January 15, 2023
These diaries only previous foray into Dutch football was to report on a 1-0 victory for NEC over Go Ahead Eagles in May 2022.
https://fatbearssportingdiaries.blogspot.com/2022/05/nec-nijmegen-1-0-go-ahead-eagles.html
NEC went onto finish 11th last season, and from the match-day squad that appeared in that match, four are no longer at Nijmegen. DR Congo striker Jonathan Okita has joined FC Zurich, forward Ali Akman returned to Eintracht Frankfurt at the end of his loan, and is now at Turkish side Goztepe, whilst left-back Rodrigo Guth is now at Fortuna Sittard and midfielder Javier Vet is with second division NAC Breda.
NEC started the day in 9th position with a 3-9-3 record, and their three defeats had been at the hands of PSV Eindhoven ( A 0-3 ), Sparta Rotterdam ( A 0-2 ) and Twente Enschede ( H 0-1 ). However, they were unbeaten in their last three matches, drawing 1-1 at home to Ajax, after beating RKC Waalwijk 6-1 at home and Cambuur Leeuwarden 1-0 away. Unsurprisingly, after the draw with Ajax they named an unchanged side
Belgian Landry Dimata, on loan from Espanyol, and ex-Sporting Lisbon’s Pedro Marques were the top scorers with 3 goals each.
Keeper Jasper Cillessen ( 63 caps ) has returned to club after starting his career at NEC before moving onto Ajax, Barcelona and Valencia. Defender Philippe Sandler started as a youth player at Manchester City before playing for Anderlecht and Feyenoord, and Moroccan winger Oussama Tannane has 11 caps and has previously played for Vitesse, St Etienne and Utrecht.
Vitesse Arnhem have had their worst start to a season for at least 10 years, being in 14th place with a 3-5-7 record, and a poor 1-2-4 at home. However, they were unbeaten in their last three games, all away from home, drawing 1-1 at AZ Alkmaar, 2-2 at Ajax and 2-2 at Go Ahead Eagles. Midfielders Million Manhoef and Slovak Matus Bero ( 25 caps ) topped the scoring charts for Vitesse with 3 goals a-piece.
Vitesse’s average attendance this season at the 21,000 capacity Gelredome was a disappointing 13,222 whereas in 1999/2000 the average was over 25,000 !
In 1998/99 I saw two matches at the Gelredome, the first stadium in the world to have a retractable pitch, and the second in Europe to have a sliding roof. The roof would be closed for today’s match.
My first visit was to attend a league match between Vitesse and Sparta, which Vitesse won 5-1 in front of a crowd of 21,000, with Greek international Nikos Machlas on the scoresheet twice. My most distinctive memory of the game was the home club refusing to sell me a ticket, as despite being obviously English, I didn’t have a Vitesse Club Card. Although I had a Sparta season-ticket, in those days away supporters were supposed to travel on official coaches, whereas I had driven on my on to Arnhem. Fortunately, when the Sparta buses arrived, one of the officials sold me a ticket for the away end.
In the October I then watched a friendly international between the Netherlands and Ghana, which finished in a very dull 0-0 draw. However, that, plus a 1-1 draw with Czech Republic in a friendly in Eindhoven earnt me enough points in the Dutch supporters loyalty scheme to enable me to purchase tickets for the Dutch games in the Euro 2000 finals against Czech Republic, Yugoslavia and Italy, much to the annoyance of my Dutch colleagues at work who were unable to obtain tickets ! I was probably the only person in the stands not wearing orange……
Other matches I’ve seen involving Vitesse were the “home” game against PSV Eindhoven in 1993 played in Nijmegen as reported in the previous NEC report, a 0-1 loss after extra time in the Dutch Cup on a freezing night in Den Haag in 1995, a 2-1 victory at Sparta in 1996/97 and a 1-1 draw at Sparta in 1999/00.
Vitesse have recently had a very close relationship with Chelsea, with at least 29 players being loaned to the Dutch club in the last 15 years. These included Mason Mount, Nemanja Matic, Tomas Kalic, Domini Solanke, Izzy Adams, Armando Broja, Luca Piazon and Patrick van Aanholt.
