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Fullname: Pierre van Hooijdonk
aka: Huggy, PvH
Height: 6ft 4′
Weight: 13 stone
Born: 29 Nov 1969
Birthplace: Steenbergen, Netherlands
Signed: 11 January 1995
Left: 10 March 1997
Position: Centre-Forward
Debut: Celtic 1-1 Hearts, League 11 January 1995
Internationals: Netherlands
International Caps: 40
International Goals: 12
Biog![[Untitled]](https://wikifoundryimages.s3.amazonaws.com/da6c05ec4c38cd168d2d2cc33ef7128c "[Untitled]")
When Tommy Burns signed Pierre van Hooijdonk in January 1995 (after being hunted down by Davie Hay) for £1.2 million, he signed a genuine quality player.
It is thought that 5,000 extra supporters turned out to see his debut against Hearts, and he rewarded their presence with a goal described as a “a rare gem in a field of rock” by one journalist, a superb shot that amazed everyone. It was a thunderbolt of a shot that almost burst the net, and was to be his signature style. He was a tall strong physical striker, and wasn’t afraid to use his strength to get the upper hand on the opposition. This helped him in the air for headers and on the ground in challenges, and in effect he was scoring bags of goals for the first team.
He was a productive striker from the start and was to make a good name for himself in his first season, which was capped by his goal against Airdrie which gave Celtic the Scottish Cup, the club’s first trophy since 1989, and a time to celebrate after the long Barren Years. He’d signed himself into the Celtic history books with that goal, a favourite of all. He later admitted that it was after this match when he saw the celebrations and tears from his fellow players that he understood what the club meant to all.
The man known as ‘Huggy‘ went on to score 32 goals in total in his first full season at the club. Manager Tommy Burns said of his star signing:
“I didn’t expect him to have any problems fitting into Scottish football, but he has added a silky touch and his goal ratio was very good“.
Pierre van Hooijdonk’s skill had not gone unnoticed and Dutch side Feyenoord even made a £2m bid for him in April 1996 which thankfully was knocked back. Their coach Arie Hann said: “Van Hooijdonk’s prolific goalscoring has put him in an elite group. He was one of the best around and his talent has attracted attention“. When a player scores as much as he did, who would not notice?
He was to play a pivot role for the club, and slotted in well with Di Canio & Jorge Cadette for a classic attacking line in the 1996-97 side which put the fear into everyone, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. It wowed and entertained the crowds, and the attack was ferocious yet we still loss the league despite a great record, and Rangers in the head-to-head matches had the upper hand, mainly as whilst the attack was strong this came at the cost of a focus on defence. Many look back with price on that season for the great attacking football of which Pierre van Hooijdonk was a huge part.
Sadly, it all went to his head and amidst controversy Pierre van Hooijdonk left Celtic for Nottingham Forrest in 1997. He was infamously known to bicker about his wages, which didn’t go well with Celtic’s then thrifty Chief Executive at the time (Fergus McCann). Pierre van Hooijdonk’s time was finished when he went on Radio and stated that “£7,000 may be good for a homeless person, but £7,000 a week is not good enough for a top class forward“. Stupid, crass, pathetic and unnecessary comment, and he had to go. No one can negotiate with a person after remarks like that.
After 92 games with an exceptional goal return of 56 goals, it was all over, and despite all the great goals and achievements, he was to be tagged & lumbered with that crass remark in the history books.
Similar stupidity followed him when he controversially went on strike at his next club, Notts Forest, before being transferred back home to Holland. Controversy did damage his career, at one point he claimed that George Graham (Arsenal manager) wanted to sign him from Notts Forest, only for George Graham to retort back that there was no truth in it and didn’t want the hassle from Pierre van Hooijdonk as had marked his time at Notts Forrest. As Pierre van Hooijdonk was to later reflect on his error to leave Celtic to Notts Forrest:
“I jumped on the first train that passed and … that wasn’t the best train.”
You reap what you sow. His career could have been so much more, although there were to be many high points too.
