Feyenoord: Coach Clashes with Players Revealed

In his early coaching career, Robin van Persie already had problems with several players. At both SC Heerenveen and Feyenoord, not everyone who was part of the former top striker’s selection praised him. Below is a list of who Van Persie was at odds with.

On Sunday after the derby between Feyenoord and Sparta Rotterdam (3-4), the situation in De Kuip reached its boiling point. Quinten Timber is going to leave the Rotterdam team, but he did not do so before lashing out at the young trainer one last time. Yet the midfielder is not the only one who had difficulty working well with the young manager and former top striker of Arsenal, Manchester United and Oranje.

Quinten Timber

Van Persie stripped Timber of the captaincy at the start of this season and that is where the feud between the two seemed to begin. The fact that Timber did not want to extend his expiring contract in Rotterdam does not seem to have helped in building their connection. In fact, there was no reconciliation at all. On Sunday, Timber and Van Persie got into a heated argument in the Feyenoord dressing room and on Wednesday the former boarded a plane to Marseille.

Quilindschy Hartman

Timber is not the first player to leave Feyenoord (partly) due to a difficult relationship with his trainer. Hartman left his childhood sweetheart behind with a heavy heart last summer and that cannot be seen separately from Van Persie. “I have had a very bad feeling in Rotterdam over the last two months. I walked around the club with a bad feeling. That was not due to the fans, but to the problems with the trainer,” the left back said about his transfer to Burnley. Algemeen Dagblad.

Jjivai Zechiël

Zechiël is playing on a rental basis for FC Utrecht this season, but normally returns to Rotterdam in the summer. The question remains whether he can count on a warm welcome from Van Persie. The two already worked together a few years ago at Feyenoord’s Under 19, but that did not always work out well, Zechiël once admitted. “If we want to work together again next year, we will have to talk about it. I think there is still something small because we have not yet expressed it,” said a guilty Zekiel to the NOS.

Ramiz Zerrouki

Zerrouki also left Feyenoord in the summer. The departure of the Algerian international cannot be seen separately from his bond with Van Persie. After his transfer to FC Twente, the midfielder did the opposite Football International opens a book about his last weeks in Rotterdam. “The bond just diminished in the last week or so of the season. But I can look at myself in the mirror and say that I wasn’t wrong. It was something that made it clear to me that I should look for something else. Sometimes someone finds something about you. And what he found, I didn’t find,” Zerrouki wanted to say.

Calvin Stengs

What exactly happened behind closed doors in Rotterdam last summer will never be fully known. The fact is that a major cleaning has taken place since Van Persie’s appointment as head coach. Feyenoord said goodbye to a large number of players. One of those names was also Stengs. When ESPN Timber’s interview on social media on Sunday left the Pisa mercenary, as well as Zerrouki and Hartman, a like. Coincidence or still some resentment?

Andries Noppert

Van Persie also did not always make himself popular with his players in Heerenveen. Noppert is an example of this. The tall goalkeeper has never regretted the coach’s departure to Feyenoord, as he said in a painful interview with Van Persie. ESPN. “Whether there is more laughter now? Yes, I think so. You get along very well with one trainer, but less so with the other trainer. That was new for me. I had quite a lot of difficulty with it.”