The pipeline from Chelsea appears to have dried up for this season, but Vitesse have 6 players on loan from other clubs. Instead, keeper Kjell Scherpen and Polish international midfielder Kacper Kozlowski ( 6 caps ) are on loan from Brighton and Hove Albion, defender Ryan Flamingo is on loan from Italian side Sassuolo, Polish striker Bartosz Bialek is on loan from VFL Wolfsburg, Croatian midfielder Gabriel Vidovic is on loan from Bayern Munich and forward Mohammed Sankoh is on loan from VFB Stuttgart.
Centre-back Melle Meulensteen is the son of Rene, and was born in England when his father was assistant coach to Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United. Vitesse are coached by former International Philip Cocu ( 101 caps ) who played at Vitesse early on his career and went onto play for PSV & Barcelona. His previously coaching role was at Derby County.
Arnhem and Nijmegen are only 20 kilometres apart and the fixtures between these two sides is known as the Gelderland derby. There is added spice to today’s game as NEC supporters were reportedly boycotting the fixture in protest at being allocated only 400 tickets, whereas the club requested 600. NEC last won in the Gelredome 10 years ago and have lost the last three meetings in Arnhem.
Tickets for the match ranged between €19 to €38, whilst VIP seats were between €95 to €190. The temperature at the 12.15 local time kick-off was around 6 degrees with the sunny spells forecast. Not that the spectators under the closed roof would probably notice this !
Bet365 streamed the match live and had Vitesse 6/5 favourites, with NEC at 5/2 and the draw at 11/5.
Vitesse were playing in their traditional yellow and black stripped jerseys and black shirts, whilst Nijmegen were in their usual red shirts with a green horizontal band, and black shorts. With the roof closed, the floodlights were on for the lunch-time kick-off and the home fans were in good voice. In the away section of the ground was merely a banner with the message “400 is te weinig” ( 400 is too few ).
NEC won the first corner of the match in the second minute as Haitian international Arcus ( 27 caps ) blocked a cross from the left by El Karouani, and as NEC looked lively in the opening phases, home centre-back Meulensteen was required to produce an excellent sliding tackle to prevent Dimata breaking clear.
Vitesse’s first attack came in the 8th minute when Manhoef received a return pass from Wittek and delivered a low cross along the 6 yard line but beyond the sliding Kozlowski and Bialek. NEC immediately went to the other end, and after a slaloming run from Tavsan, Dimata was unable to get a good contact under pressure form Arcus and his header from the rebound was easily gathered by Scherpen. The on-loan Brighton keeper also confidently claimed an in-swinging cross from the right wing on his six yard line.
NEC keeper Cillessen was then called upon to demonstrate his ability, bravely diving at the feet of Manhoef to prevent him from capitalising on a through ball from Bialek.
With 18 minutes played Arcus played the ball inside to Bero, and the first time return pass put the full-back in the clear, but his ball into the centre was totally mis-kicked by Bialek 8 yards out. As it happened, Arcus was offside so it wouldn’t have counted anyway.
The game’s major moment of controversy occurred in the 23rd minute. Nijmegen’s Tannane ran from half-way into the Vitesse half-way but after a tussle with Kozlowski the Moroccan thought he had been fouled, and pushed the Seagull loanee in the face. Kozlowski made the most of it and fell to the floor holding his face, and with the ball still in play, Wittek lunged wildly in retaliation to bring down Tannane with a bad foul. After the inevitable melee, once the referee had restored order and consulted with his linesman, a yellow card was shown to Wittek for his foul and then produced the red card to the NEC player. Tannane reacted furiously and it took quite a while for him to be escorted from the pitch, but frankly there can’t be any sympathy for him as these days any player who puts an arm or a hand to an opponent’s face is asking for trouble.
The next few minutes were particularly bad tempered as both sides took it in turns to commit bad tackles. NEC full-back van Rooij also left Wittek on the ground after a strong challenge which the referee saw no issue with. In between all the carnage, Tavsan beat two Vitesse defenders but his flick with the outside of his left foot failed to find either Dimata or Mattsson and Arcus was able to clear the danger.
With 30 minutes played, the impressive Manhoef was again in the action, brilliantly skinning Schone to get into the visitor’s area but as he was in the act of shooting, van Rooij slid in to make a block and the ball deflected over the bar for a corner. When the set-piece was sent to the back post, Manhoef was unable to control and was crowded out.
