Wout Weghorst, Matthijs de Ligt and Stefan de Vrij spoke for an hour and a half with Remco Visscher on the day of the European Championship match against Austria (2-0 win), the performance coach revealed on Saturday in conversation with De Volkskrant. In The the Dutch Summer the mental coach of the three the Dutch-internationals is called a ‘charlatan’ by Johan Derksen, who reacts with surprise.
Visscher, a 34-year-old self-proclaimed performance coach, came to the Dutch via Weghorst. With talks and exercises, he prepared Weghorst, De Ligt and De Vrij via Facetime for the meeting with Austria. “It was Wout’s dream to make it to the the Dutch squad,” said Visscher. “You can program his brain for that, with exercises. The body can achieve what the mind believes in. That goes a lot further than influencing through consciousness.”
“A charlatan, yes”, Derksen responds to the reporting. “Without any medical background, he plays games with those boys. In addition, that boy also comes from that anti-corona network. It will not be a coincidence that Weghorst did not want an injection either. And De Ligt was also hesitant about it. crazy for words that a 34-year-old rascal from Harderwijk plays games with the players for an hour and a half because they can’t play football otherwise…”
Derksen has serious reservations about the performance coach’s background. “If you’re going to work with people’s brains, I like it if you’ve followed an extensive study for that. If you’re a psychologist, then you know the hat and the brim. But this boy has no medical training whatsoever. He sees this as a gap in the market, and then there are three of those crazy people who join him. Now the end is lost, of course.”
Still, Derksen would not forbid the three players to ask Visscher for advice. “If players think or tell themselves that this cut tree will make them play better football, then I have nothing against it. But I think it’s all a bit unstable, if you go to these kind of people to get out of the fire. Come on.”
Valentijn Driessen also cracks a critical note in the program. “Why does this man have to be in the media?”, said the journalist. “This man can do his job behind the scenes and then nobody has any problems with it. But no, he has to be in the foreground, interview with De Volkskrant, another four or five footballers walking there.”
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