Radja Nainggolan has already had his share of criticism this season, but whether it affects him… “No”, he says resolutely. “Real football experts understand the situation I am in.”
And by real football experts he does not mean the media in Belgium. “There is not enough football knowledge. ‘In Belgium it is too easy to criticize without you knowing what it is like inside the house. ‘Radja doesn’t play well’. It’s easy to say that. I could have scored nine goals this season. If I had succeeded, ‘we would have been talking about other things’. That is simply Belgian football. Come on, the journalists here,” he says in HLN.
In Italy it was better. “The pressure is much greater there, but they understand more about football. I was once in ‘Extra Time’ with Gert Verheyen. Well, he understands. Wesley Sonck too. These are ex-football players who know what it’s like to be on a field. They have more tactical insight. If you have to talk to other guys sitting there and don’t understand much about football… That’s hard. A team has 25 players, one head coach and a technical staff. If you’re there, you know what football means. If you’ve never lived there, you’ll never understand.”
