‘I immediately looked at this match with a keen eye’

“At the beginning of the season I was already watching this match with a slanted eye. Now the moment has come.” 190 days after signing his first contract as head coach, Robin van Persie returns to De Kuip tonight, where he will take a seat in the dugout of SC Heerenveen.

The meeting with Feyenoord is a reunion with his former employer, the club that will forever hold a special place in his heart. Van Persie starts to beam when the long-awaited meeting is discussed.

Once before, Van Persie was in De Kuip as an opponent of Feyenoord. That was in 2016, when he started for the Turkish top club Fenerbahçe in a Europa League group match. Fenerbahçe won 0-1, without any significant contribution from the striker.

“That was a special experience,” says Van Persie. He knows better than anyone what the influence of a swirling Kuip can have on Feyenoord, where he played football for two periods during his illustrious career and spent years as a youth coach.

Did he share his best stories about the atmosphere in the stadium with his players? Not at all, he answers firmly. “We prepare them for what happens on the field. I haven’t even talked about the beautiful stadium – the most beautiful stadium in the Netherlands, you could say.”

In any case, the person he doesn’t have to tell about it is Alireza Jahanbakhsh. The 31-year-old Iranian played football for Feyenoord for three seasons and left on a free transfer this summer after the club told him that he was no longer needed. Earlier this month, the attacker signed with Heerenveen.

“If you would have asked me a few months ago whether I would ever play against Feyenoord in De Kuip again, the answer would have been no,” he says. “Mixed feelings”he mentions his return.

“I’m looking forward to going back to De Kuip, where I made many wonderful memories together with the Rotterdammers and with my teammates. But now I’m just a Heerenveen player.”

Jahanbakhsh regularly scores against his former clubs in the Premier League, NEC and AZ. What if he is accurate in De Kuip? “Whatever happens, it will be with respect. I think that is the most important thing.”

The feelings about their old club will have to be put aside for a while. “From my role, the trick is to focus on what is important: preparing my team as best as possible for this match,” says Van Persie. “And I’m satisfied with that.”

Part of the preparation was an ‘educational’ practice match against PEC Zwolle during the international break, in which he saw his team lose 2-1. “It wasn’t great defensively,” Van Persie admits.

It is exactly such duels that his youthful team needs to develop further, says Van Persie. “It sounds crazy, but that was very useful. You actually want to run into those kinds of points in a practice match. We were able to deal with them well last week.”

Van Persie is praised for his vision of the game and his style of leadership, but the results are lagging behind. The balance after twelve matches: four victories, a goal difference of -10 and a twelfth place in the rankings. Only Almere City (seventeenth) and RKC Waalwijk (eighteenth) scored more goals.

Moreover, Heerenveen has not yet won a single away game, with the heavy 9-1 defeat at AZ as the low point. “We know our place,” said Van Persie. “We have to get through it at some point. I can’t imagine a better moment than tomorrow.”