PSV Til: Mastering Pressure in Football

“Whether I’m at my peak? I don’t know. I hope not.”

Guus Til has perhaps had the best six months of his football career. Will the PSV star continue his top level in the second half of the season? Starting tonight in the league match at home against Excelsior.

With fourteen goals and four assists in all competitions, Til has been the most important PSV player of the first half of the season in numerical terms. But that’s not the complete story.

According to trainer Peter Bosz, the 28-year-old footballer also excels in his game without the ball. Til is an important link in the attack plan of the leader in the Premier League with running actions, positioning and work ethic.

How and when do you rush the opponent? Call it the art of printing. “I think it is an underestimated part of football,” Til said in conversation with NOS. “Many people watch what football players do with a ball, but everything that happens around it, without the ball, is quite underestimated.”

Based on the data, Til appears to be a first-class workhorse when it comes to applying pressure. He is the most active midfielder in this area so far this Premier League season. Til also functioned quite often as a striker, but alternated that role with Ismael Saibari.

This is also reflected in the figures. Statistics agency Opta calculated that Til made a run into the enemy box 86 times this season to rush his opponent with the aim of recapturing the ball. Teammate Sabairi is number two with 81 high pressure-runs.

It says everything about PSV’s fighting style and the enormous value that Til has for Bosz’s team, even without the ball.

Til’s (and Saibari’s) figures become even more powerful when you consider that PSV is the club with the most ball possession so far: an average of 60 percent per Premier League match. After all, a club that plays on ball possession, unlike a team that is defensive, has fewer moments when pressure can be put on the opponent.

These qualities make Til the versatile footballer that he is. “If the World Cup had been played now, we would have a very interesting discussion,” football analyst Hedwiges Maduro recently said about Til’s increased chances of selection for the Dutch team during the World Cup.

Trainer Bosz already explained in October why he is not surprised that Til is now excelling so much at PSV.

“Guus has been making almost the most playing minutes for three years. Yet you (the media, ed.) see him as a substitute. But that is not him. He had a click with Luuk (de Jong, ed.) and now he has a click with Ismael (Saibari, ed.). That is only possible if you are a good football player. That pays off on the field.”

Why Til has been performing consistently for years may also have to do with his character. He is the type who is not easily fooled.

Til may like to party, but you won’t easily see him dancing in a disco with a bottle of tequila in hand. A visit to a tennis tournament or an art museum is more for him.

Til can certainly be attracted to a game of tennis, as was shown in a documentary by the Dutch Tennis Association from the spring of 2025. He said that he played on the public courts in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark every summer. That is the neighborhood where Til grew up.

In terms of tennis, the left-handed Til could compete quite well at amateur level, as was noted in the documentary. It says enough about the versatility of the six-time Dutch international, also outside of football.

Til also talked in the documentary about his much-discussed statement that as a football player he sometimes feels “no fire anymore”, which he made in December 2024. “I don’t think it was necessarily a good interview for my career.”

In January 2026, Til’s career is going well for the time being. It can change.