Wilfred Genee started the broadcast of Today Inside on Tuesday with a cynical sneer towards Bas Nijhuis. The referee received quite a bit of criticism during and after Almere City FC – Ajax (2-2) on Sunday, when he refused to give the visitors a penalty after a push from Peer Koopmeiners in the back of Kenneth Taylor in the penalty area.
Mike Verweij caught up on Monday in the Kickoffpodcast from The Telegraph. “Bas Nijhuis should really just stop whistling.” Verweij thinks the difference between Nijhuis and the other referees from the KNVB corps is too great. “It cannot be that you, in the service of the KNVB, can apply different rules than the other referees.”
Verweij had contact with Nijhuis shortly after the podcast and mentioned this on year-old referee from Enschede.
Should Kenneth Taylor have been given a penalty here? ??#almaja
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) November 13, 2023
Gene
Genee starts off in a cynical manner on Tuesday evening. “Former top referee, good that you are here,” Nijhuis, who is sitting at the bar in the daily talk show, is told. “Former top referee too. Unbelievable, what is this?”, the experienced referee responds with a small smile on his mouth.
“Were you drinking the night before?” Genee wants to know what Nijhuis did the night before the meeting between Almere City and Ajax. “What is this, what are these questions?”, the referee immediately counters. “You gave four yellow cards in the first fifteen minutes, from the seventh to fifteenth minute. That is two more than in your entire career. And in the end you gave out eight yellow cards in that match.”
“I saw that it was my Eredivisie record, but it was really necessary,” Nijhuis explains, throwing cards in the initial phase of the match in Almere. “There was a disturbance with two players and two hard tackles and I thought: That’s not possible, I can’t let this derail. So I had to perform for a while. Four tickets.”
Genee then brings up Verweij’s statement that Nijhuis should stop whistling at the highest level. Nijhuis hears it, but does not provide an extensive response. Genee immediately switches to another game moment: Kristian Hlynsson’s dive in the first half in the penalty area of Almere City, after he came into contact with an opponent.
Van der Gijp
René van der Gijp understands that Nijhuis did not give a penalty for Hlynsson falling in the box. “These are cases of: if he gives it, you say: ‘Yes, that’s fine’. If he doesn’t give it, then you say: ‘Yes, that’s also possible’. This was a skirmish.”
“And during that first action they almost bumped into each other. That boy from Ajax (Taylor, ed.) leans towards that boy from Almere (Koopmeiners, ed.). He hears, feels or sees him coming. It is “It’s not like he’s walking straight. If he were walking straight and you gave him a push, he probably wouldn’t fall,” the analyst believes.