PSV was the only Dutch club this week to drop points in a European context. The team of trainer Roger Schmidt lost 1-2 at home against AS Monaco and that was a big blow to the bill. The people from Eindhoven have so far performed inconsistently this season, both in the Eredivisie and in Europe. Nevertheless, the PSV club management intends to continue longer with trainer Roger Schmidt. According to Mike Verweij and Valentijn Driessen, the bar is not set high enough in Eindhoven.
According to Verweij, the pressure at PSV is considerably lower than at Ajax. “It’s just a fact that very few journalists bother to drive down the A2,” says the journalist from The Telegraph. “See how much interest there is always for the Ajax press conferences on Friday. Of course that also has to do with the size of the club, the history and the turnover. At PSV, the pressure is simply much less, also because there is less interest in it. I think that Ajax is always approached much more critically than PSV.”
Valentijn Driessen completely agrees with his colleague’s words. “Yes, one hundred percent,” said the football chief. Toon Gerbrands always shouted: ‘There are no excuses in top sport’. But they do lose a lot. They can say that they are still close to Ajax in the competition, but you lose important matches against Benfica and AS Monaco. If you lose at Monaco, you have probably been seen in the Europa League and you can fall back to the Conference League. That bar could be set a bit higher.”
Driessen therefore cannot understand that PSV intends to extend the contract with Schmidt. “They had been in touch and it looks good. It looks like they will continue together. There is not a hair on his head with Schmidt thinking about stopping. Then I think: my God.Verweij knows that at Ajax, which is the opponent on Sunday, they will not be sorry if the German extends at PSV. , because it is the best trainer Ajax has ever had. It is, of course, painful to say such a thing.”