Former Feyenoord manager Fred Rutten spoke to Joep Schreuder of the NOS about his time at Feyenoord. His current thoughts on the club and his vision for the future of the Eredivisie.
- By James Rowe
On Feyenoord, Rutten said,” First off I am a Feyenoord fan and it is a club where I have worked in the past it’s a great club and I am pleased for Gio van Bronckhorst that he was weathered the storm and you can also see that he is developing well as a manager.
”Gio is a manager who is just starting out in his career and novice managers make mistakes and you see that he is learning from them ”. ”He is currently the cult figure in Rotterdam.
The fans need to be patience and understand and respect the policy that the club has chosen”.
The 53 year old former manager of PSV, Vitesse Arnhem and FC Twente also gave his thoughts on the future of the Eredivisie. There are rumors circulating of an eventual Benelux league or a break away league.
He said, I do not look at the financial aspect of the league but at the sporting aspect and if you assess the sporting aspect at the moment we all have to wake up.
“Naturally in the coming years it will be the case that Ajax or PSV will reach the later stages of the Champions League without a doubt.
”You can also see the strategy inside UEFA where they are rewarding the winners of the Europa League.
“Who knows if even more rewards will be offered in future seasons where it will be even more difficult for our small country to cope and gain eventual success.
”So my proposal is to disband this Eredivisie and my vision would be a pure technical smaller league. I would have 12 or 14 clubs and play a league and then split it in two and then half play to avoid relegation and half to be champions”.
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he is correct about the issues of the Eredivisie. Not sure about his solutions though.
I think for the long term a Benelux league would work best. Take the top 9 Dutch clubs, the 6 best Belgian clubs, and 1 for Lux and have a 16 team league. Each of those 16 clubs would then have 3 levels of feeder clubs: a U23, a U21, and a U19 team in the cities that currently have clubs. You still end up with 36 professional clubs in Holland, but since they are tied together you have better financial strength. Just my 2 cents….