Feyenoord back on earth

Monday 21 September 2009

Feyenoord have not been able to prolong their good start to the season.

In a direct confrontation with PSV Eindhoven the Rotterdammers were clearly the lesser of the two: 1-3.

Of course it had to wrong for Feyenoord at some point as the team of new coach Mario Been had been pretty fortunate in the first six games of the season.

A strong PSV punished the defensive vulnerability of the hometeam very efficiently and gave Feyenoord their first defeat of the season.

Coach Been had hoped his team would be able to benefit from PSV's tiredness after their European adventures in Prague on Thursday, but the team of coach Fred Rutten made a fresh and balanced impression in De Kuip.

After a cautious start to the game Danny Koevermans brought the game to life.

The man from Schiedam benefited from bad defending of Feyenoord who twice were unable to clear the ball from their own penalty area.

After the opening goal PSV remained on top, especially thanks to their strong midfield.

Bakkal, Toivonen and Engelaar reigned in De Kuip and especially Toivonen - replacing the injured Ibrahim Afellay - caused the Feyenoord defense a lot of trouble.

In the 20th minute Feyenoord's defense again looked shaky when Koevermans met a Lazovic cross to make it 0-2.

After that terrible opening Feyenoord got back up briefly and managed to pull one back.

Andwelé Slory was faster than his marker Erik Pieters and face to face with Andreas Isaksson he made no mistake: 1-2.

But Feyenoord were not able to push through.

Center forward Tomasson was invisible and his partner up front Cissé hardly took part.

On the other side every cross brought danger, but it was a solo effort by Otman Bakkal that gave PSV a third goal before the break.

After the break Mario Been tried to enforce something by bringing on Diego Biseswar and (later) Roy Makaay and Georginio Wijnaldum but Feyenoord didn't get anything but half chances for Tomasson and El Ahmadi.