“Great happy!” With those words, club icon Willy van de Kerkhof responds on Wednesday morning to the arrival of Ruud van Nistelrooij as the new PSV trainer. Van de Kerkhof thinks that the Eindhoven residents will bring in a lot of ‘PSV DNA’ with Van Nistelrooij, currently trainer of Jong PSV, he says in the program Wakker! on Omroep Brabant radio.
With assistant Fred Rutten and Guus Hiddink in the background, Van de Kerkhof thinks Van Nistelrooij can bring PSV back to the top position in Dutch and European football.
“A good trainer makes a good team out of less good players,” says Van de Kerkhof. And he is confident that the new coach will do just that. He especially praises the drive of the former top striker.
The fact that Van Nistelrooij lacks top-level experience as a trainer is not a problem, according to Van de Kerkhof. “As a football player, Ruud has been at top clubs all over the world. He knows how trainers deal with players there. He takes that experience with him.”
‘Back to De Herdgang’
Van de Kerkhof also finds the fact that Dutch is being spoken again at De Herdgang with the arrival of the new trainer, the successor of Roger Schmidt. “Can I go there again?” he laughs.
The choice for Fred Rutten as assistant can now also receive the approval of the club icon. While he and his brother René had the necessary criticism of Rutten in the past, during the period that he was the head coach of PSV. In the background as an assistant, however, according to Van de Kerkhof, Rutten can certainly play an important role with his qualities as a trainer.
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