Boscagli important again
For the game in northern Limburg, head coach Roger Schmidt saw no reason to change his eleven after last Sunday's 3-0 win over Heracles Almelo. So Olivier Boscagli was once again in midfield for PSV. The Frenchman showed after just under 15 minutes why Schmidt made that choice, as he was at the base of the 0-1. Boscagli opened beautifully on Donyell Malen, who then offered Cody Gakpo a free shooting opportunity. That opportunity was wasted on the Eindhoven native: Gakpo took a dry shot and signed for the opening goal.

No danger
PSV did not press after that, but also had little to fear from an attacking impotent VVV-Venlo. Yvon Mvogo was called into action once, but that was when Giakoumakis was flagged for offside. Through Eran Zahavi and Gakpo again, Schmidt's team had a few more shooting chances, but no second goal.

Baltempo
In the opening phase of the second half, the home team bit off more fiercely. With opportunistic football from a compact organization, VVV-Venlo occasionally threatened. Yet this did not cause PSV to panic, which after an hour of play increased the pace of the ball and saw that rewarded immediately. An attack set up by Mario Götze ended up at the feet of Malen. On the edge of offside he tapped in the 0-2.

Decided
After a similar attack, PSV's top scorer had the ball on a silver platter to score his second and PSV's third goal a quarter of an hour before time, but this time Malen didn't quite get his passes right and shot wide. That miss did not make the game at all exciting. After the 0-2, the game was decided. PSV was boosted by the comeback of Armando Obispo. The defender was out for a long time, but made his first minutes of the season in Venlo.