One the VIP rooms at PSV Eindhoven Stadium is named in honour of former player of the club Erik Gerets of Belgium. The former defender is currently the coach of Qatar Stars League (QSL) club Lekhwiya since the 2012 season. Besides Gerets, others who have special enclosure dedicated to them is Brazilian great Romario, Guus Hiddink and Willy van der Kuylen, both of the Netherlands. Inset: The Marketing Manager of PSV Eindhoven, Peter Rovers.
BY ARMSTRONG VAS
Doha: Dutch football giants PSV Eindhoven - currently struggling in the fifth position in the Eredivisie - aim to use new innovative training techniques at their academy as they aim to bounce back with top honours in Europe.
Among the many things which the 1988 Champions League winners have done this year is to increase their budget outlay for their youth academy by 25 percent while also setting apart a €1.8m for their pet PSV Sport Lab project.
“The academy investments have been raised by 25 percent to €4m, while we have set aside a budget of €1.8m this year for the PSV Sport Lab,” informed Peter Rovers, Manager for Marketing, Media and Merchandising at PSV Eindhoven.
Rovers was speaking to a group of media journalists who were on a visit to the Netherlands.
“As a top academy we have to make the difference with competing clubs. So we have hired an experienced new person as head of the PSV Academy and have some of the top trainers, along which several former PSV stars.”
Rovers said they are continuous improvements of facilities at the academy and they are moving to a new location.
“We have entered into a partnership with International School Eindhoven by which football and education will be at the same venue,” the club official disclosed.
Currenlty the training sessions by PSV are conducted on De Herdgang, located on the outskirts of Eindhoven in woodland surroundings. With ten fields and fitness facilities, it also accommodates all PSV youth and amateur teams. Its last major renovation occurred in 2006. PSV has also unveiled its Sport Lab project which the clubs hopes will give them an edge over their rivals and which will help sell them sell more players to the top clubs and get some revenue.
“We are open to sharing the innovations done at (Sport Lab) with other partners,” said Rovers.
Expaining the fucntioning of the Sport Lab he said: “Players wear special bibs with a transponder, a transmitter that communicates with a number of electronic beacons positioned around the periphery of the pitch. Since the communication involves several of these beacons, the computer can calculate the position of the players to an accuracy of five centimetres. With each point measured being coupled to a point in time, the system can easily and automatically determine the speed and even the acceleration of the players,” Rovers said.
“This kind of technology has already been applied to the training sessions. It enables to determine the position, clear tactical skills can be imparted to the players retrospectively. “It makes things that much clearer. If a player has been instructed by the coach to mark an opponent closely, it can now be revealed indisputably when the striker gets too much space. And since all the data are stored digitally, the video images being made continually from the side of the pitch can be cleverly process.
Rovers said the financial status of the club was healthy but playing consistently and with fair amount of success in the Champions League is one thing which the club is looking forward.
“We want to qualify and do well in the first tier of European competitions, the Champions League, that means a lot for the club, for different reasons.”
Champions League participation and the whopping bonuses from UEFA, the sell-out crowds and all the commercial windfalls it brings had in the past helped PSV’s cause.
The club had a continuous presence between 1997 and 2008 in the Champions League but since then it has been not been consistent enough.
Playing in Europe’s second tier competition, Europa League, has seen the club revenue dip, which has never been relegated to a lower division and has €1m as the highest salary cap for its players and an annual budget of €64m. The club was founded in 1913 as a team for Philips employees.
The Peninsula