Vitesse then had a loud appeal for a penalty but the ball struck the unsuspecting defender on the arm from a rebound, and the referee allowed play to continue.
Despite the player disadvantage, NEC were still looking dangerous on the counter-attack and Dimata was just unable to reach a dangerous ball into the 6 yard box from El Karouani from the left, then Mattsson sent a 25 yard attempt straight at Scherpen, who made the regulation save.
The rest of the first half saw Vitesse slowly apply more and more pressure. A shot on the turn from Kozlowski went a few feet over, a rasping 25 yarder from Wittek was tipped over the bar and Bero ran onto a stray pass and hammered narrowly over from just outside the area. Although getting on top, NEC keeper Cillessen hadn’t been unduly troubled.
Vitesse made a strong start to the second-half, winning a corner after just 26 seconds and a minute later Alvarez had to concede another corner from Wittek’s low cross. The delivery into the Nijmegen area was just too high for Bialek. In the 47th minute Kozlowski picked up a loose ball and played a short pass to Manhoef, but his left footed effort from the edge of the area was sliced well wide.
NEC’s response was for El Karouani to go on a jinking run on the left and then cut inside to send a right footed shot arrowing to the bottom corner, but Scherpen made a fine diving save to push the ball past the post for a corner.
NEC centre back Alvarez then need to make a decent header at the expense of another corner to prevent Wittek’s cross reaching Bialek. The pattern of the match was now clearly established with Vitesse slowly trying to break-down the visitor’s defence, but NEC looking to hit them with swift counter-attacks.
A robust challenge by Dijks left Tavsan in a heap on the floor but the referee waved play on, but he eventually stopped play to allow the Nijmegen player to receive treatment. Vitesse created their best chance of the match ta-date in the 63rd minute. A smart pass from Dijks on the left wing found Tronstad in space inside the area and his first-time attempt produced a fine save by Cillessen low at his near post.
NEC’s Schone was shown a yellow card for a foul on Kozlowski near the half-way line and when the Pole returned the compliment by fouling Schone a couple of minutes later, the Danish midfielder remonstrated for another yellow card should be shown, but the referee just calmly turned his back.
The first substitution of the game finally occurred in the 70th minute as NEC brought on Musaba, recently returned on loan from Monaco after starting his career at NEC. Vitesse then made two changes of their own, with surprisingly Manhoef being one of the players replaced, as he had looked their most creative player so far. However, the Vitesse changes almost had an immediate impact as Tronstad played in Baden Frederiksen but his low shot from a tight angle was blocked by the legs of Cillessen, and resulting corner flew over everyone’s heads and hit blindsided Flamingo on the leg and rolled a couple of feet wide of the post.
Baden Frederiksen was again involved two minutes later, receiving Jonathans’ pass but after attempting to cut back inside had his effort blocked by a covering defender. Another nice move saw Arcus played in behind the NEC defensive back line, but his pass to Bero was mis-kicked but found its way to Wittek, but the German’s attempt from 12 yards was deflected over.
With the clock ticking, NEC received three more yellow cards in their desperation to keeper the home side at a distance and to slow down play. Long range attempts from Wittek, Baden Frederiksen and Bero were all held by the safe hands of Cillessen.
At the final whistle, the statistics showed that Vitesse had 59% of the possession. However, NEC deserved their 10th draw of the season as Vitesse were rarely able to trouble the NEC keeper.
As far as watching the two Brighton players on show, Scherpen did every thing that could have been expected from him, keeping a clean sheet, making one good save and confidently dealing with everything else when called upon. Although Kozlowski was involved in the major incident of the match with the red card to Tannane, made some tackles and passed neatly, he was largely a peripheral figure as Vitesse laboured to break-down a determined defence.
Highlights : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kefYDusJN9w
Vitesse Arnhem : Scherpen – Arcus, Flamingo, Meulensteen, Dijks ( van Duivenbooden )– Manhoef ( Jonathans ), Kozlowski ( Sankoh ), Bero, Tronstad, Wittek – Bialek ( Baden Frederiksen )
NEC Nijmegen : Cillessen – van Rooij, Alvarez, Sandler ( Kramer ), El Karouani – Schone, Tannane, Proper – Tavsan ( Musaba ), Dimata, Mattsson ( Verdonk )
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