7:49 – Frank Arnesen provided Feyenoord with a number of gems in the summer. The technical director does not want to take the credits himself, but points to the scouting. It has undergone quite a change since its arrival.
“I’ve said it before. You can have a good trainer, a great complex, great youth trainers and you name it, but the scouting is crucial for every club. Everything is clear, every scout has his own package,” says the driver talking to Football International. Where for years Feyenoord mainly picked up players at the sub-top from the Netherlands, there is now also an emphatic search outside the national borders. “I ask a lot of my scouts. I also want to know from players what they are like, in terms of character, how they are in a group. It is very broad.”
In the past, Arnesen was also responsible for the arrival of Francesco Antonucci and Róbert Boženík. Those players have brought too little so far, but the technical director does not want to write them off yet. “Sometimes you have to deal with a new trainer who thinks differently about football and demands different things from players. Antonucci is an example of this. Can play football well, wonderful technique, but more was expected. He now hopes to catch up at FC Volendam. And if that club is promoted, he can play in the Eredivisie for a year. Only then can you actually say whether he is eligible for Feyenoord.”
It is a laborious way, Arnesen admits. According to him, it is a result of a decision in the past, when the club did not want a U23 team in the first division. “That it has to be this way is because we do not play in the Kitchen Champion Division. I have said it before: Ajax, PSV, FC Utrecht do not have those problems. That Feyenoord did not step in when the opportunity was there… We still live with the consequences of the decision not to do it.”
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