Former Everton director of football Marcel Brands has detailed how he’s managed to make PSV Eindhoven into title winners in the Netherlands, despite a lack of money at the club.
The Dutchman has been speaking to Voetbal International after PSV were crowned champions over the weekend.
Brands returned to the club in July 2022 as their Chief Executive Officer after what is now perceived as an unsuccessful spell trying to run matters at Everton.
He was with the Toffees between May 2018 and December 2021 but left the club under a cloud of criticism as the Blues battled relegation under Rafa Benitez.
It was clear at the time he did not see eye to eye with the Spanish coach and he later confirmed as much, before detailing how he had often been overridden in his plans for Everton, particularly when it came to transfers, by managers, agents and owner Farhad Moshiri.
That had not been the case at PSV before, where he had enjoyed big success identifying talent to develop for the future and indeed during his time at Alkmaar earlier in his career.
He’s now back doing the same in Eindhoven and enjoying the fruits of that labour, with a young talented squad currently nine points clear at the top of the table.
That’s been achieved despite a summer in which they brought in more money than they spent, something Brands appears to be very pleased with.
“So, this is football, it is very difficult to plan things,” he said.
“When I started as general manager, I knew we didn’t have a lot of money to invest. We only spent seven million euros on players and actually we were involved in everything last season.
“If you had said to me at the time: PSV wins the Johan Cruijff Shield, you come second and you win the cup, I would have signed for that then.
“The incidents gave the season a negative tone, but in the end, we had a great year. And Feyenoord was also very good last season.
“Our advantage was that we made two transfers in the winter last season. The sale of Cody Gakpo during the winter break was necessary, that of Noni Madueke gave us extra budget for the transfer summer.
“We were already in discussions with Noa Lang in May. When Peter Bosz arrived, we were able to switch very quickly to the players we wanted. Then you have to be lucky that they will do it. And that indeed happened quite quickly.”