In later years Pierre van Hooijdonk seems to have matured as a person and was good enough to come back over to Glasgow for Tommy Burn’s funeral. He also returned and played in the Tommy Burn’s Tribute match whereby he and Jorge Cadete played very well although both were long retired from the front line of the game and were now approaching 40 years of age. Pierre van Hooijdonk really seemed to enjoy his time back amongst the Celtic fans and admitted he regretted having left Celtic when he did and also in the manner he did. For that we’ll respect him.
Post Celtic Career
Though relegated in his first season with Nottingham Forest he pledged to stay with them and helped in no small part to win promotion again to the English Premier Division in 1998/99. Forest though failed to invest in the team and Pierre van Hooijdonk asked for a transfer. The club refused. Pierre felt “betrayed” by what he thought had been a deal with the management and announced his intention to strike. He kept fit by training with his former club NAC Breda. Nottingham Forest refused to listen to offers for him despite their need for both a striker or the cash from his sale.
At the end of the 1998/99 season he returned to the Netherlands with Vitesse Arnhem to continue his career and did much to convince his critics of his goal-scoring abilities when he helped the Arnhem team to a UEFA Cup spot with 25 goals in one season.
Van Hooijdonk then signed a three year deal with Benfica in 2000. He eventually only played one season for them with 19 goals. At Benfica he faced the same problems as he faced at Nottingham Forest with the team going through three different managers in the season. The new chairman at Benfica had no faith in Pierre van Hooijdonk and dropped him.
At the end of the 2000/01 season, he signed for his fourth Dutch club, Feyenoord, where he made his name for his amazing free kick abilities and helped them to the UEFA Cup in 2002.
Never one to settle down, Pierre van Hooijdonk joined Fenerbahce at the beginning of the 2003-04 season where he featured in 52 games for the Turkish club and scored 32 goals (24 in his first season). He won league title medals for the Turkish First Football League in 2003/04 and 2004/05. He is still one of their supporters’ most popular and beloved former players.
In mid-2005, he re-signed for his first club, NAC, playing 17 games but scoring only 5 goals. During the winter transfer window of the 2005/06 season, he re-signed for Feyenoord, where he scored 8 goals in 37 appearances.
On 18th October 2006 Pierre van Hooijdonk announced his retirement was to be at the end of the 2006/07 season. On 13th May 2007 he played his final professional match, a draw against FC Groningen in the end of season play-offs.
He moved on to become a players’ agent in the game, but got caught up in an investment scam through which he lost around £2m.
Despite all the dramas throughout his career, he has much to look back on his time with some fondness.
His son, Sydney van Hooijdonk, went on to become a footballer following in his father’s footsteps, and was often linked with a move to Celtic.
[…]
Playing Career
| Club | From | To | Fee | League | Scottish Cup | League cup | Other | ||||
| Feyenoord | 31/01/2006 | Signed | No appearance data available | ||||||||
| Fenerbahce | 01/07/2004 | 31/01/2006 | Signed | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 3 (2) | 1 |
| Feyenoord | 11/07/2001 | 01/07/2004 | Signed | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 16 (0) | 11 |
| Benfica | 01/07/2000 | 11/07/2001 | Signed | No appearance data available | |||||||
| Vitesse Arn. | 29/06/1999 | 01/07/2000 | £3,500,000 | 28 (0) | 22 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Nottm Forest | 10/03/1997 | 29/06/1999 | £4,500,000 | 68 (3) | 36 | 0 (1) | 1 | 4 (1) | 4 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| Celtic | 11/01/1995 | 10/03/1997 | £1,200,000 | 66 (3) | 44 | 10 (0) | 9 | 5 (1) | 3 | 5 (2) | 0 |
| NAC Breda | 01/08/1991 | 11/01/1995 | Signed | 99 (0) | 71 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 |
| RBC Roosendaal | 01/08/1989 | 01/08/1991 | 69 (0) | 33 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | 0 (0) | 0 | |
| Totals | £9,200,000 | 330 (6) | 206 | 10 (1) | 10 | 9 (2) | 7 | 24 (4) | 12 | ||
| goals / game | 0.61 | 0.9 | 0.63 | 0.42 | |||||||
| Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | Apps | Goals | ||||
Honours with Celtic
Scottish Cup
Quotes
In 2014, ex-Rangers goalkeeper Andy Goram, when opening a pub, spoke of an altercation with Pierre van Hooijdonk in a Celtic v Rangers match in 1996. He told a cheering group of Rangers fans that when he saved the Dutchman’s penalty in that game he went up to him and called him – and he was paraphrasing here –
“a non-white, unclean, non-Protestant with no father”.
