Heracles Almelo dealt a sledgehammer blow to ADO Den Haag during the season opening on Friday evening and won 4-0. As the official media partner of the Keuken Kampioen Division, Voetbalzone was present in Almelo, where our reporter Labib Bitchou spoke with Dirk Kuijt, Samuel Armenteros and John Lammers, among others.
Kuijt made a horror debut in Almelo on Friday evening. His team was already behind 4-0 after 42 minutes. “It is of course very disappointing that we lost 4-0 here tonight. We didn’t expect that at all. But hey, that’s football and we have to learn from that. It was a disappointing evening which makes you angry, but I am still very confident in what we are doing.”
Boy Kemper, who wears the captain’s armband in Kuijt’s team this season, supports his trainer in that confidence. “We have expressed that we simply want to do our PhD this year. Then we shouldn’t get upset and think we can’t make it after one game. There are still plenty of games in which we can show that we belong at the top.”
Samuel Armenteros was very pleased with Heracles’ performance. The 32-year-old Swede himself had a large share in the 4-0 victory with two goals. “The match was very businesslike. We showed good football, seized opportunities and enforced everything ourselves. The defense kept a clean sheet and the midfielders and attackers also did their job. Nikolai Laursen was allowed to score a goal, Emil Hansson delivered a good assist and I was able to score two goals myself.”
Heracles trainer Lammers was not only satisfied with the result, but especially wanted to highlight the field game. “We just want to do a lot of ball possession. We’ve talked about that a lot over the past six weeks. Then your residual defense must be in order and that was well taken care of with us. If you can be dominant you create opportunities and we have done that. We could have scored a lot more.”
Voetbalzone is the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division
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