Southampton manager Ronald Koeman has described Chelsea’s relationship with Dutch Eredivisie side Vitesse Arnhem as unbearable for coaches that manage Arnhem.
The former Barcelona and Netherlands player managed Vitesse Arnhem when he began his career in management in 2000 and he recounts the experience he gained there was a good one.
It was a great experience for me, it was my first club to be first-team manager. At that time, Vitesse was growing. It was two years because they got some problems with the chairman at that time and with the sponsor of the club. After that, the club was a little bit more down and now it’s in a new situation in the club because they have an owner who is connected to Chelsea.
In my time, we played in front of 25,000 to 26,000 people every home game and now if they play against Ajax, PSV or Feyenoord, there is 20,000 or 22,000 maximum. Maybe the people lost a little bit of the connection, the feeling with the club, because it is not really like before. I don’t know. That’s from a distance.
Ronald Koeman, Source – Sky Sports
Several Chelsea youngsters including Josh McEachran, Patrick Van Aanholt and current first team player, Nemanja Matic have moved to the Dutch club on temporary basis after 2010 when Vitesse became the first club in Netherlands to be bought by foreign investors.
Izzy Brown, Lewis Baker, Nathan and Danilo Pantic are the current with Vitesse from Chelsea – a situation which would make Koeman uncomfortable as Vitesse head coach.
I didn’t have that at that time and I don’t know, it looks like it is difficult, it looks difficult for the manager because you start every season with a new team and that’s difficult. It is difficult to have really the spirit in the team, I think, because all the young players come to play, but they still like to go back to Chelsea or even to play at a higher level. I don’t know if I can work in that. I don’t know.
