Jon Dahl Tomasson: streetfighter with a passion…

There’s always something going on with Jon Dahl Tomasson. It may sound unsympathetic, but everytime there was a rumble on the pitch at Feyenoord, JD was in the thick of things.

He can have a laugh about it himself. Off the pitch, the Danish Dynamite resembles a choir boy more than a streetfighter. “Once the game is on, I want to win. I always had that. And I think you should always try to find the edge. The result is everything, week in week out. And in particularly this season!”

He’s the type of player that Feyenoord lacked, in the last month. A bit of venom. “It was always like this. In my first period at Feyenoord, we had more players looking for the limit. Paul Bosvelt and Pierre van Hooijdonk used all the tricks in the book. Hell, they wrote the book! If the shit hit the fan in those days, it was just another day at the office, really.”

Statistically, Tomasson is definitely a winner. This season, he played seven games and won five. He’s the only player who won more than he lost. And he scored six goals in nine matches. A fine score. “But it’s not good enough. The ratio is, but I haven’t played enough. Those injuries…man I got so frustrated. Those statistics won’t help too much, I had a tough time and in a season where I could have been of a lot of help.”

Tomasson saw the crisis and Verbeek’s exit from a distance. “But you do know what’s going on. You see things, you hear things…but you’re also an outsider. I was focused on getting fit and I got very agitated about it all. It wasn’t much fun in the stands. You want to have influence, be on the pitch. And there you are: doing your excercises, far away from the action.”

Tomasson can look back at a full career, having had success with Heerenveen, troubled times in Newcastle, again success at Feyenoord and a transfer to AC Milan. The last years, he almost faded away in Spain and Germany before he came home. He saw a team in desperation. “I think mentally, this team was low. All those stories, the situation with Verbeek, the results… It paralyzed the team. And everyone worked hard for it, all doing what they can, but the team missed something…passion…yeah.”

And he had his clashes with Verbeek. There were heated discussions about his recovery program with the stoic and tough coach. “Listen, where people work together there are different opinions. That’s all good. I don’t want to linger to long on this subject. It’s behind us now. We’ve gotta look towards the future. Next season will be our revenge season.”

“We need to do all we can to finish this season positively. This season is Feyenoord unworthy. We need to change things and we will. We can’t make the same mistakes and I am very happy with Mario Been and Leo Beenhakker for next year. I’m convinced they know what to do.” He worked with Beenhakker for two seasons, as a coach, during his first tenure in Rotterdam.

“Leo can do wonders with his mouth. And I mean that in the utmost positive way. He can motivate people and give them confidence. He’d say: come here, laddie, we’ll have talk, you and I. And it works. He’s got so much experience. He knows the club and he knows what to do to help the club up.”

Tomasson at AC Milan with Shevchenko

Tomasson won the title in 1999 with Beenhakker but clashed a year later. During a Champions League match against Lazio Roma he gave his coach the finger after he’d scored. “Ah, that… Everyone always starts about that incident. That’s almost 8 years ago. Those things happen. Do you think Leo loses sleep over that? He came round last month, we shook hands and talked football.”

After seven years Italy, Germany and Spain, Tomasson is more mature. “At AC Milan, I learned how important winning is. Everything there is about the three points. The pressure the club put on themselves was fascinating to behold.” He now tries to mentor the youngsters at Feyenoord. “I coach a lot, I try to pressure the team by giving the example. I don’t want to force things. I don’t think that works. Those youngsters here are tremendous players and we need to take care of them. But I also want to keep them sharp.”

And so, Tomasson gives out a knock every now and then. Or he plays the ref. “I realize it can look a bit over the top, but when I’m in the car on Monday morning, driving to De Kuip I want to be able to think: nice…three points…. There’s no better feeling than that.”