Go Ahead Eagles and PEC Zwolle will play the first IJsselderby in more than four years on Sunday. Since the 2016/17 season, when PEC won 1-3 twice, the rivals from Overijssel no longer faced each other. For Bram van Polen these are the most beautiful matches of the season and after fifteen years in the service of PEC he does not need yellow and red colors in his house. “I realize this is quite sad and childish for a 35-year-old man. But it really is. I don’t want to see those Go Ahead Eagles colors in my house.”
No tulips, or pawns at a board game, in these colors in the Van Polen house. “Every club deserves a rival. Derbies are the most beautiful games of the year,” emphasizes the captain on Saturday in conversation with the General Newspaper. John Stegeman was not loved when he exchanged Go Ahead for PEC in 2019. He therefore no longer has to show himself in Deventer, where Van Polen will not be found either. “I don’t think it’s wise if I go to a terrace in that city on a free Saturday. Although I don’t feel that need either. Zwolle is much nicer.”
Joey van den Berg played for both Go Ahead and PEC in the past. “I once went to Go Ahead with the PEC supporters bus,” says the midfielder. “When you drive into that Vetkampstraat and see that excited sea of people looming up, that is very impressive. You drive into the lion’s den and can’t go anywhere; you have that feeling. I think that’s the biggest difference. PEC Zwolle fans really want to win that derby. But with Go Ahead supporters, it’s like their lives depended on it.”
Jan Kromkamp describes the IJsselderby as ‘a match that is always loaded and that you have to win when you are at Go Ahead’. “I always enjoyed that derby atmosphere. As a young player I already thought it was wonderful”, emphasizes the former defender, who started and finished his career in Deventer, in The Telegraph. “Art Langeler wanted to bring me to PEC at the end of my career. I immediately said: ‘Art, I can’t do that.’ There are people who do, such as Stegeman, but that was out of the question for me. That’s why I ended my career again at Go Ahead.”
Joost Broerse sees the derby as an excellent opportunity for his old club PEC to reverse the negative trend. In Zwolle they are still waiting for the first goal and also the first point after four match days. The goal difference is telling: 0-6. “This is an excellent race to get back into a good flow. If you win this one, the people in Zwolle have almost forgotten those first four games. Although there is of course also the risk that Go Ahead will push you even deeper into the pit. Nobody should really think about that in Zwolle.”
PEC has allegedly won the last two Eredivisie matches with Go Ahead, but has never won three IJsselderbies in a row at the highest level. Go Ahead, which is sixteenth, starts for the first time since March 1985 as a higher ranked team in an Eredivisie game with PEC (eighteenth); then Go Ahead was thirteenth and PEC seventeenth.