‘The death of Peter hit me even harder than I could have ever imagined’

Friday, July 23, 2021 at 5:48 PM• Dominic Mostert • Last update: 18:06

Peter R. de Vries was mainly known to the general public as a crime journalist, but also left his mark on football as an agent. In 2014, De Vries, who died last week at the age of 64, together with his son Royce and the late Piet Keizer, started PR Sportmanagement BV in Amsterdam, an office that focused on coaching professional athletes, especially football players. One of his first clients was Jelle van der Heyden. The midfielder stayed with the agency for four years and was hit hard by the death of De Vries.

By Dominic Mostert

Van der Heyden has seen the images of the farewell ceremony in the Carré theater. “My brother and my father were there,” he says in conversation with Football zone. Van der Heyden was also invited to the ceremony. But he plays for Vendsyssel FF, at the second level of Denmark, and could not easily travel to the Netherlands. “I wanted to go, but I couldn’t because I was here. I was very sorry. I’ve had some contact with Royce and I’ll send him another message, but I know he’s being overloaded with comments now. I’m waiting just a little while and then I will contact him a bit. Of course I called my father and brother and they told us how the ceremony was and that there were beautiful speeches.”

Van der Heyden joined the De Vries office in March 2014. He was then eighteen years old and played for the A1 of FC Twente. “All good players my age had an agent, so we knew we needed an agent,” said the 25-year-old midfielder. “Two weeks earlier we saw that Peter, Royce and Piet Keizer had set up the agency. My father then said that it might be a good idea to approach Peter, because we knew that he was an honest, honest guy. My father said very For a long time I didn’t need an agent and we could arrange it ourselves, but at some point you get to an age where you have to deal with other contracts, and you might want to make a transfer.”

“We thought: we can always try it. We asked if we could come and visit,” says Van der Heyden. He eventually went to De Vries’s office with his father, who was not immediately convinced. “Of course they didn’t know who I was. Piet Keizer then watched a match of mine in Utrecht. I came in after twenty minutes because I think the player in my position played very badly,” the midfielder laughs. “I scored from a free kick and played that game fantastic. Piet Keizer was convinced of me and he was of course the great football man of the office. He told Peter that I was suitable.”

And so it happened: De Vries represented Van der Heyden on a business level, for example in contract negotiations with Twente. If you search Twitter for tweets from De Vries about Van der Heyden, you will find plenty. Seven times De Vries wrote about a visit to a Twente match, specifically for his client. Sometimes home games, sometimes away games. “He always came to watch, together with Royce, even when we played in Groningen, for example,” says Van der Heyden. “I have had very pleasant experiences with him. He has always been honest with me. If I didn’t play well, he would tell me so. If I needed him, I could always call him. He was always available for me. PR Sports management organized activities with all the guys. That was a good initiative, although I didn’t always feel like it – I’m not someone who always likes that sort of thing. Bowling, karting, escape rooms, that sort of thing. I’m fine with it too when we go out for dinner. But he and Royce were always very caring.”

The news about the attack on De Vries came like a bolt from the blue for Van der Heyden. “I just froze. I heard it and I really didn’t believe it,” he describes. “This can’t be true, I thought. Some people, as crazy as it may sound, you think are untouchable. Peter was one of those people. He just got everywhere. I couldn’t imagine it, so I had to myself almost squeezing to realize it had really happened. It made me quite emotional. It touched me more than I could have ever imagined. It popped in. He was loved by so many people. He stood up for minorities, he was a hero to everyone. Everyone also knows that he had roles in the Marengo process and was pretty deep in the underworld. You know that something like this can happen, but I really didn’t expect it. He had no security and he is someone who knows what he’s doing.”

About a year ago, Van der Heyden had the last contact with De Vries, to ask how things are going. Their football paths had parted before. In 2018, Van der Heyden decided to look for new management. “I felt at that moment that I was just standing still in my career. I wanted to try something different and that was actually the reason,” he explains. It was not easy to break ties with PR Sportmanagement. “I called Royce because I had more contact with him – that’s also a generation thing, because he’s a bit younger. I don’t think I’ve ever been so nervous about a call. I found it really difficult. I said I would not renew. We said goodbye in a restaurant and I thought that was very nice.”

Although he is still mourning the death of De Vries, Van der Heyden’s sporting life continues. He will start the new season in Denmark on Sunday with an away game against Esbjerg fB. It will be his third season with Vendsyssel FF, after he came transfer-free from FC Twente in 2019. The team is aiming for a better final classification than last season’s tenth place, when relegation was avoided based on the number of goals scored. “I have confidence in it. We have a good trainer and some players with qualities have been added. Thomas Oude Kotte just happened to join, he arrived today,” says Van der Heyden. “It is of course nice that I can speak Dutch again, after Ali Messaoud and Jeroen van der Lely have left. With this coach and a little addition to the group of players, we can have a nice season. The competition has twelve teams and is At the end divided into two groups of six, for promotion and relegation. We go for a place in the top six and then hope for a small miracle.”