Valentijn Driessen has admiration for the way in which the internationals of the Dutch national team hold their own during their stay in the training camp, the football chief told Friday in the podcast of The Telegraph. The team of national coach Frank de Boer lives in a bubble and has to do without friends and family for a few weeks. For the the Dutch, the European Championship was extended this week with a place in the eighth finals. When the the Dutch makes the final, the players will be away from home for exactly one month.
According to Driessen, a lot of discipline is required not to do crazy things during a final tournament. “I think it’s very clever how the boys hold their own there”, Driessen expressed his admiration for the the Dutch internationals. “You would only be locked up in such a camp for three or four weeks with all guests, while your family is at home. They are screaming with testosterone, of course, because they are all boys between twenty and thirty. Then you have to be very disciplined. not to do crazy things and not to fly off the track.”
Various activities are organized for the players between the matches and training sessions. For example, the team went to the bowling alley on Thursday afternoon. “You don’t think about that, but for such a bowling outing, of course everything has to be wiped clean,” Driessen continues. “They live in a bubble. You see what can happen in Scotland. They have a positive test and England has lost two players. Those Scots happily went on and on, but those English lost two players because of the measures there. “
Driessen, meanwhile, incurred the wrath of Jack van Gelder by speaking of ‘red carpet work’ for the the Dutch now that the team is linked to the Czech Republic in the eighth finals. “Come on guys. If this goes wrong, you have to put the Dutch national team in the bunker for about ten weeks. Frank de Boer will also have to flee if he doesn’t make the semi-finals now,” Driessen said. A comment that went wrong with Van Gelder. “He can always say sourly: semi-final, have you seen who they played against? Or: they didn’t make it to the semi-final or final, so they can’t do anything about it. It seems like an annoying mentality. hard to deal with.”
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