current season made it clear that that was too simple. Offensively, PSV was still as dominant as before, but the vulnerability quickly became visible lower on the field. In the first nine games of the new year, Bosz’s team conceded fifteen goals. PSV kept a clean sheet in only one of those matches.
Bosz saw no specific cause for this, he said in the run-up to the home match against Ajax (2-2) in mid-September. “Every goal has its own story.” Yet hesitation crept into the team: defenders acted hesitantly as if no agreements had been made. Were sometimes unusually sloppy in duels and passing. Unlike before, when they lost the ball they did not immediately increase the pressure as Bosz would like, but walked backwards towards their own goal.
It forced him to reinvent himself tactically as well. In the past, the trainer was often criticized for rigidly adhering to his principles (attacking play, high pressure), even at times when the opponent seemed to have discovered the solution. He failed to stop the decline at his previous clubs. In short, a trainer who shines when everything goes well, but has never succeeded in calming a storm.
‘Extracting machine’
At PSV, Bosz has proven this year that he can do that. After the bad series at the beginning of 2025, he managed to restore confidence: nine of the ten last competition matches of last season were still won, and on the last match day PSV became national champions again. And Bosz also had a solution for the difficult start to his third season: PSV still plays with his signature, but over the course of this autumn he has also made a number of subtle changes.
The most visible is the position of Jerdy Schouten, Bosz’s regular choice low in midfield for a long time. This is a crucial position in the PSV coach’s football: he looks for players with accurate passing and good insight into the game who can initiate the attack. Schouten possesses those qualities like no other, Bosz said earlier this month. “He always finds the free man and plays effortlessly under pressure.”
But as the autumn progressed, the coach noticed that he could make better use of the qualities of his new captain Schouten elsewhere on the field: as a replacement for the departed Boscagli, a central defender who could cross an opponent’s lines with his long, clean passes. Who was not afraid to walk into midfield and act as an extra point of contact in the build-up. None of his remaining defenders possessed those qualities, Bosz realized.
This will be an excellent Christmas!
The spot in defense is now often filled by Mauro Junior, although he started as left back on Sunday, because the first choice in that position, Anass Salah-Eddine, was missing due to participation in the Africa Cup. Mauro “has the poison that a number of boys do not have,” Bosz said in the run-up to Sunday’s match. The Brazilian has good technique and overview, but is also not afraid to close gaps. This leads to more defensive stability and allows Schouten to leave his place in the defense without worries.
Other examples are how Bosz has started using his goalkeeper in the build-up this year as a kind of third central defender, in order to make it easier to play past the pressure of opponents’ attackers. How he lets Salah-Eddine move far out of position when in possession of the ball, in the axis of the field, in order to have an extra free man. And how, in the absence of a fit striker, he placed midfielder Guus Til at the point of the attack, who often drops far and thus leaves room for the runs of others.
The consequence of these adjustments is that they continuously force opponents to make choices: should they follow their man, even if he runs dozens of meters out of position? How difficult it is for opponents to get a grip when this fluid playing style is executed well was evident in October and November in crushing victories over AZ (1-5) and Napoli (6-2).
At the end of November, Liverpool coach Arne Slot was prompted to warn his club’s regular followers. After a difficult start, he had seen PSV grow into a “extraction machine“, he said in the run-up to the Champions League meeting between the two clubs, which PSV surprisingly won 1-4 a day later. “I think this is one of the best teams that Peter has managed at PSV.”
Peter Bosz greets his colleague at FC Utrecht, Ron Jans.
Getty Images
Bosz’s team did not reach that level on Sunday against FC Utrecht, as they also had a difficult win at home against Heracles (4-3) a week earlier. Yet Bosz is heading into the holidays with fewer worries than last year, he said on Sunday. Also because he sees how his players in training “take every exercise seriously”, while last year he noticed more laziness. “So they have learned 100 percent from this.”
And “fighting matches”, such as in the last two rounds, are simply part of football, Bosz knows. The difference is: unlike this spring, PSV is now staying afloat. So grumpy about the difficult game? “No man, winning these kinds of competitions is the best feeling you can have. This will be an excellent Christmas!”
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