Valentijn Driessen does not take Cody Gakpo’s words seriously after the match between PSV and Feyenoord (0-4). The PSV attacker was taken to the side by Roger Schmidt after an hour and afterwards reacted very understandingly to the choice of his trainer. Driessen thinks that Gakpo does not show the back of his tongue, he states in the podcast Kick off by The Telegraph.
In an interview with ESPN Gakpo responded to his much-discussed substitution. The audience whistled at Schmidt, but the attacker himself accepted the trainer’s choice. “We were behind and the trainer wanted to force something,” said Gakpo. “He wanted to bring some freshness into it. You just have to accept that. The trainer thinks he can turn the game around in this way. I understand the substitution, because of course he thinks: he has already played on Thursday and there are many more games to come. That’s how he switches. I don’t really have discussions with him about it, no.”
Driessen will return to the words of the PSV wing striker on Monday. “I don’t take Cody Gakpo seriously in this, because he sits next to his trainer,” said the journalist. “You can’t expect a 22-year-old player to openly resign from his trainer after a 0-4 defeat. So what Cody Gakpo says, we don’t really have to take seriously. And the boy can’t do anything about that.”
Schmidt’s substitution policy, who also exchanged Eran Zahavi, Mario Götze and Davy Pröpper at halftime, raises major questions for Driessen. “Roger Schmidt would be better off becoming a trainer of an athletics club. I can imagine that you pay attention to things like this. Then you work towards a competition, but he just uses the competitions as part of the whole training process. I think that’s the world upside down. Of course you actually switch to give your team a boost, or someone must be injured. Otherwise you switch to get a better team. He switches and the team just gets weaker. First there were allowed three substitutions, now he has five. Then he can take his hobby all the way to the extreme.”
Driessen does not rule out that Schmidt will come under pressure in Eindhoven. “The PSV policymakers have not yet conjured up the big substitution trick, but of course that will happen at some point. You felt in the stadium yesterday that there was just a lot of aversion to the team, but also to the trainer and This was the first time, but will it go wrong a few times now… And last season it has of course gone wrong before, then there will be a dynamic and I have to see how the PSV leadership will hold up .” Mike Verweij adds: “Last season he was of course very lucky that those stadiums were empty, because otherwise he would have been whistled out of the stadium with sixteen points behind Ajax.” Schmidt’s contract with PSV expires after this season.