Brentford have signed Marinus Dijkhuizen as Head Coach from Dutch Eredivise side Excelsior – a move and one that has surprised (once again) the whole football world.
A relatively inexperienced coach, Dijkhuizen jumped from successfully managing amateur side vv Montfoort to getting Excelsior promoted from the 2nd tier Dutch league to the Eredivise (Dutch Premier League) in his 1st season in charge. He then, against all the odds, kept Excelsior in the top division with the 2nd lowest budget in the league (€4m).
Billy Grant caught up with Excelsior fans Renzo Kennepohl, Jeroen Verstappen and Dylan Metselaar about the club that they love and the manager who has just joined Brentford. They gave some really interesting insight into the Dutch club and the inexperienced manager who brought them so much ‘relative success’.
Billy also spoke to Sjoerd Mossou, Football Writer for – the 2nd biggest daily paper in Holland – about how the Dutch media has viewed the appointment and how he feels Djikhuizen will fit into life in West London.
Interesting comments from the interviews include:
- Excelsior is very much like Brentford. An unfashionable small club in Rotterdam dwarfed by its neighbours Feyenoord and Sparta. They operate with one of the smallest budgets in the division
- He kept Excelsior in the Eredivise (Dutch top league) in 15th place – 2 spots above the relegation playoffs on a budget of €4M (total budget to run the whole club) compared to €63M for PSV and €65M for Ajax and €12m plus for 16th place NAC Breda who were relegated this season.
- Excelsior fans have an incredible amount of warmth for Dikjhuizen – feeling gutted about him leaving for Brentford but wishing him well (very similar to Brentford fans’ views for Warburton .. and Rosler when he 1st left)
- Dijkhuizen changed the way Excelsior played when he took them over last January – flipping them into a more attacking style of football which saw them go from 7th in the 2nd division to 3rd in 3 months and winning the playoffs
- Dijkhuizen is a by and by a ‘good bloke’ and an excellent man-manager. He improved both Luigi Bruins and Tom Van Weert – players that other clubs would either not take a chance on or were unable to get the best out of
- His record of ‘just’ 6 wins in the Eridivise doesn’t look good on paper. But both the journalist and the fans believe it is a miracle compared to expectations – they were only expected to win 1 or 2 matches with such a small budget. Coupled with that, Excelsior actually drew 14 matches meaning they were a difficult team to break down
- Excelsior had a knack of letting in late goals last season. If matches were 75 mins long and not 90 mins, Excelsior would have finished in 6th place in the Eridivise.
- Dijkhuizen is a relatively rookie manager. No one knows how he will take to life in the Championship as there is no template although Sjoerd the journalist hoped he would mimic Ronald Koeman at Southampton by simply bringing Dutch technical football to the English game
Billy Grant
@BillytheBee99
As a Dutch fan of Brentford i’m very excited that Dijkhuizen signed with Brentford. Hopefully he will bring us to the Premier League. Small comment on the article. The neighboor club of Excelsior is not PSV but Feyenoord. PSV is from Eindhoven not Rotterdam.