René van der Gijp looked on Sunday with amazement at the blow that Steven Berghuis dealt to a supporter of FC Twente. The wing attacker, who later apologized, did so because teammate Brian Brobbey had been treated racist. Van der Gijp cannot imagine that, like Berghuis, he would ever be touched if someone insulted him in such a way.
“This is not in me at all. This would not occur to me in the slightest”, Van der Gijp expresses his surprise in Monday evening Inside today. “To punch a boy in the head on a bus, that’s just not an option for me.” Table companion Johan Derksen has more understanding for Berghuis’ action. “He wasn’t in the starting line-up and then has the consumption. Then they are outplayed at his old club. He is booed and then there is such a guy behind a fence yelling at him. It is completely wrong, but it is a succession of irritations.”
Ajax player Steven Berghuis has just punched a FC Twente fan…
pic.twitter.com/MsipXygbdE— george (@StokeyyG2) May 28, 2023
“And then he behaves extremely unprofessionally. Because as a footballer you have to be resistant to everything that rolls off those stands. And that is not flattering, you know that.” Van der Gijp observes a structural problem in football. “When I had to play with PSV at ADO, do you know how many years ago that was? That was just forty years ago. Do you know what was on the bus? You shouldn’t run into it in an alley, if you were alone. They shouted the most horrible things. Then you took your packed lunch and sat in the back of the bus. What do you care?”
Response Berghuis
“I regret my action, I should not have done this,” Berghuis said in a press statement on Sunday. TC Tubantia brought an eyewitness testimony saying that Brian Brobbey was called a ‘cancer black’. Berghuis did not specifically name that incident, but does say: “After every away game, we get a lot of curses thrown at us at the bus, while we make time to hand out autographs to fans who ask for it. I’m used to it by now , but people think they can say anything.”