PSV and Feyenoord: Dutch development beyond Ajax

The foundation: the Zeist Vision

The KNVB has its headquarters in Zeist. There, in the 1980s, a development philosophy was formulated under the federation's leadership that is known as the Zeist Vision. It goes back to Rinus Michels, national coach from 1984 to 1988, who shaped the federation's coach education in that period.

The Zeist Vision defines what a Dutch player is supposed to learn, and how:

Football is learned through football. The central sentence of Dutch development. No training without the ball, no conditioning without a link to the game, no technique without an opponent. The game is the teaching form, in a simplified or reduced version.

The 4-3-3 as a teaching system. Not because it is the best system, but because it maps every position with clear roles and teaches the game through the wings, the centre and depth. All Dutch youth teams — not only at Ajax — learn in this system.

The TIC model. Where Ajax works with TIPS, the federation works with TIC: Techniek, Inzicht, Communicatie — technique, game understanding, communication. Communication here does not mean only speaking, but interplay: how a player reads his team-mates, how he coordinates, how he reacts to what is happening around him. The three dimensions cannot be trained separately. Every exercise has to address all three.

The four main moments. Possession, opponent in possession, transition after winning the ball, transition after losing it — the same division as in tactical periodisation and in the playing principles. Every exercise is assigned to a main moment.

Age-appropriate formats. In 2017 the KNVB pushed through a reform that Germany only followed in 2024: children play in small formats. Up to U10 6v6 on a small pitch, U11 and U12 8v8, from U13 11v11. The reasoning is the same everywhere: more touches, more decisions, more shots per child.

Coach education in the same language. Every Dutch coach who takes a licence learns the Zeist Vision. A youth coach in Eindhoven and one in Rotterdam have the same vocabulary, the same exercise forms, the same understanding of the system. That is the real reason for the breadth of Dutch development.

PSV Eindhoven: De Herdgang

PSV is the works club of Philips, founded in 1913. The connection to the corporation kept the club financially stable for decades and gave it an infrastructure with few equals in the Netherlands. The training centre De Herdgang on the northern edge of the city has been in operation since 1965 and has been expanded several times.

Graduates: Ibrahim Afellay, Memphis Depay, Jeroen Zoet, Jetro Willems, Cody Gakpo, Mohamed Ihattaren, Johan Bakayoko, Isaac Babadi. Plus players who came from other clubs as teenagers and took the final step at PSV — Noni Madueke arrived at 16 from England.

What PSV does differently:

Pace and physique. PSV graduates stand out for their athleticism compared with Ajax players. Depay, Gakpo and Bakayoko are wingers with speed and power. That is no accident. PSV has traditionally put more weight on the physical dimension and has used the Philips infrastructure for it — performance diagnostics, sports science, individual athletic work alongside team training.

Jong PSV in the second division. Since 2013 the second team has played in the Eerste Divisie, for points against professional sides. That is the same advantage Benfica B has and the same one Ajax uses with Jong Ajax. An 18-year-old plays men's football before he is a candidate for the first team.

International scouting. PSV deliberately recruits teenagers from Belgium and England who are in big academies there and open to a move. Bakayoko arrived at 16 from Anderlecht's youth, Madueke from Tottenham. The proximity to Belgium — Eindhoven lies 30 kilometres from the border — is a geographical advantage the club uses systematically.

Result orientation. PSV is less dogmatic than Ajax. The youth teams play for titles, and that is not hidden. The club sees winning as part of development, similar to Benfica.

In sporting terms PSV has been the dominant club in the Netherlands since 2024. Under Peter Bosz the team were champions in 2024 and 2025, in 2024 with only one league defeat. The squad was a mixture of home-grown players and targeted signings — the model currently works better than Ajax's.

Feyenoord Rotterdam: Varkenoord

Feyenoord is the club of the Rotterdam working city, with the motto "Geen woorden maar daden" — no words, but deeds. That shapes the development more than it seems at first glance.

The academy is at Varkenoord, right next to the De Kuip stadium. It was comprehensively modernised in the 2010s and has since been regarded as one of the best facilities in the Netherlands.

Graduates: Robin van Persie, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Georginio Wijnaldum, Stefan de Vrij, Bruno Martins Indi, Jordy Clasie, Leroy Fer, Tonny Vilhena, Rick Karsdorp, Lutsharel Geertruida, Orkun Kökçü, Antoni Milambo, Givairo Read. Between 2010 and 2020 Feyenoord was regarded in the Netherlands as the country's most productive academy — at times ahead of Ajax.

What Feyenoord does differently:

Mentality as a development goal. At Ajax technique is at the centre, at Feyenoord character. Feyenoord graduates stand out for their duelling strength, work rate and resilience — de Vrij, Martins Indi, Wijnaldum, Kökçü. The club says openly that it develops players who can survive in Rotterdam: in front of a crowd that puts commitment above elegance.

Defenders and midfield engines. Where Ajax produces technicians and Sporting dribblers, Feyenoord produces centre-backs and holding midfielders. That is a pattern across generations and shows that an academy's signature shows up in particular positions.

