Gertjan Verbeek: I won’t give up!

By: Jan | October 24th, 2008

Coach Gertjan Verbeek calls himself a winner. But the former boxer and current Feyenoord coach couldn’t ignore the harsh reality after Feyenoord’s loss against Nancy (3-0).

“I know. I played eleven games with Feyenoord and lost seven. It’s a huge disappointment and I don’t enjoy it. But I won’t give up. That word is not in my dictionary. But I have to look at the facts. Our results are disappointing. We don’t score enough. We do create opportunities, but because of this we are ranked low in the Eredivisie and we are not doing great in the UEFA cup. Am I afraid to be sacked? Well, check out the morning headlines.” he said to a French reporter.

Verbeek was open during the press meeting. “If the Feyenoord board feels another coach can do better, then it’s their duty to fire me. And I will try to find something else to do.”

Asked about the upcoming game against his former employer Heerenveen: “I won’t go into that now. It’s too early. But I do see enough positives in our games, even in the one against Nancy. It’s just that it’s not reflected in the results yet. And thus, it will get harder and harder. The players need a success. They have to dig deeper every time to create their energy. It’s my job to get them to play 100% against Heerenveen, without too much stress. That’s what I am to do.”

Mario Been lost his first group match against Dinamo Zagreb, but was primarely proud. “I do feel we gave it away. When you lead 2-1 with ten minutes to go, you need to at least snatch one point. But, this team is young and it’s hard under all that pressure. I’m proud of the way we played. This was another huge learning experience. We will only get stronger from this and we did play good football at times.”

“We showed our resilience, but I’m a bit disappointed that we started to walk backwards at 2-1. We needed to press them back and defend further from the goal. Now, we soaked up their pressure too close to our goal and they are very strong with setpieces and all. They have tall and strong players, so you’re asking for problems then.”

Marco van Basten thinks his team has learned a lot too. “We didn’t get too many chances but we did dominate the game. That second goal right before half time was a bit of a bummer. Unnecessary. So was the first. Vermeer misjudged that ball, but they did the same when we scored. That’s football I guess. We forgot to play our game in the second half and our forwards couldn’t hold onto the ball. I don’t think we lost from Villa, we lost from ourselves.”

Heerenveen coach Sollied wasn’t too shocked with the result and showed some humor. “At least our group is young and has growth potential. The AC Milan boys are a tad older. But all in all, we knew the games against Milan would be tough. It was a wonderful experience for our team and I do think we did well. Inzaghi shouldn’t have been allowed to score that first goal. He clearly hit our defender on the head before he scored. That was a foul. They scored twice in five minutes. That’s a tough call. We played one on one at the back and I would do that again next time. We put pressure on them but we failed to be as lethal as they are.”

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