IN THE NEWS - PSV hoping to ‘buy a championship’

FOOTBALL - Last night it was reported that Mark van Bommel has been offered a contract to play for PSV next season. If he indeed joins the Dutch club, it might be worth putting your money on them now to win next season’s Eredivisie as Van Bommel wins league championships wherever he goes.

Whenever, Wherever

This season, the Dutchman looks like winning his sixth league championship in the last eight seasons, a period in which he has played in four different countries, winning league titles in each. Add the 2010 World Cup final, a competition in which Van Bommel also played a crucial role for the Netherlands, and it is clear that he is a player that any team would want.

Winnen/Ganar/Gewinnen/Vincere (winning in four different languages)
Having won his fourth Eredivisie championship in 2004/2005, Mark van Bommel began on his highly successful adventure outside the Netherlands in which he has won championships in Spain, Germany and Italy. The only seasons from 2004/2005 onwards in which the Dutchman failed to get his hands on a league championship trophy were both at Bayern München – 2006/2007 and 2008/2009 – but even those seasons were triumphs of a sort as he was voted player of the year in the first and given the captaincy in the second. He was the first non-German to ever captain Bayern.

Out of the doldrums?
If Van Bommel returns to PSV, the club will hope that he can turn their fortunes around. In his previous period there, PSV won four Eredivisie championships in six seasons and finished second in the other two. In the two in which they failed, Van Bommel missed 11 matches each time which may have had an effect on their final league position. The club from Eindhoven threaten again to fail to finish in the top two for the fourth season in a row this term and Van Bommel’s potential return will remind their supporters of his memorable last season which contained a Champions League semi-final spot as well as the league title.

Simon Gleave is the Head of Analysis at Infostrada Sports and will regularly contribute to these pages on the issues of the day in which a little more depth can be found.