PSV sent youth coach Stefan Maletic away in the spring because of ‘transfer apps’ to Mauro Júnior, so report Eindhovens Dagblad and Football International. The 33-year-old former defender had been working at De Herdgang since the summer of 2019, but that came to an end ten months later. Maletic is now working as an assistant to Rogier Meijer at NEC Nijmegen.

Maletic sent Mauro several texts in April, in which he allegedly stated that he had recommended the 21-year-old Brazilian to a management agency that was looking for profiles of players for a club in the United Arab Emirates. The then youth coach of the Eindhoven team wanted to get in touch with Mauro by phone, but he held back and referred him to his own agent.

It Eindhovens Dagblad writes that the apps show that Mauro is’ very loyal ‘to his own agent and had no intention of just contacting’ an unknown person, who would have an enticing proposal that would make him and his family never have to work again ‘. In the end, head of youth training Ernest Faber and technical manager John de Jong realized that Maletic was approaching Mauro in this way and became ‘irritated’, because it was not expected that a youth coach would approach a player from the A-selection for this. Ultimately, due to a ‘breach of trust’, PSV decided to say goodbye to Maletic, who did not agree with this.

The former defender of De Graafschap, TOP Oss, Achilles’29 and Burton Albion, among others, went to the Board of Arbitrators of the KNVB, which ruled that PSV had to pay him an amount of 20,000 euros for the early termination of his contract. At the same time, it was concluded that Maletic’s behavior was ‘inadmissible’ and ‘not as would be expected of a good employee’. Nevertheless, the Board of Arbitrators considered it more obvious that Maletic had been reprimanded instead of a summary dismissal, because there was no urgent reason for this and it has not been established that he acted in bad faith.

PSV took Mauro away from Desportivo Brasil in 2017 and for now the youth international of Brazil played 37 official games in the main force. After a rental period at Heracles Almelo, the midfielder can count on the necessary playing time this season under trainer Roger Schmidt, because he made twelve appearances in this year. Mauro’s contract in Eindhoven will continue until mid-2022.