Pierre Van Hooijdonk on Andy Goram (2015)
(source: https://www.scotsman.com/sport/tom-english-the-self-pitying-goram-still-sees-himself-as-the-victim-1-1362600)
“Scoring the winning goal in that final and seeing the joy and happiness of the fans and players made me realise how important it was for Celtic after six years without a trophy.
“I remember everything about the goal. A ball was kicked away and it ended up at the feet of Tosh McKinlay who put an early cross in towards the back post. I jumped just a little bit higher than my opponent and headed a diagonal header into the ground and it went into the far corner.
“The moment when I really realised what it all meant was when the game finished and I saw Paul McStay and Peter Grant, two real Celtic men, crying on the pitch and hugging each other for 10 or 15 minutes, that´s when I realised what this club meant.”
Pierre Van Hooijdonk (May 2013)
“Pierre wasn’t well known before we bought him from NAC Breda.
“But his head got very big very soon after he arrived in Glasgow.
“I’m not surprised by what’s happened to any of them [The Three Amigos]. What DOES surprise me is someone is willing to pay to take trouble off your hands.”
Chairman Fergus McCann on PvH (1998)
“On the day I signed for Celtic, I was at the hotel at night having dinner with my family and Tommy arrived with a pile of VHS video tapes and photographs of Celtic and told me to watch and look at them to find out about the history of the club.”
Pierre Van H on Tommy Burns (Jun 2020)
“That’s bulls**t! Did Brian Laudrup or Henrik Larsson lose their place in the Danish or Swedish national team when they moved to Scotland? And those two players were playing for nations who were at a different level to the Irish team right now. You don’t become a sh*t player simply by moving leagues. When I secured my place in the Dutch national team I was at Celtic and I asked the coach, Guus Hiddink, does it matter what league I am playing in? He said the only thing that mattered was that I was playing well.”
Pierre Van H on playing in the Scottish top tier (Sep 2020)
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Daily Record
24 May 2013
PIERRE VAN HOOIJDONK last night claimed Rangers had been guilty of financial doping as he compared them to Tour de France drug cheats.
The former Celtic striker has no sympathy for the Ibrox side after watching them tumble to the Third Division following a financial implosion. The Dutchman was part of the Hoops side that finished second to the big-spending Ibrox club in 1996 – despite losing just one game all season.
Van Hooijdonk claims the sums Gers spent on stars they couldn’t really afford gave them an unfair advantage.
And he reckons that sowed the seeds for their eventual descent into administration then liquidation.
He said: “I’m not sorry for Rangers. I’m sorry for a lot of things missing from Scottish football now.
“But they spent too much. They made their mistakes.
“People can say we went a season and lost once while David Murray was signing players he could not afford.
“I agree. I know why people would say that.
“But is it the same as Floyd Landis winning the Tour de France because of doping?
“Is there a similarity there? If you are number two do you say you should have won the Tour de France? Maybe, I can see why they say that.”
But van Hooijdonk admits Gers haven’t been the only club guilty of overspending.
He said: “In football there are so many other clubs who did the same as Rangers.
“In Spain there are a lot of teams in debt. But in Holland if you are £1million in debt that’s you finished.
“Across Europe there are no rules which say you are allowed to have, say, just £500,000 of football debt.
“It’s completely unregulated. And that’s why football has never been a completely honest competition.”
The 43-year-old believes there should be no forgiveness for clubs in a financial mess.
He said: “Rangers made their mistakes and they have to pay for them – like many other clubs these days.
“I say to my Dutch friends who played for Rangers that they should help.
“We lost two clubs from the Dutch First Division this year. It’s a pity but if you do the crime you must do the time.”
