De Kuip politics: radio silence from Van Bronckhorst after Technical Director talks held with Feyenoord | OneFootball

According to VoetbalPrimeur this morning, Chris Woerts made a remarkable claim on Vandaag Inside. The sports reporter explained that Feyenoord spoke to their former Eredivisie and KNVB Cup-winning manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst about a potential technical director role. Talks reportedly stalled, leaving journalists to question an internal power imbalance in the south of Rotterdam.

“Dennis te Kloese is the technical and general director at Feyenoord,” Woerts begins. “There is a large movement within the club that says that these functions should be separated. Dennis general director and a new technical director. One of the candidates: Giovanni van Bronckhorst. He has a Feyenoord past and is a neat, representative guy. He also speaks his languages. They had one conversation and after that he never heard anything again. Nothing more.”

Johan Derksen thinks he knows what’s going on. “I strongly suspect that Te Kloese wants to keep all the power to himself.” Valentijn Driessen sees only one solution for Feyenoord. “You can’t have both. You have to separate them.”

Woerts explains why that hasn’t happened yet. “Dennis is actually more of a technical director than a general manager. He does play general manager, but his heart lies with technique. He never wants to give that up.”

“They have a supervisory board that supervises that, don’t they? Dennis is not the boss of Feyenoord,” Derksen chimes in again. “That’s right,” Woerts responds. “I think Gio is an excellent candidate to be technical director at Feyenoord. When he calls, they all answer the phone.”

Derksen agrees by saying that Van Bronckhorst is really someone coming up in his own right. “Nobody is coming in with Dennis,” the journalist says. “Dennis has, of course, failed miserably by letting Robin van Persie leave for Heerenveen, to then get that dead Dane, that didn’t work out, to then declare Van Persie suitable. Then you are worthless as a Technical Director.”

Woerts agrees. “Priske was the biggest blunder at Feyenoord ever. They scouted him for nine months, and it turned out he couldn’t do anything.”

GBeNeFN | Max Bradfield