Robin van Persie will be taking two potential debutants with him to FC Volendam on Sunday afternoon. They are Ilai Grootfaam (16) and Jivanyo Zinhagel (16).<\/p>\n
Both Feyenoord youth players are sixteen years old, but they have something else in common: for years, they trained together in Ajax\u2019s youth academy.<\/p>\n
During the international break, the teenagers were allowed to train with Feyenoord\u2019s first team. They made a good impression on Van Persie, the manager said at Friday afternoon\u2019s press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cZinhagel and Grootfaam have trained well. When I see them in action, it really warms my footballing heart. They\u2019re fresh and take the initiative whenever possible, and that rubs off on the rest of the team,\u201d said Van Persie.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough of Zinhagel and Grootfaam has caused some grumbling in Amsterdam. Stan Bijl, coach of Ajax Under-17s, was a guest on the Pantelic Podcast and thinks it\u2019s a real shame that the two talents no longer play for Ajax.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have quite a few good youth players at Ajax, but you also have to make sure you can keep them. If you look at what\u2019s happened over the past year\u2026\u201d, Bijl begins.<\/p>\n
\u201cFeyenoord have opened their wallets and invested heavily in signing players. Just imagine if we\u2019d simply kept Tim de Koning (who also went to Feyenoord), Zinhagel and Grootfaam in our academy. They\u2019re currently the best players in their academy, and they came from us. That doesn\u2019t seem right to me,\u201d he concludes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Robin van Persie will be taking two potential debutants with him to FC Volendam on Sunday afternoon. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[101],"tags":[749,199,26018,200],"class_list":["post-55433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-amsterdam","tag-ajax","tag-amsterdam","tag-feyenoord","tag-netherlands"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116349901943115434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}