Luciano Valente has undergone a clear physical development at Feyenoord. While several teammates suffered injuries during the course of the season, the midfielder managed to take steps. While he had difficulty playing at a high level for ninety minutes at FC Groningen, that is hardly an issue in Rotterdam.
“It is a very big switch from barely playing ninety-minute matches at FC Groningen to two games a week at Feyenoord,” says Valente in conversation with The Telegraph. ”That is a nice development that I have gone through. The physical guidance is very good at Feyenoord. They helped me enormously in taking those steps.”
According to Valente, medical and physical guidance plays an important role in his progression. The midfielder quickly became a permanent fixture in the starting eleven. ”I took some time in the winter to look back and realized that this was one of my best years ever. So much has happened. I notice that I am growing in everything, in football but also outside of it.”
Feyenoord started the season excellently, but is now in a sporting crisis. Valente is confident that the Rotterdammers will perform again soon. ”It is clear that things have to be different. We talked about that together and we are working very hard on it. I have a lot of confidence in that. We know that things have to improve, we have had many conversations about that together. We do everything we can every day to get everything back into place as quickly as possible.”
”There was a phase in our game where we were clearly worse than in the beginning. We lacked freshness, of doing logical things. It is easy to play football when everything is going well, but in a phase where things are becoming more difficult, we must also keep fighting for each other and remain positive. That is a difficult phase that we were in and are still in, but we have recovered in terms of mental health, I think. If you have gone through a difficult period and you all come out of it together, it gives you so much strength. I’m really looking forward to that.”
