Robin van Persie may have found that, for this year at least, fairytales have their limits. Only 10 days have passed since he was tasked with leading the club that forged him and it was a delicious twist of fate that Inter, contributors to a formative moment in his playing career, posed his first Champions League test. This proved a harsh introduction to the sharper end of management and it will be a shock for the ages if a depleted Feyenoord, willing but callow, can turn around a two-goal deficit at San Siro next week.
Inter simply weathered an early storm and, summoning the poise and wisdom that so often helps Serie A sides dismiss irritating arrivistes, brought their potent strike force to bear. Marcus Thuram and Lautaro Martínez finished clinically either side of half-time and at this point it would be a stretch to claim Piotr Zielinski’s missed penalty may be consequential. While Milan had fallen here in the playoffs and been humbled in the return leg too, their city rivals simply looked a level above when it mattered. The weaker half of the draw may soon open up for Simone Inzaghi’s team.
“The boys gave their all and I can’t ask for more,” said Van Persie, who will require time to revive the glow of Arne Slot’s reign. “I’m not a coach that puts the focus on winning a game too much. I put the focus on energy, body language and leaving everything you’ve got on the pitch.”
While reality eventually bit hard, there had been an epic quality to the buildup. The sun shimmered over this city’s snaking waterways while vessels hauled their freight this way and that along the arteries that keep a continent in motion. As the light receded, focus was concentrated on the curves of a venue with no equivalent in Europe. Sound courses around this uncompromising, sweeping yet intimate, cauldron with the ferocity of cyclists hurtling round the bends in a velodrome. It reached guttural, feverish levels as Van Persie and his players emerged. This could be Rotterdam and nowhere else.
Van Persie knows better than most what happened in April 2002, when Feyenoord’s home staged one of its most famous nights. Inter were overcome in a Uefa Cup semi-final, a certain 18-year-old forward setting up the first goal for Pierre van Hooijdonk, and Feyenoord proceeded to win the trophy. The rangy-looking left winger who started that game could barely have countenanced overseeing the chance to do it all over again.
Feyenoord coach Robin van Persie applauds the home fans at the De Kuip after the defeat. Photograph: Olaf Kraak/EPA
Initially it appeared Feyenoord might seize it. They were missing 16 players through injury, suspension or ineligibility, Van Persie inheriting a personnel crisis along with his dream job, but began with the sharpness their head coach had detected in training. His tenure had begun with a goalless draw against NEC but Ibrahim Osman, a livewire left winger on loan from Brighton, came close in the third minute with a shot that Josep Martínez parried wide.
Feyenoord needed to make those early moments count. They won five corners in the first 20 minutes, that pumped-up support doing its job, but their old boy Stefan de Vrij was a towering presence in the backline and Inter rarely felt more than mild concern. The attacks kept coming but Igor Paixão, scourge of the Rossoneri, was never afforded the space to inflict a similar level of damage.
Instead Inter, their pack lightly shuffled by Inzaghi with an eye on domestic title concerns, assumed a level of command without sparkling. Thuram and Martínez had flickered slightly before Denzel Dumfries, a Sparta Rotterdam alumnus, teed up Nicolò Barella for a cross that dipped teasingly towards the six-yard box. The Feyenoord defence had not kept track of Thuram, who contorted in mid-air and could divert a difficult volley high into the roof of the net with the outside of his right foot.
Saves by Timon Wellenreuther from Martínez and Kristjan Asllani stopped Inter turning the screw before half-time. Five minutes after the restart, though, he was powerless to prevent the Argentinian flattening a mood that had hitherto retained its buoyancy. Alessandro Bastoni is not a natural left wing-back but marauded inside to feed Zielinski, who eventually found Martínez for an immaculate first touch and thrashed finish that effectively placed one foot in the quarter-finals.
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Feyenoord go on the attack backed by a packed and raucous De Kuip. Photograph: Joern Pollex/Uefa/Getty Images
“I get knocked down, but I get up again,” a pre-match banner display by Feyenoord’s fans had read. Their team tried to channel the relevant Chumbawamba hit and Jakub Moder, gloriously placed, sidefooted wastefully high after another searing run from Osman. Their public rediscovered its voice when Weidenreuther repelled Zielinski’s spot-kick, awarded through a VAR check after the struggling deputy right-back Jeyland Mitchell had fouled Thuram, but could not manifest any lifelines at the other end.
“We know we’re in a challenging phase but that’s not why we lost,” Van Persie said. “The players who played are really good players who we all believe in. We’re still in the game.” His beloved Feyenoord are firmly back on the map but may, for all his trademark optimism, need longer before reviving the spirit of 23 years ago.
