| FMF's Toon Army Spiderman and member of the Writers Crew Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: wiltshire Posts: 2,394 Thanks: 304 Thanked 620 Times in 592 Posts Nominated 0 Times in 0 Posts TOTW/F/M Award(s): 0 | 
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Thankfully, the only incident that was worth noting on saturday, was that we had signed one more youngster for our up and coming youth team. Our enquiry for Balazs Dzsudzsak had resulted in cash strapped Debrecen offering us the player's services for a paltry £225k, with an agreement of a 10% sell on fee. I snapped him up, and Frank de Boer headed over to Hungary to tie up the lose details.
Davids' injury proved to be less serious than we thought, he had a triple fracture in the damaged bone, but the specialist assured me he would be in action again, probably before christmas. That was a relief. I rang him in the morning, his spirits seemed quite bright, and he wished us the best of luck for tommorow. My assistant manager, Hennie Spijkerman who had just returned from holiday that same day, went straight to the clinic to make sure Edgar was ok.
At about 10am, I received a text from Gerrie Muhren, who was in Finland, checking on the availabilty of ex Villa player, Mika Aaritalo. While he was a guest at Turun, he picked up on another youngster there, a Goalkeeper named Lehtovaara. I texted him back, and asked him to get me some details, and a video of him playing if he could. Then I turned my attention to selecting the first 11 to face PSV. An hour later I was happy with my choice, and went home. And as you can imagine, I didnt sleep a wink.
The build up to the game was awesome. We arrived at the venue, in this case our own Amsterdam ArenA, to a cacophony of sound and colour. We were ahead of PSV by twenty minutes, to allow for fans to sort themselves out. As the team coach pulled into the private underground carpark I could already hear the reverbarating sound of the stadium above. It was if the whole place had come alive.
The dressing room talk went really well, all the lads were in great spirit, and well up for the game. I told them to relax, let their feet do the talking. I wanted them to move the ball around, and make PSV work for it. At that moment the Buzzer sounded. We were on stage.
Myself and the opposition manager, Ronald Koeman followed the two teams out of the tunnel, with our bench staff and the subs. The roar was incredible, there were horns going off everywhere, and drums threatening to crush my hearing. Koeman didn't say a word to me at all on the way to the benches, and when we arrived at the dugouts I turned and offered my hand "Good luck" I wished him. Koeman looked at me for a second, glanced at my outstretched hand, and smiled at me, kind of like you would expect from a James Bond badguy. He turned away from me and headed for his seat on the bench, leaving me like a lemon with my hand out, infront of nearly 40,000 people, and the world media. Well, Setanta sports anyway.
Mercifully, his assistant Jan Wouters came to my rescue, and shook my hand warmly, wishing me the very best of luck. Red as a beetroot with sunburn I went to the bench. My own Assistant manager, Hennie patted my shoulder and told me not to worry. I wasn't. Koeman was off the christmas card list now.
The game itself started at a blistering pace. We knocked the ball about comfortably with Maduro in particular showing a lovely touch or two. Jaap Stam, in the captains armband looked assured, and marshalled his back line of Emmanuelson, Heitinga and Vermaelen well. 14 minutes in, we had our first real opportunity, From the "D", Huntelaar gathered a superb pass from Rommedahl, and smashed an effort off the base of the left hand upright, and out for a goal kick. On 32 minutes, my swedish winger, Kennedy Bakircioglu showed Kromkamp a clean set of heels, but his cross towards Luque was easily caught by Bas Roorda in the PSV goal. Then disaster struck on 38, in the form of the deadly Farfan. He managed to round Maduro on halfway, then a beautiful one-two with Koevermans left him only to outpace Stam, which he did with ease...My god that lad is fast. Less than a second later, he rounded Stekelenburg and fired into the empty net before Emmanuelson could slide in to block. We went in at the break down 1-0.
The second half played out much better, with both teams probing each other's back line, looking for a sniff of an opportunity. On 67, Stekelenburg saved brilliantly from a deflected effort from Edison Mendez, and on the rebound, tipped over from Farfan at point blank. This seemed to galvanise the side, and dead on 79 minutes we got our equalizer, Jan Vertonghen slotting home superbly from 8 yards out following great work from Huntelaar and Mitea. However it went horribly wrong and 3 minutes before the 90 was up, we were left wondering what the hell had happened, as Koevermans headed home a pinpoint cross from Aissati.
I had just lost my first game in charge, and to make it worse, Dr Blofeld himself Koeman just had to rub it in. "Don't you worry my son, you will be feeling like this a lot this season" as we shook hands.
I made a mental note to run his fluffy white cat over.
Last edited by Hartynips; 22-04-08 at 12:35 PM. |
