Mike Verweij and Valentijn Driessen are not impressed by Roger Schmidt’s performance in his two and a half years at PSV. Despite the fact that the departing trainer “was allowed to put the whole club to his will”, the journalists judge in the podcast Kick-Off by The Telegraph that Schmidt has added little to PSV since his arrival. Verweij mainly cracks his influence on the transfer policy of recent years, from which, according to him, few acquisitions have emerged.
Driessen starts by mentioning that PSV has not come closer to arch-rival Ajax under Schmidt. “Those two clubs can send each other to great heights. But that has failed miserably in the past two and a half years. I don’t think PSV has come much closer to Ajax. It worked under Mark van Bommel, and then Ajax was also on a higher level. level with Frenkie de Jong, Donny van de Beek, Hakim Ziyech and associates. So yes, I do think that Schmidt failed. You did not expect that because promises had been made. Wündertrainer that will turn Dutch football upside down’. Nothing came of that.”
“He has not added anything to PSV”, Driessen concludes. Verweij corrects his colleague. “You say that, but Schmidt has added Mario Götze, Philipp Max, Philipp Mwene, Eran Zahavi, Joël Drommel, Ibrahim Sangaré and André Ramalho to PSV. In fact, PSV has simply put the key to the club in his hands. And now he does. leaves: What to do with these players? You can do something with Sangaré and Ramalho, and maybe Max, but the rest … are those additions that the next trainer also wants to work with?”
The arrival of Götze at the end of 2020, which was labeled a ‘huge stunt’ by a large number of media at the time, does not appeal to Verweij. “I didn’t like that about Schmidt.” “Hopefully we are now rid of that eternal nagging that German football is so great,” Driessen finally wishes. Since his arrival in Eindhoven, Schmidt has only won the Johan Cruijff Scale for the time being. The coach can add three more prizes to this before his departure next summer: PSV is still in the race for the national championship, the TOTO KNVB Cup and the Conference League.