Tuesday, 20 July 2021 at 01:03• Mart van Mourik • Last update: 01:07

Sjoerd Mossou is impressed by Marco van Ginkel’s performance. The PSV midfielder came over from Chelsea on a free transfer earlier this month and wore the captain’s armband in the friendly match against PAOK (1-0 win). The journalist is in the program football talk from ESPN very pleased with the speedy recovery of Van Ginkel and the way in which he fought back to the highest level after almost three years of injury.

“Whether it is a logical choice if Van Ginkel were to become the captain of PSV? Well I continue to find Van Ginkel an incredible story. He hasn’t played for so long and yet he manages to hook up again. It really almost never happens that a player does not actually play for three seasons and then hooks up at a very nice level. It took some time, but it seems that he will make it again and even become PSV captain,” said Mossou.

Van Ginkel tore his cruciate ligament in Chelsea’s shirt on September 24, 2013 in the game against Swindon Town. Since then, the former Vitesse midfielder has continued to struggle with knee problems and between June 2018 and January 2021 (956 days) he was sidelined again due to problems with his knee. In the second half of last season, the midfielder returned to PSV on a rental basis and played a total of eleven Eredivisie matches. Last week, Van Ginkel even wore the captain’s armband.

Roger Schmidt indicated after the game with PAOK that he was charmed by Van Ginkel’s leadership qualities, although that does not automatically mean that the captain’s armband also ends up with him. “Marco did well today,” said the PSV coach after the practice win. “He is the type who can be a captain. But there is no final decision yet. Next week we’ll see how we fill it in.”

Further comes during football talk the possible interaction with Davy Pröpper and Mario Götze. Can the three names play together? Mossou thinks so. “They are going to play a little more in a 4-2-3-1 formation. So as far as I’m concerned, you can put Van Ginkel at ‘number 10’.” Commentator Leo Driessen fully agrees with his colleague and suggests that ‘good football players should always play’.