No surprises in Oranje

Hmm… smells 4-4-2.

By the way, I just translated Simon Kupers article on Rijkaard into English. Feel free to post it on your blog Jan, or read it or delete it or do whatever you like to.

By Simon Kuper
Translated by Simon Lerkot Berglind

When Silvio Berlusconis Milan won its first European Cup title in 1989 by defeating Steaua Bukarest with 4-0 in Barcelona, the evening was ended with an banquet. Players, board people and others were already sitting by their tables when Berlusconi walked in. Almost everybody in the room rised from their chairs and applauded. When il presidente went from table to table with a large smile on his face, people eagerly took the chance to shake his hand.

After a while, Berlusconi came to the Dutch table, where his three fantastic tulipani – Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard were sitting down with two Dutch friends. The Dutchmen were still sitting down.
- Dutch people are left, Rijkaard explains.
He doesnt really speak about the usual, political scale, but is trying to explain an instinctive calvinistic feeling about equality. He tells the story a summer night in a river house in Amsterdam many years later.
- I even think Marco continued to eat. When Berlusconi understood we werent going to stand up, he lost his smile.
Rijkaard felt sorry for Berlusconi, so he turned around and raised to the half – he show us how he did it – and took his hand to save his face.
- I think he appreciated it, because after that, our relation became a bit better. Before that, Gullit was the only one who stood him close.
Most Rijkaard stories give a good picture of many people at the same time. Especially Gullit will return in many stories later on.

As I wrote, it is an evening in Amsterdam in the year 2001 when I get to hear all these stories. The cabaret artist living in the river house arranges a quiz about soccer followed by a diner about once a year, or sometimes every other year. The guests are old Dutch football players and some of them are journalists. In my house in Paris there is a photo with the guests from 2001. We stand in the artists wonderful living room with yellow tree floor, two big wall clocks and the walls almost covered my modern art. I wear an old football training shirt from the 80’s that once belonged to Danish football player Sören Lerby. On the left side of tiny me, I have the old Dutch national team striker Wim Kieft, who look like a big blonde male bimbo. On my other side we have Danny Blind with his curled hair, team captain in Ajax when they won the Champions League in 1995. Stefan Pettersson, the center who once was so popular in Ajax that he was called “Mr Ajax”, has traveled all this way from Gothenburg only to be at this evening.

The other people on the photo is maily big Dutch guys: a couple of journalists, the nephew of the cabaret arist, and, at the very left in the back row, the hero of tonight, Rijkaard. He has giant triceps, because as unemployed he can spend his days training at the gym, but he has also gotten a bit of a stomach, like most men his age. A year earliey, at Euro 2000, he left his job as Dutch national team coach after the Dutches in some way managed to miss five penaltys in the semi against Italy. He is only 38 years old but its doubtful if he is ever going to coach a team again. I already know him a bit, I interview him when he was manager. It was boring just like all the other interviews with Rijkaard, so before this night I thought he was a boring guy.

The people on the picture is sort of working brothers, sort of like the guild Rembrandt once pictured. This is the Dutch football etabliss????, and every player who is here tonight knows eachother. Rijkaard was only 17 when he together with equally old Wim Kieft made his way to the first team in 1980. Blind and Rijkaard played together in the central defense in Rijkaards last game of his career, the Champions League final 1995.

Ive kept this story for myself in years, even though Rijkaard since then has become the most succesfull team manager in Europe. I now feel it is my duty against football history to tell this story. But to keep some discretion, I would like you to keep this in Sweden.

We sit behind a huge tree table. Pettersson is on the right of me, Blind on the left, and Rijkaard on the left of Blind. I am the only one in our corner of the table who was never one an european title, but everybody is so nice that I almost think that I’ve done it.

The quiz begins. Ten questions per round, maybe six rounds. Who is the only football player on the cover of the Sergeant Pepper-CD? When did goalie Jan van Beveren debut in the national team? What was the only player from NAC Breda in the Dutch squad for Euro 1980? Okey, that one Rijkaard knew, but only because he had played against the guy. Otherwise he dont impress, I mean, he knows most of the people the quiz is about!

I joke with him about it. There is no problem joking with him about those things. Every time he and I speak this night, he lean back so he can see me behind Blind, the touches my shoulder, grabs my hand, looks me in the eye and listen to me. He counters my critisism.
- How many collegues do you have on the paper? How much do you know about them?
Quite a lot actually. Its obvious Rijkaard never worked in a paper staff.

