Ronald Koeman thinks it’s good and clever that Steven Berghuis was so outspoken on Sunday after Feyenoord-Ajax in De Kuip about the role of the media in the run-up to The Classic. The new national coach of Orange, who was presented on Monday at the KNVB campus in Zeist, also sent a message to the Ajax midfielder.
“I sent Steven an app last night to say that I really like what he did,” Koeman said at the first press conference of his second term as national coach.
“Often people keep their mouths shut. I think they do that out of fear, because the media has the pen and the microphone. But he felt this way and then he has to say it.”
Berghuis on Sunday lashed out at certain media, which in his eyes had “incited” things in the run-up to his first match as an Ajax player in a Kuip full of Feyenoord supporters. “This week has had an impact on me and my family. I think people with such a wide range should think before they say something,” Berghuis told, among others. ESPN.
Koeman, who played for Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV and was a trainer at all three top clubs, can imagine what Berghuis has experienced in the past week. “I know what certain statements in the media can mean for parents or a grandmother, such as with Steven. But that is not always realized by those people who call it on TV.”
Koeman himself was also present at The Classic. “When I came to De Kuip I thought: am I going to football? There was so much hatred against Ajax.”
“I saw a lot of police, I saw the mobile unit, I saw nets in the stadium. It’s a pity that things have to be like this in the Netherlands, but I think that’s a social problem.”