Old Stars enjoy European Legends Tournament at PSV
Teams from PSV Eindhoven (3), Feyenoord Rotterdam (2), Vitesse Arnhem (2), NEC Nijmegen and the amateurclubs Unitas ’59 (2) and Gestelse Boys yesterday participated in the European Legends Tournament at the trainingsground of PSV, De Herdgang. All the teams came with a lot of expectations and before the games started the players were all sure they were going to win the tournament. “We trained hard”, said a player of PSV. “And we are playing at home.” The Feyenoord-players also had kind of a ‘big mouth’, since their first team defeated PSV two days earlier in the Philips Stadium in an Eredivisie game (0-1). “We do not want to rub it in, but we already proved to be strong”, a Rotterdam player smiled. “Remember Sunday.”
But as in professional football, speculation is nice, but it all has to happen on the pitch. After the first round everybody was impressed with the team of Gestelse Boys, who seemed to have the ‘oldest’ team, but won all three games and qualified for the finals. “We came with 6 players and don’t have substitutes”, their captain said after the first round. “Still, it is going really well. Don’t ask me why, we are just doing our thing.”
Gestelse Boys played in the finals against Vitesse Arnhem and another amateur team, Unitas ’59. After beating the latter, Gestelse Boys had to play Vitesse in order to win the tournament. Just before their last game the players were not to sure of themselves. “As I said earlier, we have no substitutes, but you know how it works; if you keep on winning, you don’t feel the pain. Still, Vitesse have a good team. We saw them play against Unitas and they might just be too strong for us now.”
But also Vitesse turned out to be very, very tired. Gestelse Boys played very efficient, kept the ball in the team and profited of the mistakes Vitesse made in its defence. With a 3-0 result Gestelse Boys showed clearly to have the best Walking Football team at this European Legends Tournament.
“It was a great day”, Harm Oppers from PSV Foundation said afterwards. “We were lucky with the weather and all the players really enjoyed playing this tournament. All went well. No injuries, no organisational problems, everything turned out great. I am happy, as are all the players and that is the main thing.”
An impression, filmed by PSV TV
https://youtu.be/OtHetsCxYcQ
