Feyenoord's Transfer Window Critique: Board Under Fire
Feyenoord’s board came under heavy fire on Monday, as Mike Verweij and Valentijn Driessen dissected the Rotterdam club’s transfer window in De Telegraaf’s podcast Kick-Off. Their conclusion was blunt: technical director Dévy Rigaux and general director Robert Eenhoorn squandered a crucial market.
Verweij argued that Rigaux, who had been quick to distance himself from predecessor Dennis te Kloese, has little ground to stand on after this summer.
“Rigaux has taken a huge swipe at his predecessor Te Kloese,” Verweij said. “But now it turns out that Te Kloese, with the money for Hadj Moussa included, had 40 million. There was a bid of 25 million for Ueda, who was sold far too cheaply to Lille OSC. And Read could almost have risen to 35 million. And Hull City bid 20 million for Targhalline.”
Those figures paint a very different picture of Feyenoord’s options. According to Verweij, the club had a chance to cash in heavily.
“If they had simply done their job and sold the right players, Feyenoord would for the time being have had a great deal of financial resources,” he continued. “That same Te Kloese put together a squad there that was worth around €120 million. So I think Rigaux and Eenhoorn did something wrong in this transfer window. If they had sold Read immediately, they could have been much more effective in the transfer market.”
Friends of Feyenoord in the spotlight
Driessen then shifted the debate from the pitch to the boardroom structure, pointing straight at the powerful Friends of Feyenoord group.
“It all comes back to the Friends of Feyenoord again,” he said. “They have 49 per cent of the shares. And the moment Feyenoord pay €17.5 million, they lose 25 per cent. And in two years’ time, again. But Feyenoord are also obliged to buy part of the shares if they post a positive transfer balance in a transfer window. And they certainly would have done that if one of those transfers had gone through. Then that transfer balance would have been so high that they would have been obliged to buy part of the Friends’ purchases.”
In other words, a big profit on outgoing transfers would not only have boosted the squad budget, it would also have triggered mandatory share buy-backs from the Friends of Feyenoord. For Driessen, that financial mechanism sits at the heart of what went wrong.
He then levelled a serious accusation.
“But the Friends of Feyenoord do not want out. And Eenhoorn came in at the request of the Friends. He is their favourite, and became director. So he is not going to go against those Friends. Eenhoorn allowed himself to be influenced into not letting the Hadj Moussa transfer go through,” Driessen claimed, directly linking the technical director to the investor group’s interests.
The Hadj Moussa saga
The failed move of Hadj Moussa to Al-Ittihad has been surrounded by talk of bank guarantees and paperwork. Driessen dismissed that explanation.
“For Driessen, a rejected bank guarantee is not the reason Hadj Moussa is not now an Al-Ittihad player. It concerns a €40 million transfer. It concerns Saudi Arabia, just ask Ajax. They have always had the money and are solvent.”
He argued that Feyenoord themselves complicated the deal.
“Feyenoord were also hardly reachable by phone, it was very difficult to get in touch with them. It was dragged out for a very long time, and in the end the medical could no longer take place. Robert Eenhoorn is simply an extension of the Friends of Feyenoord. He is their mate. The moment someone puts you forward and you can serve their interests, that happens nine times out of 10. He has previously made it known that he is not exactly eager to buy out the Friends. And then you remain stuck with those Friends,” Driessen concluded.
The criticism leaves Feyenoord facing more than just questions about missed millions and undervalued sales. It strikes at the core of who really calls the shots in Rotterdam – and how long the club can afford to let boardroom politics shape its transfer strategy.
