Feyenoord is preparing for the matches against FC Drita in the second preliminary round of the Conference League. On paper an opponent that seems doable, but the Rotterdammers often thought in the past that a hurdle was easy to overcome in Europe. Three years ago, AS Trencín was 4-0 too strong for Feyenoord, which had won the Johan Cruijff Scale at the expense of PSV the weekend before. The return ended a week later in 1-1 and so the team of then trainer Ricardo Moniz surprisingly went one round further.
“A beating of the arrogance of Feyenoord”, Moniz said on Wednesday in conversation with the General Newspaper back to that play-off game for a place in the Europa League group stage. “Of course something like this should never happen to such a big club. When I think back to the match against AS Trencín, I immediately think of the amateurism at Feyenoord. Look, for me Giovanni van Bronckhorst is the ultimate Feyenoord trainer, still. But I got a strong feeling that he had been misadvised by his staff members prior to that game.”
“It is very nice for us as a country that a club like Feyenoord comes along”
A closer look at FC Drita on the basis of former Feyenoord player Simon Loshi, who played for KF Feronikeli Drenas for the past year and a half in Kosovo.
Moniz points out that Feyenoord decided the day before the match not to train in Slovakia and Robin van Persie had even stayed behind in the Netherlands. “Apparently Feyenoord thought they could handle it at half power and untrained. Then you don’t understand it as a club, I think. We have beaten them on fitness and mentality”, emphasizes the technology expert from Hamburger SV.
Feyenoord lost no less than 17 of the last 23 away matches in the Europa League and so it is not easy to think about FC Drita, the number two in the Kosovar league last season. Moniz points out that clubs nowadays ‘value data way too much’. He believes that you should not listen to people who base themselves on what the laptop tells them. “They tell you that you have to let players start slowly, like Van Persie in 2018. The opposite is true.”
“You have to create overcapacity, make sure your players are fitter than their opponents. Otherwise, as a Dutch club you simply lose, even against unknown teams from the Eastern Bloc, for example. That has happened to Feyenoord too often and unnecessarily. A shame, because it costs the club millions.” Moniz cannot imagine that Arne Slot’s current Feyenoord cannot beat FC Drita in two matches. “Beware of arrogance, fight and make sure you can sprint for ninety minutes.”