Mart van den Heuvel has absolutely no good memories of his collaboration with Mark van Bommel. The former PSV team manager got along very well with Van Bommel as a player, but the bond clouded when he became the club’s trainer. According to Van den Heuvel, Van Bommel took an authoritarian attitude and was ‘beyond reason’.
Van den Heuvel explains in the Skiete Willy Podcast from Football International explains that the relationship with the player Van Bommel was very good. “But then he became a trainer, first with the youth”, said Van den Heuvel, who retired last summer as team manager at PSV. “There he already had collisions with the head of youth academies, with the predecessor of Ernest Faber (Pascal Jansen, ed.). He just did his own things, did not go along with the structure of the club. And then he became head coach, because Phillip Cocu suddenly stopped to go to Fenerbahçe. It was seemingly promised that Mark would succeed him. “
“What bothered me the most is that the moment he became ‘boss’, he thought he could also determine everything. I said to him:’ If you make the team play football now, we will take care of the doctors. , equipment men and the physio’s for the rest. If you disagree with something, you have to say. ” And he said, “I determine it.” It got out of hand. He was beyond reason. With Mark it was a drama in terms of communication, really terrible. “
The first season the results under Van Bommel were still excellent, but from the 2019/20 season it went a lot less. “When we were going to lose, we were blamed that he lost. If we draw 1-1 at Emmen, he should not blame us. We cannot help the fact that there is artificial turf at Emmen and that they do not spray there. He projected everything onto one person. He is also the reason that I left PSV. ”
In mid-December 2019, Van Bommel was fired from PSV due to the poor results. “It went completely wrong. I also don’t understand what got into him. I haven’t had any contact at all since he was fired. I haven’t called him again, he did call me once. That was the day after he was fired. He scolded him. I was completely rotten, then I put it down. Then he called again with a secret number. Then I picked up and said: “If you want to tell me something, come to Veldhoven. Then we go to the kitchen table. Then I’ll explain to you what a big dick you are. ” I never heard anything again. “