NEC and Dutch international goalkeeper Jasper Cillessen has apologised to supporters after Sunday’s 4-1 derby defeat to Vitesse. The 33-year-old goalkeeper made numerous mistakes at the Goffertstadion to hand relegation threatened Vitesse a simple victory.
The away side opened the scoring in the 25th minute. A simple strike from Matus Bero slid under the left arm of Cillessen, into the bottom right corner. Just three minutes later Cillessen made his biggest blunder of the day. The former Ajax shot-stopper was dispossessed by Vitesse striker Mohamed Sankoh just a few yards from goal. Sankoh played the ball to teammate Kacper Kozlowski who tapped the ball into an empty net to make it 2-0. The NEC Nijmegen nightmare continued in the second half. An own goal from defender Bart van Rooij gave Phillip Cocu’s side a 3-0 lead. NEC pulled one goal back through Dirk Proper, but Vitesse’s Ryan Flamingo put the game to bed with an 83rd-minute strike.Â
Speaking to ESPN after the game, Cillessen, who has 65 Netherlands national team caps to his name, said ‘Sorry for my language, but this sucks. This should not happen to me. I blame myself the most for the second and the third goal. I have no explanation for this. I’m going to look at the footage to see what went wrong.’ Cillessen admitted he had let down the supporters with his ‘terrible mistakes’. The defeat keeps NEC Nijmegen 10th in the Eredivisie table (35 points). Vitesse sit 13th (30 points), just five points off the drop zone. NEC have now picked up back-to-back home defeats, having lost 4-2 to PSV on April 1st. Prior to that, they hadn’t lost a home game since the first match of the season back in August. Next up they travel to Groningen, who sit second from bottom.
