Ali Boussaboun looks back on his time with former PSV player: ‘Back then, you saw things that were very special.’

At the age of sixteen, Arjen Robben made his debut in the 2000/2001 season for FC Groningen in professional football. At Groningen, Robben managed to impress enormously, and this earned the former striker a transfer to PSV in the summer of 2002.

After two years at PSV, Robben left for Chelsea to move to Real Madrid in 2007. After two years at Real Madrid, in the summer of 2009 the forward made a transfer to FC Bayern Munich and undoubtedly experienced the best period of his career there.

Robben won a total of eight times the Bundesliga in the period 2009-2019, five times the DFB-Pokal and once the Champions League in 2013. In that year, FC Bayern was supreme in Europe and for the first time in the club’s history, the renowned treble was secured.

In the final of the billion-dollar ball match against Borussia Dortmund, the former PSV player provided the winning goal for Der Rekordmeister (1-2). As a result, the South Germans were once again the best in Europe for the first time since 2001.

At the beginning of his career, Robben was frequently booed by the supporters of FC Groningen, as Ali Boussaboun still remembers all too well. Boussaboun often picked up the former footballer since Robben at the time did not yet have a driver’s license.

This tells the former pro in conversation with Sportnieuws.nl. ''In my time at FC Groningen he was still a seventeen-year-old kid on the left wing. He was still a bit reckless and at that time even got a bit booed by his own supporters, because he was playing so uninhibitedly. At the time he was only busy making runs, all with his head down. At FC Groningen we didn’t have a close-knit group back then, and I still remember how he was completely brought to the ground. Teammates went after him, while they should have been helping him'', says Boussaboun.

Where Robben had just started to attract attention, Boussaboun had already made enough minutes in the Eredivisie and gave Robben advice at the time about getting booed. ''So I was fairly experienced, and at a certain point I was in the car with Robben. Then I said: 'Boy, don't worry about those who carry on like that against you. This is their ceiling, and they should be happy if they get to play football here again next year, while you have signed for five years with PSV. Just go and enjoy yourself''', the former professional still recalls.

For Boussaboun, it soon became clear that Robben was going to be a major player. "As the season progressed, things started to click for him; you could see things in a seventeen-year-old kid that were very special. Then you could tell: he isn't an ordinary player, you know," said the former footballer.