Thursday, July 8, 2021 at 2:36 PM• Yanick Vos

In addition to Jens Toornstra, Bryan Linssen also had to take a new phone number after a screenshot leaked out showing that Ajax target Steven Berghuis had left Feyenoord’s group app. In an interview with ESPN Linssen says that he was surprised that the screenshot appeared on social media. “Yes, of course you were surprised because you don’t expect it to happen in a group,” said the 30-year-old Feyenoord winger.

A few days after it became known that Ajax had reported for Berghuis, the the Dutch international stepped out of Feyenoord’s group app. The screenshot would have been leaked by a youth player of the Rotterdam team, who has only just joined the group and therefore had not yet put the phone numbers in his phone. “It was a off season group app, so not so much the group app we are currently in,” says Linssen.

It General Newspaper reported a day after the screenshot had spread over the internet that Berghuis had not left the group app because of a departure from Feyenoord. Due to a possible switch to arch-rival Ajax, he received ‘annoying messages’ from supporters and felt compelled to take a new number. “We also know that Steven didn’t go out because he didn’t want to say goodbye to us. There were, of course, also reasons,” said Linssen.

Linssen, among others, reacted with humor to Berghuis’s departure from the group app, as can be seen on the screenshot. “In group apps it goes like this, a hundred gifs are sent in there. There is laughter in it and there is talk in it. You are one group and crazy things are not easily said. With us there will never be an issue, in that regard. Just because it comes out, then everything is widely reported. Everyone gets an opinion. Then it is annoying that it comes true.”

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Linssen’s number became public, which meant that he was inundated with messages and telephone calls. “I don’t know what was sent to me. I didn’t open anything because I couldn’t keep up anymore. Every second I got a call and got a message. After ten minutes or fifteen minutes I turned it off. I was also thrown into group apps and those group apps went crazy. So you can check how many messages I got. It was impossible to keep up,” he says with a laugh. “So I turned my phone off and got a new number the next day.”