PSV is the long-awaited champion of the Netherlands. The look back on a memorable season has begun and both captain and technical director Earnest Stewart are still disappointed with the elimination in the eighth finals of the Champions League by Borussia Dortmund. Valentijn Driessen states that the people of Eindhoven have missed an excellent opportunity for success in Europe.
For PSV, the season started early with the preliminary round of the Champions League. The formation of coach Peter Bosz first convincingly dealt with Sturm Graz, before Rangers FC was played in a pile in the Philips Stadium. In a group with Arsenal, Sevilla and RC Lens, PSV subsequently secured a ticket for the knockout phase of the billion-dollar ball, in which it met an opponent who was struggling in their own country in the eighth finals in Borussia Dortmund. . The fact that PSV nevertheless failed to reach the last eight hit Eindhoven hard.
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Bosz was critical of his own performance after the defeat in Dortmund (2-0), but De Jong believes that his trainer was ‘overly self-critical’. According to the captain, the players on the field should have reacted more quickly. “Joey (Veerman, ed.) went with the 10 of them, with Brandt. He continued to follow him. Mauro Júnior was in a very big hole in midfield. That we didn’t see that ourselves!”De Jong speaks in conversation with Willem Vissers de Volkskrant expresses his surprise. “I saw it happening, but I didn’t tell Joey to move on. The trainer leaves us free to do so. We can always do something different in consultation with the trainer. In the field you often notice best whether it works or not, whether you take action on time. We often talk about that with Veerman, Jerdy Schouten or Guus Til. Should we do it differently?”
That was indeed asked of PSV in the return against Borussia Dortmund, but it happened too late. The Germans qualified for the quarter-finals thanks to a 2-0 victory after the first leg in Eindhoven ended 1-1 and are now on the threshold of the final battle. They defend a 1-0 lead against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday evening. According to Driessen, PSV could or perhaps should have been there. “It is precisely on the international stage that the current PSV’s major sore point lies with the unfortunate and unnecessary elimination in the eighth finals of the Champions League against the now semi-finalist Borussia Dortmund”Driessen writes in his column The Telegraph.
The reporter thinks that the current PSV could otherwise really have rivaled the ‘golden team’ of 1988. “Although the European campaign was objectively very mediocre, the path in the Champions League was open for PSV to create a sensation at the champions’ ball. Now the performances of the two PSV teams from 1988 and 2024 cannot be compared. Not to mention PSV’s cup defeat at Feyenoord in the eighth finals in January after a withheld penalty for Noa Lang following a tackle by Mats Wieffer.” Stewart acknowledges in conversation with it Eindhovens Dagblad that PSV had the opportunity to continue, but that Borussia Dortmund ‘also left the Eindhoven team alive for parts of the match’.
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