Eindhoven: Europe’s city of innovation. It was named the smartest region in the world in 2011 and is the tech hub of the Netherlands.
Innovation, studies and progression are in the DNA of the city’s first football club, Philips Sport Vereniging (the latter means “partnership” in Dutch), better known to enthusiasts around the world as PSV Eindhoven.
The PSV was founded in 1913 for the workers of the Philips company, which went on to develop items as diverse as light bulbs, electric shavers and CDs.
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More than a century later, PSV is one of the leading developer of players.
Data from the CIES Football Observatory from January 2024 places PSV in 12th place globally and second in the Netherlands (behind Ajax) for earnings generated over the last decade through players who have spent at least 3 seasons at the club and over the ages of 15 to 21.
They reduce the squad to recent years and are eighth, ahead of Lyon, Tottenham Hotspur, Borussia Dortmund and Porto.
His list of graduates (takes a deep breath) Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Memphis Depay, Ibrahim Afellay, Jeroen Zoet, Arnaut Danjuma, Jordan Teze, Steven Bergwijn and Donyell Malen. The latest guys on the bill have been Cody Gakpo and Noni Madueke, sold to Liverpool and Chelsea in January last year for around £70 million ($89 million at the prevailing exchange rate) combined, and Johan Bakayoko, now a regular in PSV’s first team.
Athletic spent two days inside the academy, with all the areas. Here are the titles:
Eindhoven is 125 km south of Amsterdam, close to the Belgian border. If you arrive exercising, the city’s BrainPort district will welcome you. BrainPort, the main sponsor of PSV, is a self-proclaimed “ecosystem” of more than 5,000 tech corporations that work collaboratively. and a kind of concrete jungle.
A few kilometres to the north, PSV’s educational plant couldn’t be more different. The De Herdgang campus is in Philips de Jongh Park and offers the kind of tranquility associated with Clairefontaine, the home of French football, or Coverciano, its Italian equivalent. The trees above the spotlights, while the passing trains emit a delicious white noise.
This is where the men’s first team, reserve team and women’s team, the men’s first team on the one hand and the reserve team and women’s team on the other, are trained. The two buildings are almost invisible: gymnasium, gymnasium, break room, dining hall and research room.
Outside, there are 8 pitches, the exhibition field, which is reserved for U-18 and U-21 matches.
Three pitches side-by-side sound like a Goldilocks football scenario.
The first, an older 3G model, is incredibly hard underfoot. The moment is much softer, a softer passing surface that you sink into when you run on it, but it reduces loading and injuries, and it educates players the most.
The third is halfway between the previous two: even with its launches, PSV is there to innovate.
Under-21 football in the Netherlands is different from most European countries. PSV, Ajax, AZ Alkmaar and Utrecht are all in the Eerste Divisie, the second division of Dutch football, where they compete against the seniors of other clubs. 11th season for Jong (young) PSV at this level.
There is no danger of relegation, as the third division is semi-professional, but Jong PSV face groups trying to win at all costs, and in front of much larger crowds than in the old academy matches (excluding Jong’s 4 groups, the average at home. This season, the Eerste Divisie has more than 7,000 people.
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Teenagers face physically impressive groups and want to maximize their technical quality to compensate. This becomes evident when you watch Jong PSV play against Den Bosch on a cold, snowy January night.
PSV leads the group of 20 teams in ownership, but has crowned five groups and its defense is the worst in the league. Faced with the urgency of a 3-5-2, PSV kick long while Den Bosch leaves a three-on-three halfway through, an offensive principle when the warring sides play in a superior defensive line.
Den Bosch scored first, counter-attacked and beat an ill-timed offside trap, but PSV temporarily took control. The equaliser at the start of the second half came after a big loss and thirteen minutes later they took the lead after a comeback. ended with No. 9 Jesper Uneken.
When Den Bosch switched to a 4-2-4, PSV struggled physically. Their high line was caught out by direct balls. Efforts to play keep-ball in the opposition half led to counter-attacks, as their ‘rest defence’ — the positions defenders take up when the team have possession, ready to counter-press — is loose. A late onslaught from Den Bosch is rewarded with a headed equaliser from a corner. The game finishes 2-2.
Seeing out games when leading has been an issue at home this season. This was the fifth time, after games against Jong Ajax, ADO Den Haag, FC Eindhoven and Maastricht, that Jong PSV were ahead after 75 minutes yet failed to win, losing three of them. They have also conceded the division’s most goals during the final 15 minutes of matches (16).
The club’s staff have an explanation: their focus on individuals rather than groups at older ages means they can often end up with uncomplimentary technical/tactical pairings.
Under-19 coach Jack Brasil explains that in their wide triangles (a full-back, a number 8 and a winger) they need “one who is a runner, who attacks deep into the four opposing defenders, one who is an author and one who is more of a solid rest-defensive player”.
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Brazil continues: “Sometimes we have a lot of runners, sometimes you have too many creators, and we don’t have the depth. We have to find that balance.”
