Ruud van Nistelrooij had a photo of Thijs Slegers in his pocket during the match against SV Spakenburg. The PSV trainer reached the final of the TOTO KNVB Cup on Tuesday after a 1-2 victory and the coach did that a lot. After the match, Van Nistelrooij showed the journalists present a photo of PSV’s press secretary, who died in March. “This final is for Thijs.”
Van Nistelrooij was interviewed after the game by ESPNreporter Hans Kraay junior. The latter asked Van Nistelrooij whether it was ‘not a bit exaggerated that there were very big festivities’. “If you reach a cup final, that’s just great,” replied the Eindhoven team’s trainer, who then said that he did not want to celebrate reaching the final battle in a big way. “I was not much into festivities. I had this in my pocket,” he said while pulling out a photo of Slegers. “I received this photo yesterday during the funeral.”
Ruud van Nistelrooij dedicates the final place to Thijs Slegers ??#SPAPSV pic.twitter.com/7q7wgtK6HL
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) April 4, 2023
“My heart broke when I saw his wife, his daughter and his son,” continues the emotional Van Nistelrooij. “But I also heard about Thijs’s militancy and saw how strong his family is. That gave me and the boys all the strength today. A lot of strength for everyone around the Slegers family. This final is for Thijs.” Slegers died on Monday, March 27 at the age of 46 from the consequences of the after-effects of a stem cell transplant. Slegers underwent this treatment after being told he had acute leukemia at the end of 2020. The stem cell transplant initially seemed to work, but at the beginning of February the former journalist indicated that the after-effects would be fatal for him.
Before Slegers became the subject of conversation, Van Nistelrooij also talked about the match. Érick Gutiérrez and Patrick van Aanholt gave PSV a 0-2 lead, after which the final score was set at 1-2 by Dwayne Green. With that, reaching the final in De Kuip on Sunday 30 April became a fact. “Any way you look at it: if you play a semi-final, you just have to go to the final. Today was such a match that you just have to make sure you win. How the players picked it up towards the match and also during the match… Then we did it very professionally.” PSV’s opponent in the final will be Feyenoord or Ajax. Those two teams will face each other in the other semi-final on Wednesday.
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