Another PSV player in the Oranje?

By: Firezen | November 18th, 2009

After Danny Koevermans in 2008, another player was called up to the Oranje for their performances in PSV (Engelaar and Ooijer don’t count, they were nationals before joining us). Who is it you say? Yeah, your right, Otman Bakkal.

I’m back Huub Stevens you sucka!

Otman Bakkal has gone through one heck of a transformation since the beginning of the season. A itty bit part person who made the constant substitutions under Huub Stevens’s one season. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have talent. He played an integral part in PSV’s starting XI the season before Stevens came, and also played for Netherlands U-21 team that won the Euro in 2007 and the Olympics team in 2008 Beijing. Once again, he has proven to the world how important he can be.

The 24 year old has scored 7 goals in his first 12 Eredivisie games (his best goals record in one season was 8 goals with 31 games two seasons ago), and he is leading the scoring charts for PSV. Interestingly enough, his position is not even striker, so that just shows his goalscoring prowess.

Why the change all of a sudden? Well it helps to have games of course, and I think being kept away from starting a match under Stevens has actually helped him grow. Speaking from experience, growing from a sub player to a first team regular is hard, but reverting the process while you show no sign of slowing down in growing is very very hard. I was captain of my volleyball team, but was relegated to the bench just because the setters on court for my position was “better” than me in my coach’s eyes. It’s very frustrating when you know your better than the players on court, but are still not being able to play a full match. This helps contribute to the extra hunger and drive to perform your best whenever you have the chance, cause you appreciate it more than words can describe.

And he has been doing that. Running around like a mad man (literally), and showing up in the most dangerous spots all the time. You’ve never seen someone as motivated as he is, and his morale boost and confidence is just oozing out of him whenever you see him play.

Which is very good news, and I really think he deserves it. And despite no one at the moment is nailing a spot in the starting XI for Oranje from PSV, I’m not too worried. What I’m more worried about is the Jong Orange team for PSV.

Jong Oranje just beat their Spanish counterparts 2-1, leaving them the undisputed undefeated leaders of their qualifying group. Now, out of the 21 players who are in the U-21 group at the moment, there is only (!) 1 player from PSV. And that is Erik Pieters. And well Rens van Eijden is ex-PSV, but that only makes less than 1/10 of the group if we include him too. That just shows how pathetic the PSV youth development of Dutch players is right now! Feyenoord (man their youth generation is nasty… in a spectacular way) and Ajax are by far still leading the charts in terms of providing the youngsters (9 players in between them), while we have 2 Premier League club representativies too (Arsenal – Barazite, Chelsea – Bruma).

At the moment, the person I can think of that will one day no doubt represent Netherlands U-21 level in the near near future is Jereon Zoet our goalkeeper. He’s just very talented, and he’s only 18 years old. But except for that, is there anyone else emerging from our youth set up?

Did someone just say my name?

But that being said, we always let other clubs develop the youngsters, then we just buy em over. Philip Cocu, Ruud van Nistelroij, Mark van Bommel, Arjen Robben are just some of the notable examples… I guess we don’t have to worry that much then?