On Thursday evening, Bristol City from the English Championship met Eredivisie side FC Twente at Ashton Gate. Twente suffered a 2-0 defeat, and after the match Football-Oranje writer Michael Statham spoke to Twente midfielder Fredrik Jensen.

Enjoy the video below, which is exclusive to Football-Oranje’s YouTube channel.

  • By Michael Statham
  • Follow Michael on Twitter @EredivisieMike

Twente endured a tough first half, with City hitting the post and bar after a series of assaults on the back-line, and the Dutch side were lucky to get to half-time only a goal down.

“It was a hard performance,” stated Jensen. “Big respect to Bristol and how they played. They made it hard for us the whole game, but the first half we didn’t get into our rhythm. In the second half, we stepped up a little bit but still you could see that Bristol was the better team today and they deserved the win.”

When asked whether René Hake’s decision to employ a 4-4-2 formation for the first time was behind the lack of rhythm, the 19-year-old replied, “If you get a new formation you need to adapt quickly and we didn’t do that well. I think it was also a mental part of the game, we weren’t ready to start the game. You could see that as well – we lost the second balls, we just weren’t ready.”

The Finland international was then pressed on his reliability for the upcoming campaign, “I had an OK season last season. I want to step up my game. I’m looking forward to next season.”

However, Jensen realises there is work to be done before the opening fixture, “If we start that game as we started today against Feyenoord, we’re going to have a very hard, first game of the season. We need to have a good sit down with the team. But I’m confident in the team that we’ll do better. Last season was good for us, we need to improve and hopefully get a better spot than seventh.”

Last summer, Twente were banned from entering European competition for three years. When asked whether that mentally affects the players in terms of motivation, Jensen responded, “Of course you want to play the European games, that’s like every footballer, you want to play in the Europa League or the Champions League. We have to realise that’s the point we’re in at the club. We can’t change that as players, the staff can’t change it, the directors can’t change it. We’ve just got to adapt. As we did last year, we had a good season. Maybe that’s the last touch of it that brings out your motivation but we can’t let that happen this season. I don’t think that will be an issue for us.”

Finally, Jensen revealed to us that he’d like to play in the Premier League, and was consequently questioned on whether the style of football he face tonight gave him a better taste for the English game, he answered, “A lot of people think of English football as kick and rush but you could see they had amazing play with great technique – fast and strong. I’ll take my hat off to Bristol for bringing it today, it was nice to see and a good test for us as well to see that we need to step up our game to challenge these teams. So, it was a good test.”




Michael Statham (853 Posts)

Writer/interviewer/YouTuber for Football-Oranje. Massive Dutch football fan from the UK. Follow me @EredivisieMike & subscribe to Football-Oranje on YouTube.