Wim Kieft truly astonished by the witch-hunt against Ruben van Bommel after his red card for Ajax

Ruben van Bommel had barely left the tunnel when the media storm broke. In the Eredivisie clash between Ajax and PSV, the young forward was sent off for a hugely reckless challenge. The result was not just a red card. The whole of the Netherlands reacted, from pundits to anonymous social media accounts, all condemning him at once. Yet two days later, Wim Kieft, the Euro 2026 winner and a man rarely carried away by the crowd, admitted he was genuinely astonished. Not by the challenge, but by what had been unleashed after it. Kieft did not defend the tackle. He used strong words, calling it reckless, rash and simply a red card. But after accepting that, he asked a bigger question: Aren’t people going a little too far here? That question was enough to stop the campaign of condemnation for a moment. Something feels wrong when an on-field mistake is turned into a trial of character. Ajax against PSV is never a normal match. It is a title race meeting between two of the biggest clubs in Dutch football, where every moment is multiplied by emotion. Van Bommel’s lunge immediately became a symbol of excessive aggression. René van der Gijp, a sharp former player turned pundit, noted that Van Bommel knew he was not going to win the ball but still went through with it. That detail was the fuel. Fans cannot forgive a player who apparently continues with a lost cause in a dangerous way. The context changed the incident from a poor decision into evidence of intent. Yet from an analytical perspective, the story is more nuanced. In years of watching Eredivisie matches, I have learned that young attacking players are often under the greatest pressing pressure. When a coach asks the team to press high, wingers and forwards must engage in duels with very little time. The difference between a clean tackle and a foul often comes down to the defender’s speed of execution, something a player in his early twenties may misjudge in a heated match. Van Bommel is not the only player to make that mistake, but he is the only one being lectured by an entire country on television. Numbers do not lie, but they hide what matters most. If we analyse late tackles across top-level football, most come from players still adapting to the speed of the game, not from those intending to harm an opponent. Van Bommel may have gone in too late and lost control of his body, but there is no evidence he wanted to hurt anyone. That is why Kieft felt obliged to speak out. After all, magic is only a name for something we have not measured yet. In this case, the same is true of hatred. It grew from a challenge that had not been properly analysed, then was amplified by the speed of news. Van der Gijp also said Van Bommel was struggling badly after the match. This invites a comparison with Ibrahimovic, who faced every controversy with coldness. Van der Gijp seemed to hold up that comparison as a lesson, but it is cruel to a young man who lacks that kind of armour. Not every young player has skin as thick as the former Sweden striker. Some carry fear and shame back into the dressing room. If PSV focus only on the red card and forget to protect the player’s mind, they will make a bigger mistake than the tackle itself. The irony is that the angry crowd might be helping Van Bommel. The endless replays and moral judgments could force the KNVB disciplinary committee to pause. If they impose a long ban simply to satisfy public opinion, they become an extension of the press. That kind of reaction used to be called a witch-hunt, and Kieft did not hesitate to use that word. In Dutch football, where the media has enormous power to shape debate, a young player attacked in this way may receive hidden sympathy from disciplinary officials. Not because they think the red card was wrong, but because they do not want justice to be controlled by an online tribunal. In other Eredivisie matches I have seen tackles far worse than this one, yet nobody spoke about them two days later. Why did Van Bommel’s provoke such a violent response? Because it happened at Ajax, the great rival, in a match the whole country watched. Because the offender shared the surname of a legend, making the story easier for the media to sell. And because he left the pitch in a way that made him look incapable of explaining himself to the referee. That turned a moment into a full drama with a villain. Football should always be seen in layers. Data analysis tells us he was late; emotional analysis tells us he was reckless. But only one of those approaches actually helps a young player improve. The misalignment is not the machine’s fault; it is what people choose not to see. Here we see a young player being dragged away from his development context. No one mentions how well Van Bommel had been playing before, or that his father is PSV legend Mark van Bommel, or that his grandfather Bert van Marwijk once coached the Netherlands. Those men know the dark side of fame. Rob Jansen, an experienced agent, was right: how the boy deals with this and how PSV handle it publicly will decide everything. That is not theory; it is the lesson of many previous controversies. The remaining question is not for the referee. It is for PSV, the Van Bommel family and for Ruben himself. Can he step back into the light after a week of national criticism? PSV’s next match will be a bigger psychological test than any tactical session. Football does not die when the stadium is empty; it just shows its real bones. Likewise, a young player’s career does not end when he receives a red card. It only becomes truly dangerous when everyone around him chooses to define him by a single moment. Kieft is trying to bring the tide of opinion back towards balance. Without such voices, football can become a prison with no way out for young people who have made their first mistake.