Netherlands national team international heavily criticised: ‘Treats journalists like boys asking for charity stamps’
Nico Dijkshoorn has torn into Virgil van Dijk and Netherlands press officer Samuël Sanches in his column for Voetbal International. Noa Lang, however, comes in for praise.
The issue centres on the attitude of the Netherlands players towards the Dutch media. Van Dijk sparked a fiery atmosphere at a press conference two weeks ago, where he aimed a series of reproaches at the journalists in the room. That came despite head coach Xavi Hernández repeatedly stressing that he wanted to create one family within the Netherlands setup.
“Xavi will never say it himself, but in PR terms Virgil van Dijk is his biggest problem,” Dijkshoorn said. “It is at the very least clumsy when the captain of the Netherlands national team radiates deep mistrust towards anything that smells even slightly of journalist in every little interview he is contractually obliged to give.”
He then turned up the heat. “Virgil treats seasoned journalists like boys asking whether he wants to buy charity stamps. I do not know where it ever went wrong and exactly when that was, but every interview with Virgil van Dijk feels like a conversation with a politician. In fact, whenever you look at Virgil van Dijk’s face while he is obliged to answer questions, you can expect the following sentence every time: ‘Those are your words.’”
Dijkshoorn also went after the press officer in brutally harsh terms. “So far, Samuël Sanches has only shown that he lets everything spiral wildly out of control,” he said. “Every press officer can see that Virgil van Dijk’s attitude is deadly for a good relationship with the Dutch press. The row between Valentijn Driessen and Virgil proves that absolutely nothing has changed. Sanches apparently has no influence whatsoever on the inflated pride of the captain of the Netherlands.”
Lang, by contrast, is heavily praised by Dijkshoorn for the way he handles interviews. “The way we showed up in the first half, that has to stop at some point. It happens to us too often. I have no idea why that is. If you want to be a top country, then you have to show it and simply win these kinds of matches. They wanted it more than we did in the first half and that is a serious matter,” Lang said last week after Greece v the Netherlands (2-2).
Dijkshoorn loved it. “I sprang up cheering from my special football-watching sofa,” he said. “How long has it been since anyone from the Netherlands national team spoke without a pound of flour in his mouth? We were all watching a key moment when Noa Lang said, with refreshing frankness, that he had seen what we had all seen. It was poor. It was arrogant. It was haughty.”
Still, Dijkshoorn suspects one man will not have enjoyed Lang’s interview: Samuël Sanches. “I am curious about the conversations the self-proclaimed PR wonder Samuël Sanches has had with Virgil and Noa in recent days,” he concludes.
