UTRECHT – René Hake has seen enough against Cambuur last weekend. Against Heracles, FC Utrecht’s trainer Henk Veerman starts in the base. The newly recruited attacker fell 2-0 behind the team against the Frisians and then led Utrecht to victory with, among other things, a goal.
“Sometimes it is very easy”, Hake laughs after Thursday’s training when he confirms that Tasos Douvikas and Henk Veerman are the two strikers on Friday evening in Almelo. “But Tasos and Henk are different types of players, so that requires something from the people around them. So on a detailed level, the rest has to fill in something else.”
In the first half of the competition, FC Utrecht beat Heracles. In the Galgenwaard it then won a cramped 1-0 victory. Then, as in previous games, it played in a 4-4-2 system. That will again be the starting point. “I know we won in the nick of time,” Hake says. “But we’ve had enough opportunities to score more goals. What should we do differently than then? They’re falling for it now.”
And that’s where Veerman comes in. The Volendammer must take care of the goals together with the Greek Tasos Douvikas. “For me it is actually still completely getting used to playing with two strikers,” acknowledges Veerman, who played in a different system at Heerenveen. “I do feel free in it. I can act as a point of reference or dive into space myself. It is still in the habituation phase, but I really have more space and I come 1-on-1 more often.”
New Willaarts and Van Loen
In the eighties FC Utrecht had the striker couple Erik Willaarts and John van Loen. Van Loen was the long lightning rod and point of contact, Willaarts the finisher. The latter scored 25 goals that season before being sold to Borussia Mönchengladbach. Douvikas and Veerman seem to be the same duo. Last game, the Greek made two hits, Veerman one. “I don’t mind being the lightning rod for Tasos then”, Veerman responds. “This is going well, I’m in the prime of my life.”
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