Teun Koopmeiners thinks that his departure from AZ went ‘not very well’. The 23-year-old midfielder’s transfer to Atalanta was only completed on the penultimate day of the transfer window, after his name had been linked to a departure from Alkmaar all summer. Koopmeiners says in conversation with Football International that he had hoped AZ had shown more of his ‘moral side’, being a boy of the club.
“I’ll be honest: my departure from AZ did not go very smoothly. Not as I had hoped. Fortunately, we smoothed everything out afterwards. But during the negotiations, our interests diverged widely. That is logical and unfortunate at the same time,” says Koopmeiners. In the end, Atalanta paid twelve million euros to bring the midfielder to Italy. He played four more games for AZ this season and after the game with sc Heerenveen announced in tears that he was going to leave.
“Of course I understand that AZ wanted to go for the main prize. But corona has an impact on the amounts that clubs can spend. In the end, all parties surrendered to the deal, so that it could still go ahead,” says Koopmeiners. He emphasizes that this was not without a struggle, however. “Usually my agent did the conversations with Max (Huiberts, technical director of AZ, ed.), so that I could concentrate on playing football. But sometimes I picked up the phone myself or sent a message.”
“Not to exert pressure, but to express my feelings about the situation. We had agreed in advance that we could say anything to each other, positive and negative. That wasn’t always fun, but at least you’re clearly against each other. In that time I learned that ideal pictures do not exist in professional football,” says Koopmeiners. For the time being, he played eighteen games in the Atalanta shirt, in which he was good for two goals and two assists.
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