Having players who aren’t absolutely physically mature (and facing conflicting teams who are) means that Jong PSV suffers from fatigue sooner, and physicality can be a deciding factor in the match.
Psychology can also help. The club uses Action Type Profiling, a personality control questionnaire very similar to the popular Myers-Briggs assessment. It is not the best science and is considered a more useful tool than the gospel, yet the existing Jong organization is considered to be more commonly introverted. Which is neither smart nor bad in itself, but extroverted personalities would arguably be more desirable when it comes to achieving victories.
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“Spaces and overloads” is a phrase repeated by Joop Oosterveld, head of coaching between under-11 and under-18. Attacking play is based on principles, not patterns. Examples include…
These principles apply to teams of all ages. He explains how PSV’s U-18s won their league last season with 32 players, some of whom were promoted to older teams and the most productive U-17s were recruited.
PSV fielded a different line-up in all six of this season’s games in the UEFA Youth League (the under-19 level’s Champions League equivalent). They finished third in a group also containing Sevilla, Arsenal and Lens, matching the senior teams’ draw, but learned a lot.
“The key thing was that PSV and Arsenal had the best individuals, and probably the best way of playing in terms of attractiveness,” says Brazil.
“But in terms of winning, Lens and Sevilla were so far ahead of us. They played real adult football and this was a real learning curve — how do we create those environments? And how do we manage it next year? Is it appropriate for us as the under-18 staff to take the Youth League? Or is it better for the Jong PSV staff to take the Youth League because they work with them every day?”
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PSV’s assistant first-team coach Tim Wolf started at the club at the U11 level. He then served as assistant to Ruud van Nistelrooy when he coached the U18s and U19s, before they combined to manage the first team. There he remained under the control of Peter Bosz, who replaced Van Nistelrooy last summer.
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U18 and U19 head coach Vincent Heilmann on PSV’s books between U9 and U19, but three ACL injuries hampered his playing career.
He tells The Athletic that having unified principles that apply to teams of all ages is “the key to individual development. “
Heilmann continues: “If you move a lot of players (between young teams), the identity, the way you play and the way you solve problems, everything has to be the same. There are small main points in a game: whether you play against five or against four, it’s a little different, but the identity has to be the same.
The numbers don’t lie: of the players who succeed at PSV U18, 70% go on to professional careers and 40% succeed in the first team.
As one of the “big three” clubs in Holland (along with Ajax and Feyenoord), the criteria for graduates here are higher than in the country. “Exceptional skill” isn’t enough, players want adaptability too.
Gakpo, who made the under-12 level and was PSV’s second-best-selling player when he signed for Liverpool last January, is cited as an example of how to balance elite strategy with technical and tactical versatility. He made his PSV debut as a left winger, his primary position in his college days, but is used at Liverpool as a No. 9, No. 8 and on the wing.
Colin Bergmans, the trainer, developed the “Skillbox”. This is a comprehensive individual technical progression program, focused on “filling the backpack”, containing more than 40 attack and defense techniques, adding overhead kicks.
From under 9 to under 12, he sends players “homework” each week, examples of technical skills they can master on their own, all related to their new educational goal. These are accompanied by “landmarks”, clips of the most sensible players acting with the same skills. For example, when focusing on preparation, the task may simply consist of clips of other long-distance passes to central defenders and other parts of the foot.
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Twice a week, Bergmans spends 30 minutes training for each age group, a combination of unopposed practices and drills in which players will have to attack with balanced numbers, force plays and/or penalize — one-on-one, three-on-two. For example.
They work out 4 times a week, in addition to matches, with a large volume of small group work. De Herdgang is one of 4 centres in the south of the Netherlands, and consistently does not allow young players to exercise close to home. There are between 50 and 60 players, consistent with the age group. Each season, each has another mentor (a coach or a player), as well as their own progression plan. There is a balance between honing his “exceptional skills” and his “focus points”, in line with PSV’s principles.
Players come in a variety of ages, often divided into upbringing based on their position, biological age (their degree of physical maturity, known as “bio-banding”) or even their dominant foot. The sessions work in carousel approaches, where each a coach sets up a station and players spend the same amount of time at each station, moving in groups.
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For instance, with the under-13s and under-14s, there are four stations (plus the goalkeepers training separately). Two start with ball manipulation, with players dribbling and changing direction. The other two focus on passing patterns, with players following their pass. One group has multiple patterns simultaneously to add a bit of chaos while remaining unopposed. Those practices then develop into one-v-ones/two-v-twos, and rondos.
Before reaching the under-18 point, there is little concentration on the established teams. Players are constantly rotated and moved between younger age groups. An example is Jong PSV goalkeeper Niek Schiks. He joined the club at the under-9 level and was an Outfielder until the under-12 level, when the squad considered that his profile was more suitable to play in goal.
Youth education continues off the field. PSV offers equally subtle physical and cognitive programs. They use the same “neurolympic” control as the AZ, designed through BrainsFirst. It shows the extent to which players collect, process and act on information, and predicts cognitive level. outliers: a must-have feature in a fast-moving and psychologically difficult game.
