The question of “can Trond Sollied survive the PSV match?” may have been answered late as despite controlling the overwhelming majority of the match, the Heerenveen defense collapsed and allowed two late goals to bring to a 2-2 conclusion. With Abe Lenstra Stadion going from complete jubilation to utter shock, it is unclear how upper management will react but quite obviously the club is in desperate need of reviewing defensive play as the final ten minutes were a nightmare.
The overall review of the match is definitely two separate parts as Heerenveen looked to be in complete control of the match, opening the scoring sixteen minutes in as Roy Beerens, fought off a very physical challenge by Jérémie Bréchet to put the ball behind PSV ‘keeper Andreas Isaksson. This might have been a hint of things to come because PSV’s “fight” definitely had an impact in their comeback. Heerenveen had a number of chances to add to the margin but couldn’t break through till the sixty-fifth minute when Paulo Henrique took the PSV back line to school and swept a cross in-close to Beerens which he tucked into the goal for the second of the night. Slowly the match took on a more physical tone and with nine minutes left Reimond Manco, who had just entered, crossed to Danny Koevermans, who then headed in from approximately eight meters. Marking on the Netherlands veteran was dreadful and brought concern the flood gates were about to open. A minute later Balázs Dzsudzsák drew a yellow card for violent conduct, a few seemingly harmless shoves but it had me thinking whether it was a statement that the defending champions weren’t going to back down. Two minutes later, Heerenveen made another tactical defensive error converging on the ball, leading Serb Danko Lazović to send a through-ball to Stef Nijland who lifted the ball over a diving Kenny Steppe and to the back of the net.
