Text: Joost Pool
Hans van Breukelen
The penalty killer speaks What better place to meet PSV’s most successful goalkeeper ever than in the PSV-stadium? In bar/restaurant de Verlenging Hans van Breukelen reflects on his glory days and looks forward to the upcoming world championship in Brazil. For the past fourteen years Van Breukelen has had his own consultancy agency and four years ago he became a member of the board of directors of PSV. Hans van Breukelen after winning the European Championships with Dutch national team.
Could you tell us what the function at PSV entails? “I’m the first former player to join the board. But to be honest, when I was asked four years ago I didn’t really know what was to be expected from me. I decided to give myself a year to get accustomed to the job. We play an advisory role and supervise the day-to-day business. The other board members all come from the corporate world. So their take on soccer is different. They don’t know the smell of sweat in the locker rooms. How it feels to win and lose and deal with the reaction of fans and media. Soccer is very opportunistic, the corporate world has a relatively long-term vision of at least a year. In soccer, every match is the next moment of truth.”
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“They don’t know the smell of sweat in the locker rooms.”
“You have to run a soccer club as if it were a company. This can be done 90% of the time. I mean running it financially and safeguarding the identity of the club. The last 10% is emotion and perception. You have to manage the perception and the quotes in the press. Whereas a company ‘belongs’ to the shareholders, a soccer club is ‘owned’ by the people; the supporters, sponsors and employees. It’s all about creating synergy. You have one common goal in mind. So building up a good relationship with the press is really important. The media’s interests are quite often the opposite of the club’s interest so it takes a certain finesse to deal with them. That’s why it is very important that we combine our backgrounds in favor of PSV, our club and serve them.” Howdo’s target group are the expats in the region. You could say that you were an expat in your Nottingham Forest days. “Yes, I suppose I was. It wasn’t as common then as it is