After fourteen seasons as Feyenoord’s team manager, Bas van Noortwijk will retire after this football year. The 66-year-old former goalkeeper has, including his active career, spent no fewer than 48 seasons in football. In good and bad times, Van Noortwijk was there for his club, of which he never missed a duel. “I had a lot of fun doing it and was able to work with great trainers”, he says in conversation with it Algemeen Dagblad back to a period that is as turbulent as it is beautiful.
He is pleased with everyone, Bert van Marwijk, Ronald Koeman, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, but he did not click with one trainer: Gertjan Verbeek. “Verbeek would be strong from an organizational point of view. But I didn’t notice any of that. I have never experienced such a mess at Feyenoord. There was no work with him. And he was disrespectful to people. Incomprehensible, actually, when you look at what he achieved. We almost fell off the rankings ”, Van Noortwijk scoffs. Verbeek was already evicted in January 2009, after six months of employment.
Van Noortwijk has countless anecdotes about the footballers who were active in De Kuip over the years. Graziano Pellè, for example, did not understand much of the phenomenon of section control. “He got so many fines every month that at a certain point I advised him the following: Take a private driver, you are cheaper.” Rick Karsdorp wanted to come to training sessions with his own Porsche against the club guidelines and promised not to do that anymore. One day Van Noortwijk saw the car in the parking lot of the Sligro, right next to De Kuip.
“So I take a picture of that car, which had rather striking features, and a moment later I say to Rick, ‘Verrèk, I didn’t know there were two of those Porsches driving around.’ Well, then you had it, you know, ha. ” Van Noortwijk considered good contact with everyone just as important as directness. “Players, coaches and executives must have cursed me at one point or another. Who knows, they might think: ‘It’s nice that it is finally rotted up.’ Who’s to say, dude? But they never could blame me for one thing. And that is that I played a part. I’ve always been honest. To everyone.”