Interview
Pierre van Hooijdonk: ‘I told Ron Atkinson he was a pub manager’
Michael Butler
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/oct/13/pierre-van-hooijdonk-nottingham-forest-celtic-netherlands-ron-atkinson
The Dutch striker on his time at Nottingham Forest, Celtic and returning to Glasgow to pay tribute to Fernando Ricksen
@michaelbutler18
Sun 13 Oct 2019 09.00 BST
Last modified on Sun 13 Oct 2019 12.20 BST
Pierre van Hooijdonk does a very good Ron Atkinson impression. It is genuinely funny as, in the lobby of an Amsterdam hotel, he tries in vain to collapse his 6ft 4in frame into something resembling Big Ron. The Dutchman’s accent and intonation, however, are spot on as we discuss his final few months under Atkinson at Nottingham Forest in 1998-99, when the club was relegated from the Premier League. They have not been back since.
“Despite being bottom of the league, Ron had just appeared in a Carling advert as some sort of clueless medieval king who had just discovered football,” Van Hooijdonk says. “I remember one training session afterwards where I was pissed off with the whole situation and I cursed loudly. Ron replied: ‘If you don’t like it, why don’t you **** off?’ So I did, and as I walked off the training pitch I shouted: ‘The only reason they asked you on that beer ad is because you are the biggest pub manager in the country.’
“Later that afternoon, Ron called me at home to come and see him in his office. He was smiling and said: ‘I liked your joke. A couple more games are left, you can leave after that, just give your best.’
“We laughed it off. Ron was a people person and I can imagine him doing better with the right group of players. He was funny, warm, even if his tactical approach was the same as Dave Bassett’s. And all the players were pissing themselves when he got into the wrong dugout in his first game in charge.”
It proved a rare moment of lightness in a turbulent time for Forest and Van Hooijdonk, who had fired the club to the 1997-98 First Division title the previous season with 34 goals, scored at the World Cup for the Netherlands and then spent the first few months of the next season on strike after failing to secure a move away from Forest.
“The thing that started all that was after the World Cup Newcastle and Ruud Gullit came in with a £7m bid, twice what Forest had paid,” Van Hooijdonk says. “But Bassett told the papers my price was £10m. Ten million! In 1998, that’s like putting a price tag on a bottle of water and asking for £25. Officially it’s for sale but it’s not for sale.”
Van Hooijdonk would not play in the first team until November, eventually reintegrated by a now‑desperate Bassett, who would be sacked and replaced by Atkinson two months later. Van Hooijdonk is withering in his assessment of the former Wimbledon manager.
“Bassett’s training was primitive. We played five-a-side most of the time. We would do drills where the goalkeeper, Dave Beasant, was playing up front. Bassett wasn’t there most of the time. Then, on a Friday, he would turn up. Before matches we would just go to an Italian restaurant opposite the City Ground. We could order what we wanted: chicken wings, carbonara with loads of sauce, french fries, whatever.”
Bassett was not the only obstacle for Van Hooijdonk. Some players publicly made their feelings known about the Dutchman, and in one game refused to celebrate one of his goals. While Van Hooijdonk was on strike, Steve Stone said he “couldn’t give a **** what Pierre does next” and said the striker was not welcome in the dressing room. “Why was it that no foreign player at Forest was interviewed?” Van Hooijdonk says. “To this day, there is not one foreign player from my time at Forest that has said something bad about me.
“When I returned that November, I called a meeting with the players in the dressing room, explained the reasons I stayed away in bullet-point form and asked if anyone had any questions. That was their time to say something, face to face. All the guys who said something when I was away stayed quiet. Only one person, Geoff Thomas, said he didn’t agree with me. And I respected Geoff for that.
“People can say I went on strike but I believe nobody can say that as a colleague and a professional I was an *******.”
Forest were understandably reluctant to let Van Hooijdonk go. He was the club’s best striker since Stan Collymore and Teddy Sheringham, a two-footed, world-class set-piece specialist, and did not look out of place alongside Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Kluivert in an orange shirt. He eventually left for Vitesse Arnhem in the summer of 1999 for £3.5m.
He had arrived at Forest from Celtic, with his spell in Glasgow also controversial. “In Scotland, every day the papers are on you, mad for Celtic and Rangers. But at Forest, it was not the same. I didn’t miss the attention but you noticed the difference.
“In Glasgow, I was easy to recognise: tall and dark. I got some trouble from Rangers fans; once at some traffic lights a boy opened my car door and spat at me. It sucked the energy out of me.