There is gamified cognitive training, with a joystick that players have to move in the direction of an arrow that pops up on a screen, but, depending on the colour, they have to change the direction of the answer. This is scaled up by adding in a ball, making players pass in the direction of the arrow (regardless of the colour).
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Physical controls are not standardized in the Netherlands, which is why PSV’s battery of physical controls (anthropometric controls, 30-meter run (just under a hundred feet), change of direction, static long jump, hand-eye coordination control) is self-evaluated. administered twice a season (anthropometric checks are monthly).
Their years of carrying out these tests mean first-team benchmarks are well known. The required level is four seconds for the 30m sprint, with the first 10m completed in under 1.9 seconds. The hand-eye coordination test, involving throwing a tennis ball at a wall (and catching it) with one hand while bouncing a basketball with the other, has correlations to better footballing performance.
PSV has pioneered biomechanical studies on the goalkeeper’s explained position, looking for the preferred position rather than a squatting position at 75% of leg length. The discovery? Faster but less far-reaching reactions, as it eliminates the remediation step.
One potential criticism of the academy is that not many of its goalkeepers have graduated — Zoet, now 33, was the most recent to play for the first team. He made 260 appearances and became a full Netherlands international before joining Italian club Spezia in September 2020.
Developing physically balanced players, i. e. education beyond football-specific movements, is essential, especially the pre-growth period. At younger ages, this is basically taught through mini-games and other sports. An example is the “smash” strategy in volleyball, which is the same motor tendency to attack a cross with the head. They also play hockey and basketball, and once a month they spend 90 minutes at a local trampoline park.
PSV recognises that it is a club that sells, basically, to the five most sensible European leagues.
They were also the launching pad for Romario and Ronaldo in the 1990s after they left Brazil. Van Nistelrooy and Jaap Stam played in other academies in Holland and were signed by PSV through Manchester United. Arjen Robben joined PSV at the age of 18 from the Netherlands. club Groningen and bought through Chelsea two years later. Georginio Wijnaldum and Kevin Strootman are more recent similar examples.
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PSV call it his “international journey as a player” and it’s a badge of honor.
They were proud that Madueke left Tottenham Hotspur to sign for them at the age of 16 in 2018, a decision the player described as “obvious”. He arrived at his first team in two years, scored the first two goals in his 2021 Johan Cruyff Shield beats Ajax and signs Chelsea for £28. 5m 12 months ago. Similarly, much-loved Everton defender Jarrad Branthwaite spent last season on loan at PSV and called it “the most productive thing I’ve ever been able to do”. .
PSV’s transfer income has been above their expenditure in five of the past seven seasons. Top talent does not stick around long in their first team, so there is always room for the next graduate.
Dutch football has been guided, albeit burdened, by a national commitment to 4-3-3 and a general high-possession football. There can be a hyper-focus on control, and as a result, open, spontaneous and creative players become the winners. A list of PSV’s top 10 sales includes five wingers and two players (Gakpo and Depay) capable of betting up front. It’s inevitable that Bakayoko will soon be on this list.
PSV’s goal is to make 3 consistent first-team debuts per season for the academy players. His pace is more than double: 44 debuts with the first team, men’s and women’s, for the home team since 2017-18.
The names of those players are displayed proudly on the wall of a corridor near the changing rooms.
In the current team, beyond golden boy Bakayoko, backup winger Yorbe Vertessen, box-crashing No 8 Ismael Saibari and starting right-back Teze all rose through their youth ranks. PSV equalled an Eredivisie record by winning their first 17 league games of this season, scoring at least twice in all of them, before a 1-1 draw with Utrecht last weekend. Consequentially, they are well on their way to their first title since 2017-18, 10 points clear of second-placed Feyenoord.
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Arsenal and Feyenoord (in the KNVB Cup on Wednesday) are the only teams to have beaten them at any festival this season, and PSV have qualified for the Champions League round of 16 for the first time since 2015-16. The U-19 team coming out of the Youth League means that those players can also fight for the overall title.
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“We’ve always recognised that we have a lot of good intellectual property, that we have a lot of good ideas, but then they also can be improved,” says Brazil. “It’s not just about developing others, it’s about us developing ourselves. The staff have to present and explain their ideas really clearly in a second language (English) — I’ve done it the other way, in Dutch, and it’s nerve-racking.”
This is part of a broader “internationalization” strategy that has seen, since 2022, PSV become part of Austin FC (United States), Chivas (Mexico), Cruzeiro (Brazil) and Jeonbuk Motors (South Korea). South). These are deals meant to share wisdom and experience, not to form multi-club teams to buy and talent.
Johan Cruyff, the greatest icon of Dutch football, once said: “Don’t look at what you don’t have, look at what you can create. “
PSV embodies this concept.
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To be involved in upcoming PSV ‘interest days’, visit their website www.psvcoachingacademy.com