NEC beats Feyenoord in De Kuip

By: Jan | October 5th, 2008

Mario Been yelled: “This feels like doping!!” after beating Dinamo Bukarest last Thursday.

Been’s NEC came to his old homegrounds, to play Feyenoord. As a NEC coach, the former Feyenoord playmaker never lost in De Kuip and his team would again take the three points home to Nijmegen.

Gertjan Verbeek spoke about a very expensive lesson. “We lost three points in a game that we shouldn’t have lost.”

Verbeek referred to the first half of the match, in which the Feyenoord players should have scored twice at least. “We were doing so well, but we didn’t score. In particular Roy Makaay’s canon isn’t callibrated at the moment. Bad for Feyenoord and too bad for him as well of course. I don’t think he forgot how to do it, but you can tell he is still not the old Roy we know.”

Verbeek didn’t want to find excuses in the referee decision not to give Biseswar a penalty at 0-0. NEC then immediately scored in the turn around. “Ah well, one referee gives the spot kick, the other doesn’t. You can’t influence that. But we didn’t resolve that situation well. Most of players were yelling at the ref or they had their eyes fixed to the heavens. That happened too much in the second half. We had good ideas about the marking, the movement, the free man and all. We wanted to keep the pitch small but no one seemed to remember the game plan in the second half. Greene kept moving away, leaving Gio to take care of midfield in a one to one situation. NEC took advantage of that, very well.”

The Euphoria after Kalmar was gone. Five matches, one win, one draw and two losses… Only once in 100 years did Feyenoord start worse than this.

A painful report card. Verbeek was signed because of his drive, discipline and innovative way of working. Peter Bosz determined that Feyenoord needed a top sport climate and Verbeek was the man to make that happen.

The coach changed many things. The trainers room, the dressing room, a fitness center, more intensive training sessions… A different culture, in other words.

In Sweden, his approach seemed to work, at last. But in the Eredivisie, Feyenoord plods along. There are many good intentions and sure, Feyenoord misses a couple of key players, but being number 14 in the standings is just not good enough. In particular when you have 10 (ex-) internationals in your squad (Timmer, De Cler, Lucius, Hofland, Gio, Landzaat, Tomasson, Makaay, De Guzman, Slory).

Against NEC, only four of them could play, but still “we should have been good enough to beat NEC” was Verbeek’s opinion.

El Ahmadi was fit and started as holding midfielder, controlling the game and giving away great passes as if he was Santa Claus. Roy Makaay had two big open chances and Wijnaldo hit the cross bar. NEC wasn’t able to create anything themselves in that first half.

In the second half, again Feyenoord had the dominant role, but NEC hit Verbeek’s team in the counter attack. Biseswar was pulled down in the NEC box, the ball was played deep and when De Cler slipped it was easy for Janssen to fool Timmer: 0-1.

“We broke the agreements we made, defensively. Our markers, Bahia and Greene, constantly left their zones and we kept on giving NEC more space than was good for us.”

Mario Been: “After the 0-2 we could have scored even more. We are really maturing. If you first beat Dinamo Bukarest and then Feyenoord, you are doing ok. I think we made a statement in Europe. AC Milan will be shivering when they read this,” Been laughed, hinting at the UEFA Cup draw of Tuesday.
“And let’s be honest, it’s quite a feat, beating Dinamo Bukarest. I said Dinamo Bukarest! I’ll repeat it some more, because that wasn’t a shoddy club we beat, you know?”

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