A connection to the city. Feyenoord scouts above all in Rotterdam and the surrounding area, a region with a high population density and many children with a migration background. Rotterdam street football — Feyenoord players have often described it as formative — is part of the foundation.

The path under Arne Slot. Slot coached Feyenoord from 2021 to 2024, won the title in 2023 and built on home-grown players such as Geertruida and Kökçü, complemented by targeted signings from undervalued markets. His positional play was a further development of the Zeist Vision with modern elements — and the basis for Liverpool hiring him in 2024 as Klopp's successor. In 2025 Robin van Persie returned as head coach.

The Feyenoord Academy network. Since the 2000s Feyenoord has run partner academies abroad, among others in Ghana, and exports its own methodology. That is less a scouting instrument than an attempt to position the Feyenoord brand as a developing club.

The comparison: Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Rotterdam

Three clubs, the same federation foundation, three signatures:

What the comparison shows: the system is national, the signature is local. All three work with the Zeist Vision, the 4-3-3, the TIC model, the small-sided formats. What separates them is the weighting — and that is a question of club culture, city and tradition.

The criticism

The Zeist Vision is old. It dates from the 1980s and has been updated several times, but its foundations are forty years old. Critics in Dutch football complain that the 4-3-3 as a teaching system and positional play as a guiding idea do too little justice to modern football with its transition speed and its athleticism. The national team has not won a tournament since 2010 and missed qualification in 2016 and 2018.

The Eredivisie cannot keep the players. Like Portugal and France, the Netherlands produces for Europe. The best players leave at 20. PSV and Feyenoord find it harder than Ajax to achieve European fees at all, because the brand is weaker.

Feyenoord has no second team in the league. The club has no side in the Eerste Divisie and therefore loses the transition step that Ajax, PSV and Benfica have. The U21 plays in a youth league, which is not the same thing.

The documentation is good, the club methodology less so. The Zeist Vision is public, well described and can be read up in coaching textbooks. What PSV and Feyenoord do differently in detail is, as everywhere, reconstruction from interviews and graduate profiles.

Application: what you can take from it

This section is our interpretation.

Dutch development is the most accessible school for German coaches, because it is the best documented and because the formats have resembled the German ones since the children's football reform.

Assign every exercise to a main moment

Possession, opponent in possession, transition after winning the ball, transition after losing it. Before you set up an exercise, decide which moment it serves. If you cannot say, the exercise is probably occupation, not training.

Take TIC as an assessment grid

Technique, game understanding, communication. The third element is missing from almost every German assessment grid and is the most interesting: how well a player reads his team-mates, how he coordinates, how he helps others with calls and movement. That can be trained, but only if you observe it.

Let the small-sided formats work

The German children's football reform from 2024/25 has adopted the Dutch logic. Use it: at 3v3 or 5v5 in the children's age groups no coaching of positions and systems is needed. What is needed is many touches, many shots and quiet from the touchline.

Decide on a signature

Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord work with the same system and produce different players. That comes from the weighting. Ask yourself what your club stands for: technical development, pace, mentality. There is no wrong answer, but without an answer there is no signature.

Use the teaching system consistently

If your club develops in a 4-3-3, then in every age group, with the same role descriptions. A player moving from U13 to U14 should not have to learn anything new except the higher tempo. If every coach plays his own system, the club loses a year at every transition.

Mentality can be developed

Feyenoord shows that character is not an accident. Start small-sided games from behind, do not blow the whistle on every duel in training, leave players on the pitch after mistakes instead of substituting them. What you allow in training and what you punish shapes your players' attitude.

What to take away

• Dutch development rests on the KNVB's Zeist Vision: learn football through football, 4-3-3 as a teaching system, the TIC model, four main moments, small-sided formats, unified coach education.
• Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord use the same system and have different signatures: technique in Amsterdam, pace in Eindhoven, mentality in Rotterdam.
• PSV uses the Philips infrastructure, Jong PSV in the second division and the proximity to Belgium. Since 2024 the dominant club in the country.
• Feyenoord develops for Rotterdam: duelling, work rate, character. Centre-backs and midfield engines as a pattern.
• The system is old and is criticised. The Eredivisie cannot keep the players.
• Transferable: main moments as an order, TIC as a grid, taking small-sided formats seriously, choosing a signature, sticking to one teaching system.

Anyone who sorts exercises by phase of play in Coach OS is working with the logic of the four main moments. No tool takes over the assignment — that is the thinking work before training.

Sources and further reading

• KNVB: publications on the Zeist Vision, the TIC model and the playing formats in youth football.
• Rinus Michels: Teambuilding: The Road to Success — on the origin of the Dutch development philosophy.
• David Winner: Brilliant Orange — on Dutch football culture and the differences between Amsterdam, Eindhoven and Rotterdam.
• Interviews with academy directors of PSV and Feyenoord, among others in Dutch sports media.
• CIES Football Observatory: reports on developing clubs in Europe.

A note on the evidence: the Zeist Vision is publicly documented. The description of the differences between PSV and Feyenoord rests on statements from around the clubs and on graduate profiles, not on published curricula.