RONALD De Boer has claimed that PSV Eindhoven should fear playing at Ibrox far more than Rangers should be concerned about their trip to the Philips Stadium – and told his former club they can silence their opponents’ notorious supporters easily.
Monaco, who lost the Champions League third qualifying round double header against their Dutch rivals after extra-time on Tuesday night, lodged an official complaint with UEFA yesterday about the behaviour of PSV fans.
They revealed their entire travelling party was woken up at 4am on the morning of the game when fireworks were set off outside their team hotel by the Young Ultras Eindhoven – who later posted a video of the incident on their social media page.
The hardcore element of the PSV support have a reputation for disorder and the Eredivisie outfit have been fined by European football’s governing body in the past for racist chanting and unrest in the stands at matches.
De Boer was involved in several encounters Eindhoven during his time as a player with Ajax and knows that his former club Rangers will get a hot reception when they travel to the Netherlands to play in the second leg of the play-off on Wednesday week.
However, the ex-Dutch internationalist thinks that Ibrox is a far more intimidating arena for a visiting side than the 35,000-capacity Philips Stadium – where Rangers have never lost in three visits - and believes the Europa League finalists can kill the atmosphere with a strong performance.
“The Philips Stadium can be a hostile ground,” said the veteran of numerous “De Topper” derbies. “If it goes well for PSV against Rangers then their fans will show themselves for sure. There can be a great atmosphere, especially at the start of matches.
“But it is nothing compared with what away teams experience at Ibrox. The Rangers crowd is more hostile than the PSV crowd. Also, if Rangers do well at the Philips Stadium the PSV crowd will be silenced far more quickly than the Rangers fans will be at Ibrox.
“If Rangers are 1-0 down the fans will always try to cheer on their players even more. In Holland they can be far quieter. They are passionate, but not that passionate.”
De Boer added: “I loved the Ajax v PSV games. In my time at Ajax we always seemed to have a big struggle at PSV. I remember we won 4-1 away in a game that I scored a nice goal in. But I must say that PSV were always tough opponents.
“They were usually in the top three in Holland with Ajax and Feyenoord. In my time, Feyenoord were never a problem. Ajax always won easily, usually by a few goals. But PSV were always difficult. I don’t know why because Feyenoord always did well against them.
“Maybe it was because Ajax always tried to dominate games when I was playing for them and they had players who could hurt on the counter attack. It didn’t suit how we played.”