“I was single for six months there but didn’t go out because I had to be careful. If I went to a concert, I would take a taxi and crouch down in the back seat as we went past the pubs. Even when I was playing for Fenerbahce with the Galatasaray fans or for Benfica with the Porto fans, the danger was never as bad.”
Van Hooijdonk made an immediate impact for Celtic, scoring a famous 1995 Scottish Cup final winner – the club’s first trophy for six years – and the next season would be the league’s top scorer with 26 goals. Paolo Di Canio and Jorge Cadete would later join to form a frontline known as the Three Amigos.
“When I arrived at Celtic in 1994 I was not impressed with the quality,” Van Hooijdonk says. “But when Andreas Thom joined, then Jorge and Paolo, the difference in level was unbelievable. It was a great partnership.
“John Collins had taken me to his home for dinner when I had joined, so when the other foreigners arrived I did the same. Andreas at the time was smoking cigarettes and so was my wife, so he felt safe at my home. He was from East Germany; they are a little bit different, more suspicious.
“Paolo also came round. At the ‘96 Olympics the volleyball final was between Holland and Italy. I said to him after training that he should come to my house to watch. It was my first time meeting him properly and I thought he was going to be relaxed, but he was on the floor, rolling around, screaming with passion at every point. Paolo was a funny guy – he once called a team meeting because Andreas had not passed the ball to him.”
Pierre Van Hooijdonk beats Dunfermline keeper Ian Westwater to score for Celtic in 1996.
Di Canio, Cadete and Van Hooijdonk would all leave Celtic in acrimony, with the Dutchman falling out with the chairman, Fergus McCann, over a new contract, declaring Celtic’s offer of £7,000 a week was “enough for the homeless but not for an international striker” in 1996.
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“Our best players were on five‑figure sums per week and I was not,” Van Hooijdonk says. “McCann said if I did well he would raise my salary. I became top scorer but he never offered me the same money as the others. I’m a man of my word.”
Van Hooijdonk’s goal record is astonishing: 335 in 551 games, including at least a goal every other game for seven clubs between 1991 and 2005. His pinnacle was the Uefa Cup triumph with an unfancied Feyenoord in 2002, alongside a young Robin van Persie. Van Hooijdonk scored in every knockout round, including two goals in the final (in Rotterdam) against Borussia Dortmund, one a trademark free-kick.
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Remarkably, at 49, Van Hooijdonk plays for a Sunday league team. He is still besotted by football and easy to talk to: about how he spent his pocket money as a kid on hiring a sports hall because it had a goal with a net, or about Harry Kane, or his 19-year-old son, Sydney van Hooijdonk, a striker for his hometown club, NAC Breda.
Articulate and passionate, it is perhaps unsurprising he works as a TV pundit in the Netherlands. It allowed him to visit Glasgow last month for Feyenoord’s match against Rangers, where he paid tribute to his former teammate Fernando Ricksen at Ibrox.
Pierre van Hooijdonk (@pierrevh17)
#fernandoricksen pic.twitter.com/vML0GOVIqN
September 19, 2019
“I knew Fernando through the national team and could not miss out on the opportunity to show my respects,” he says.
It seems some of the Glasgow confrontation has died down. “Some Rangers fans even said hello to me.”
Pierre van Hooijdonk still irked at Celtic’s failure to stop Rangers’ 9-in-a-row
Former Parkhead striker on why 1995/96 campaign was his most frustrating
By Stephen Halliday
Tuesday, 16th June 2020, 7:30 am
https://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/international/pierre-van-hooijdonk-still-irked-celtics-failure-stop-rangers-9-row-2885048
Pierre van Hooijdonk will always harbour regrets over Celtic’s failure to derail Rangers’ record-equalling run of nine consecutive league title wins during his spell with the Parkhead club.
For the former Dutch international striker, the greatest source of dismay was the 1995-96 campaign when he was top scorer with 26 goals for a swashbuckling Celtic side which lost just one league match all season under Tommy Burns’ management but still fell short of halting Walter Smith’s relentless Rangers team.
“When I arrived [in January 1995], the team was not of Celtic standard,” recalls van Hooijdonk. “But that summer, Tommy brought in some really good players and we played some attractive, attacking football.
“We were scoring goals for fun and winning games for fun, but we still could not catch Rangers. They had Brian Laudrup and Paul Gascoigne. I was frustrated. We all were.
