The knives were out in the De Telegraaf studio on Monday. Target: Feyenoord’s board. Charge: botching a transfer window that, in the eyes of two seasoned observers, should have transformed the club’s financial power.
“They should simply have done their job”
As the Kick-Off show turned to Feyenoord, Mike Verweij did not bother with soft landings. Dévy Rigaux and Robert Eenhoorn, he argued, misplayed a market that had laid out enormous possibilities.
“Rigaux has taken a huge swipe at his predecessor Te Kloese,” Verweij began. “But now it turns out that Te Kloese, with the money for Hadj Moussa included, had 40 million.”
From there, he laid out the numbers like a prosecutor reading a charge sheet. There was a €25 million bid for Ayase Ueda, who eventually left for Lille OSC “far too cheaply,” according to Verweij. Read could, he said, “almost have risen to 35 million.” Hull City put €20 million on the table for Targhalline.
Add it all up and the picture, in Verweij’s view, is damning.
“If they had simply done their job and sold the right players, Feyenoord would for the time being have had a great deal of financial resources,” he said. That same Te Kloese, he reminded viewers, had assembled a squad “worth around €120 million.”
His conclusion was blunt: “So I think Rigaux and Eenhoorn did something wrong in this transfer window. If they had sold Read immediately, they could have been much more effective in the transfer market.”
The shadow of the Friends of Feyenoord
Valentijn Driessen needed no invitation to widen the scope. For him, the debate does not stop at transfer fees or missed opportunities. It goes straight to the power structure around the club.
“It all comes back to the Friends of Feyenoord again,” he said. The investors’ group holds 49 per cent of the shares, and that, in his eyes, dictates the logic behind the summer’s decisions.
Driessen sketched the mechanism: at the moment Feyenoord pay €17.5 million, the Friends lose 25 per cent of their stake. Two years later, the same scenario repeats. On top of that, Feyenoord are obliged to buy part of the shares if they post a positive transfer balance in a window.
“And they certainly would have done that if one of those transfers had gone through,” Driessen argued. The transfer balance, he said, “would have been so high that they would have been obliged to buy part of the Friends’ purchases.”
In other words: big outgoing deals do not just bring money in. They trigger obligations that dilute the Friends’ position. That, in Driessen’s telling, is where the real resistance lies.
Eenhoorn under fire
Then came the sharpest accusation of the night.
“The Friends of Feyenoord do not want out,” Driessen claimed. “And Eenhoorn came in at the request of the Friends. He is their favourite, and became director. So he is not going to go against those Friends.”
From there, Driessen linked the internal politics directly to one of the most striking non-transfers of the window: Hadj Moussa’s failed move to Al-Ittihad.
“Eenhoorn allowed himself to be influenced into not letting the Hadj Moussa transfer go through,” he said of Feyenoord’s technical director.
The official explanation has centred on a rejected bank guarantee. Driessen dismissed that as the decisive factor.
“It concerns a €40 million transfer. It concerns Saudi Arabia, just ask Ajax. They have always had the money and are solvent.”
He painted a picture of a deal that was allowed to wither.
“Feyenoord were also hardly reachable by phone, it was very difficult to get in touch with them,” he said. “It was dragged out for a very long time, and in the end the medical could no longer take place.”
For Driessen, this was no coincidence or administrative hiccup. It was a choice.
“Robert Eenhoorn is simply an extension of the Friends of Feyenoord. He is their mate. The moment someone puts you forward and you can serve their interests, that happens nine times out of 10. He has previously made it known that he is not exactly eager to buy out the Friends. And then you remain stuck with those Friends.”
The criticism leaves Feyenoord facing a harsh spotlight: not just on the players they failed to sell, but on who really calls the shots when tens of millions are at stake.
