According to Bart van Hintum, Danny Buijs committed a striking action on Sunday evening. In the half-time of the game against RKC Waalwijk (3-1 loss), FC Groningen was already behind 3-0, as a result of which Van Hintum was sacrificed, just like Damil Dankerlui and Michael de Leeuw. Van Hintum tells for the camera of ESPN that Buijs also forbade the three of them to come into the dressing room, although the Groningen trainer wants to nuance that story himself.
“Then you go into the second half: what does Danny Buijs say at such a moment?” Hélène Hendriks asks Van Hintum after the game. “I’m going to be very honest,” replies the defender. “I wasn’t allowed to be in the dressing room with the three guys who were substituted, so I don’t know what he said. But he wouldn’t have been happy.” Hendriks is stunned: “Isn’t that strange, you must know what is going to change?” “Choice of the trainer. Small dressing room perhaps”, says Van Hintum.
“I wasn’t allowed to be in the locker room with the three guys who were substituted”#RKCGRO #deunion pic.twitter.com/DtmgYmO11m
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) May 1, 2022
Despite the striking story, the routine shows himself sober and speculates about the reason. “I am sorry, of course, it is a team process. I understand that he was angry, I just played badly myself. If you then say: ‘Don’t come in the dressing room’, you have to accept that.” Buijs himself, however, wants to nuance Van Hintum’s story. “The first sentence of Bart’s interview was good”, the coach begins, “it was indeed a small dressing room. Then it goes wrong, because I was not angry at all. A number of players were full of frustration and I tried to calm them down and to prepare as best as possible for the second half. In my view, that would be difficult if the entire selection were on that small surface, including showering players who had just been substituted.”
“The first few minutes of the break all players were inside,” Buijs continues. “Then everyone could have a drink or go to the toilet. Then I asked all substitutes to leave the dressing room for a while. So that I could go through some things on the magnetic board with the eleven who would play. “We all kicked a ball on the field at halftime. The difference now was that I had replaced three players halfway through. You can expect an experienced boy like Bart to have been able to estimate and express that a little better.”