“We lost just one game, but we still finished four points behind. We maybe didn’t feel we were a better team than Rangers but we felt we were more of a team.
“But Rangers had pure class in their individual players who could easily win games for them. Around November time, we felt we were really a force, probably stronger.
“But, again, they had Laudrup. He was different class. He p***** the Scottish League, with two fingers in his nose.
“Seriously, I’d never seen a guy playing on the highest level make football look so easy. If necessary, he just put his feet on the gas pedals and ‘boom!’. Or he would create something special. He was magnificent.
“But, don’t forget, Celtic came from far behind. Tommy was building a new team. Rangers had dominated Scottish football for a few years and nobody expected us to change that immediately. We came unbelievably close to winning the league, but we didn’t.
“Not winning the league the following season was probably more frustrating because you recognised your own team as being capable of winning it.”
Van Hooijdonk left Celtic for Nottingham Forest before the 1997-98 campaign when, under his compatriot Wim Jansen, they succeeded in stopping Rangers making it ten-in-a-row.
That pressure will fall on Steven Gerrard and his Rangers squad in the coming season when they will need to find the qualities and characteristics Van Hooijdonk says are essential in overcoming a more dominant rival.
“What was missing in our group? Maybe the experience of winning,” he told The Lockdown Tactics podcast.
“The top players at Rangers had all played for big clubs in Europe and there was always pressure on them to win the title.
“The players Celtic signed were very good players but they came from smaller clubs. So, you have to adapt to that winning attitude and it takes time.
“It was the same for me. It is a different pressure and a different mentality. If we dropped points then the whole week was miserable.
“I had a high level of expectation at Celtic and I knew I had to deliver. I joined the club not long after the loss to Raith Rovers in the League Cup final. That was a major disappointment.
“As a striker you want to start really well. I was lucky to do it after nine minutes or so, maybe my best goal of my Celtic career. My debut goal against Hearts was a special memory. That kept the fans calm and they started to believe I could do well.
“But we did win the Scottish Cup in 1995 against Airdrie. It was unbelievable to win the cup. I started the game with a hamstring injury. I picked it up at Seamill on the lawn there in the build-up preparations.
“I was very doubtful but I wanted to play. It was my first final. It was great to score, to get on the end of Tosh McKinlay’s cross. I had to come off in the first half as my hamstring was sore.
“It was a horrible final, we didn’t really play well. But I was so happy we won. It was great for Tommy Burns and the supporters.”
Van Hooijdonk retains great affection for Burns, who sadly died in 2008 at the age of 51.
“On the day I signed for Celtic, I was at the hotel at night having dinner with my family and Tommy arrived with a pile of VHS video tapes and photographs of Celtic and told me to watch and look at them to find out about the history of the club,” he recalls.
“He ended up staying for a bite to eat with my parents. I watched the tapes and looked at the photos. It was a nice introduction to a great club.
“Tommy was very good at people management because his heart was always there, every hour of every day. If players were a little bit grumpy, then he would put an arm around them and make them smile.
“As a coach, he also went to other countries to see how they were doing things. He wanted to learn and he wanted his players to learn. He was a young manager and open minded to new ideas.”
The much-travelled Van Hooijdonk scored 375 goals in 634 career appearances for nine clubs and regards his role in Feyenoord’s 2002 Uefa Cup winning side, including a defeat of Rangers, as the highlight.
“I was so happy when I played for Feyenoord and we knocked out Rangers,” he says. “The frustration of not being able to win the title with Celtic was always there, so this win was my biggest revenge for that.
“I scored two identical free-kicks in the second leg in Rotterdam. There was a little too much panic and fear in the Rangers wall, and Lorenzo Amoruso was maybe going to stand on the goal line.
“If you look at the photos of the wall for the second free-kick, the guys were not the bravest. I still have fun with my old international team-mates Arthur Numan and Ronald de Boer about it, as they had their faces covered. If the wall had jumped, I’m sure both of the free-kicks would not have gone in.
“I used to practice free-kicks almost every day, so it was always nice when they went in. We went on to win the Uefa Cup that season and that was a great moment, to win it in our own stadium against Borussia Dortmund.”