There’s no love lost between Dutch fitness coach Raymond Verheijen and Davide Moyes, with the former constantly attacking the Manchester United manager through twitter and other media services since the day he took the job. One issue he usually refers to is the mistreatment of Robin van Persie, claiming he has been given pain killers and is purposely overtrained, causing early injuries and coming at the cost of the national team.
Louis van Gaal decided to keep Van Persie out of the Netherlands squad for their two friendly matches this week against Japan and Colombia, as the striker is suffering from groin and toe injuries. According to Verheijen, all of his current problems are rooted in United’s preseason treatment of Van Persie, overworking him and feeding him pain killers in order to keep him in a rigid training program when rest should have been the best thing for him.
Van Persie is known to being a slightly fragile player, especially during his Arsenal days, but the ironic thing is that the Dutch national team is mostly known for bringing back players to their clubs in shattered pieces, something that Arsenal suffered from many times in the case of Van Persie, while Arjen Robben is another fantastic example.
Verheijen doesn’t let the facts confuse him, and goes on through sources or simply his own intuition: Van Persie having to travel 30 hours to a completely different time zone as he joined the Manchester United team while he wasn’t completely fit during the preseason tour began all the problems, but he wasn’t given any rest until it was too late and they had to sit him out. Verheijen hopes that with Van Gaal giving him extra rest, he can come off the pain killers being given to him by the Manchester United medical staff.
In defense of the team, they shouldn’t care one bit about national teams. They’re the ones paying the players salary, and they should only think about what’s good for the club. However, treating Van Persie the wrong way eventually won’t only keep him out of international matches, but make him unavailable for Manchester United too.