The NOS has apologized to the KNVB for a moment during the European Championship qualifying match for the Netherlands and Ireland on Saturday. What Ronald Koeman said to his assistants could clearly be heard on TV. The national coach was not happy about that.
“Look where they are, the two of them,” Koeman grumbled in the second half of the Netherlands-Ireland match in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. “Look how they are standing! Wout, you have to go there! To the right!”
Koeman was not happy that his words could be heard loud and clear in the living room. “This is of course irritating,” he said afterwards to NOS reporter Jeroen Stekelenburg. “I find it irritating that there is a camera half a meter from my face for the entire match.”
Stekelenburg’s response – “That is part of top football” – was of little use to the national coach. “That’s not top football,” he grumbled. “That doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t bother me abroad, and now the camera is half a meter away.”
‘We have spoken to the KNVB’
NOS has now apologized for the incident. “We spoke with the KNVB on Tuesday,” a spokesperson told NU.nl. “We shouldn’t have added that sound. I don’t know how it happened. We talked about it and that took the chill out of the air.”
The Dutch national team and Koeman will conclude the European Championship qualifying series on Tuesday evening. The Dutch team has already qualified for the tournament in Germany, so only prestige is at stake in the away match against Gibraltar in Faro, Portugal (kick-off at 8:45 p.m.).
