Kees Kwakman hopes that action will be taken against trainers who instruct their keepers to fake a pain in matches. In recent years, several trainers in the Eredivisie have been caught giving their goalkeepers instructions to lie down and thus stop the game, after which the trainer calls his group of players together to make tactical changes. After the victory of Sparta Rotterdam against Go Ahead Eagles (1-0) on Saturday evening, Henk Fraser makes no secret of the fact that he used that trick.
“There must be a solution for Fraser’s trick”, Kwakman added on Saturday evening The Grandstand on ESPN† He cannot immediately come up with a solution. “It is quite a difficult matter. Every time he leaves his keeper on the ground as if he is injured and then calls his entire team together. We have seen that trick before: Danny Buijs often did it with Sergio Padt at FC Groningen. Today Fraser did it after 25 minutes, because Go Ahead was much better in the beginning.”
“It is quite difficult to come up with something about that, but it is starting to get quite irritating. There are just rules, you can address your team during halftime. If you have to call everything to the side after twenty minutes, I would you should prepare better,” concludes the analyst. Fraser gets in his match interview afterwards ESPN submitted the comment that it is nice for him that Maduka Okoye gets injured every now and then. “Yeah, but we have to be careful with Okoye. He’s been in some trouble a few times.”
“I have to say that he is quite fit. It’s a small pain, so in that respect I’m glad he was able to stay standing,” continues Fraser, who eventually admits to playing a game. “We are Dutch. I am proud to fifty-fifty to be Surinamese. But we are very good at finding the loopholes in the law. It’s not up to me to change that. You could of course influence it. People can say that they think I’m very unsportsmanlike, I think that’s fine and I understand. I must survive, we must survive as Sparta. A lot is allowed in sport and love.”