Eric Gudde officially retired as director of the KNVB last week. In a big interview with the General Newspaper On Saturday, Gudde looks back on his turbulent time on the board of Feyenoord and the national football association. One and a half years ago, for example, he became the national Kop van Jut when the competition had to be stopped and the sporting consequences had to be determined. Gudde knew at that moment that he could never do that to everyone’s satisfaction. “The regulations did not foresee a scenario like this at all. Professional football has never been shut down in 65 years.”
“For weeks before, I realized: it’s going to be a diabolical dilemma.” Gudde emphasizes that the file could not be solved at the conference table. “There would always be winners and losers, with every conceivable solution. Also internally, opinions were almost 50/50 divided here, all kinds of polls gave the same picture. But that knot had to go through – I never wanted to run away from that.” In the end, it was decided not to carry out promotion and relegation. “The decision we have taken is now almost one-on-one in the revised regulations. That says something.”
“I thought, everything added up and subtracted: it can’t be the case that you get a PhD while you haven’t been promoted yet. Nor that you can be relegated if you have not actually been relegated yet. I still see it exactly the same now,” emphasizes Gudde. “Of course, a lot went wrong on the day itself. The fact that everything had to be digital, with all the complications that entailed, didn’t exactly help. I didn’t get a good feeling about the way that went. I’m not made of stone either.”
FC Utrecht grabbed next to European football: the cup final was canceled and the ranking was decisive, even though Willem II had three points more, one game less and a worse goal difference. FC Utrecht owner Frans van Seumeren refuses to shake Gudde’s hand to this day. “I think the latter is, how should I put it… Levelless, yes. I understand very well that there were strong emotions, that clubs and supporters were angry. But with the people from Cambuur and De Graafschap, I eventually regained a normal, healthy working relationship. I even handed out the championship scale to Cambuur.”
“You can disagree very much, but if you work in the football world yourself, I think you know how sensitive things are. What the impact can be of words, of a certain attitude. Some mutual respect can’t hurt in this world.” He also had to deal with emotions at Feyenoord, for example around the Kuip file. “What touched me most in all those years in this work was a comment from one of my sons, when everything was going on at Feyenoord.”
“Jesper and Tim were still at school, still living at home, when one day Jesper said, ‘Dad, shall we go back to our old life? When you still worked for the municipality? Then everything was still normal.’ That did the trick, you know.” He looks back with nostalgia on the national title in 2017, but also how the financial situation went from thirty million euros in debt to equity of thirty million plus. “A lot of people worked incredibly hard for that, but that national title had a lot more impact of course – and it should be. That is what makes football such an exciting and intense world.”