Arne Slot wants to keep Leroy Fer for Feyenoord. The midfielder currently has no prospect of a base place with the Rotterdam team and will not appear in the base on Thursday evening in the Conference League match with FC Luzern. In the defense Gernot Trauner is preferred and in midfield Slot again opts for Jens Toornstra, Orkun Kökçü and Guus Til. That also seems to be the middle line in the Eredivisie and so Fer could wonder whether his future might lie outside Rotterdam.
Slot assured just before the reunion with FC Luzern that Fer had not asked to look for another club. “He has filled that role in defense as much as possible, to the best of his ability. He is not a central defender,” emphasized the Feyenoord trainer at ESPN. “He is also showing now that he is out of the starting line-up that he is of great value. He is incredibly busy with those young guys and is training very hard to get back into the team.”
“That is ideal in the first instance. He has also not indicated that he wants to leave. And I don’t want that either. Not if he fills in his role as he does now.” Marciano Vink does not think that Fer is a footballer who is already wondering what his role will be in the remainder of the season. “I do not think so. I don’t know how old he is (31 years old, ed.), but you’re not there to pat young teammates on the back,” said the analyst of ESPN. “You just want to play football and you want to show what you can do.”
“Only, Fer has played too long in a certain rhythm. In a certain position where, so to speak, he could play football for another 25 years, at that pace. But Slot now asks for other things. He demands more dynamism from his players, that they want to touch the ball. That is more the problem for Fer”, Vink predicts. Fer’s contract with Feyenoord expires next summer.
In December 2007 Fer made his debut in the first team at the age of seventeen, after a period of eight years in the youth academy at Varkenoord. In the summer of 2011, he moved to FC Twente, after which he played for Norwich City, Queens Park Rangers and Swansea City for many years. In the summer of 2019, Fer came ‘home’ to De Kuip after eight years, a wealth of experience in, among other things, the Premier League richer.