The quiz continues. Who was subbed in then Frank Rijkaard was substituted in the world cup game between Holland and Brazil in 1994?
Normally the answer would have been Aron Winter. He was always a sub in the national team. Under a short period he even held the Dutch record in most caps, even if he almost never played from start. But against Brazil, Holland was one down in the second half. This means they probably put in some one else, since Winter is the least creative player in the history of football.
Rijkaard guesses Winter. My guess is Ronald de Boer. I am right.
- Frank, I say, how could you not remember who you got substituted against in your final game with Oranje?
- I didnt see anything. I had tears in my eyes, he says.
- Is that true? I respond, shocked that the jokeful tone is gone.
- Of course. Its terrible to be substituted.
Later it shows that Rijkaard went to a christian school as a kid.
- But you probably dont know anything about that either, I tease, and continued: Adam and…?
- “… Gerrit?” Rijkaard suggests.
I win the quiz. Blind, who will defeat me in later years of the event, comes third. I think Rijkaard comes sixth.
- Back to coaching, he jokes.
I get a trofee that I lift over my head in exactly the same way as Danny Blind did when Ajax won, but I dont think anyone gets the quote.

Already before dinner, its obvious that there is a strong hierarki between the players. All four was wonderful players on their time, they won lots of titles in Europe and made lots of caps, but Rijkaard is the first of the equals. Not only is he more intelligent, charmy, well spoken and funnier than the others, he was also a better player. The rules of the dressing room still rules. Kieft asks him a couple of times to tell some of his anecdotes, and when Rijkaard finally begins to speak, everbody leans back and listen.
- Take the one about Passarella, Kieft says.
Rijkaard begins to say that it is a story that he has heard from the old Internazionale forward Aldo Serena, who told it with much respect for Passarella. It was in the end of the eighties and Inter had an away game in Serie A. They were down with a couple of goals when they got a penalty in the end. The highly respected argentinian central defender Daniel Passarella begins to run over the pitch to take the penalty, but Alessandro Altobelli – who like every forward thinks a goal is a goal – takes the penalty and scores before Passarella has a chance. Shortly later, the referee blows his whistle and Inter had lost big.

In the dressing room after the game, Passarella yells:
- Its always the same thing! When its 0-0 nobody dares to take the penalty, but when its not about anything, everbody wants to take it.
He grabbed his balls.
- You are all cowards! You have no balls, no cojones!
Passarella went on in the same style for a while. Most Inter players were used to it so they didnt care, but after a while Altobelli couldnt stand it any longer. He walked to Passarella and said:
- You talking to me?
Passarella knocked him down with one single hit. Rijkaard shows. Passarella undresses and takes a shower. After a couple of minutes, Altobelli had recovered. He looked around with wild eyes, and suddenly he remembered what had happened. On his side he had a fruit bowl, there were always fruit in the dressing rooms in Italy by the time. In the bowl Altobelli finds a little knife, used to cut the fruits. He started looking after Passarella and found him in a shower where he stood naked and shampoed his hair. Altobelli waved the knife in front of him.
- What are you waiting for, Passarella said and waved Altobelli to come closer.
Altobelli didnt know what to do. He didnt really want to kill his team mate. If he did, he might be put on the transfer list. So the just stood there and waved his knife while some players dragged him away. Rijkaard imitates Altobelli when he pretends to be dragged away against his will while he is really eased – all while Passarella continues to wash his hair.

One of the things that make Rijkaards stories so interesting is the cast: he was most top players colleague in Serie A, for example Maradona in Napoli.
- I played against him pretty many times. His team mates was really not top notch players, sometimes he got passes behind him, but still…
And Rijkaard shows how Maradona applaudes and gives his sad team mate the thumb up.
It is impossible not to discuss the usual Dutch discussion of who is the better one: Cruijff or Maradona. Rijkaard, who played with Cruijff in Ajax, ends the debate:
- Maradona could cheer up his team mates. But he couldnt move them to new positions where they played better, like Johan could.

Rijkaard is a good listener, but we others prefer when he talks. When he goes to the bathroom it feels almost empty, even if we are a dozen of people around the table. I follow him with my eyes when ge comes back. He looks at all the expensive paintings and I have a feeling that he likes being here.

Its not possible for a man to speak for eight hours, so sometimes someone else too has to talk. Once every half an hour, Pettersson says something and I try to be patient enough to listen at him while I with my other ear try to hear what Rijkaard says. Pettersson tells me that Anders Svensson, a Swede who just signed for Southampton, is a really good player. Its exactly those kind of tips that we journalists want, a player that you have never heard of but who is predicted a big future. When Svensson dominates in England, I will already know about him.

The cabaret artist himself makes the food, and while the meals come and go, Rijkaard improvises some kind of humoristic novel based on his favorite subject: the 80s Milan. Its not the games that he remembers, but the people, the days on the training center Milanelllo, a bunch of young guys who had fun together.
- Gullit talked all the time, Rijkaard says smiling.
Gullit and he has not only known eachother since they were kids, their fathers, George Gullit and Herman Rijkaard, came with the same boat from Surinam and both player football as half-pros in Holland. Rijkaard and Gullit was in the same friend community as kids in Amsterdam-West. They and Kieft debuted at the same time in the national team, against Switzerland 1981 during half time, a substitution the Swiss referee never noticed. In AC Milan they met again.

One day, Rijkaard ate lunch with the defender Mauro Tassotti, “the guy with the big nose”. They studied Gullit, who sat at another table and held a monologue while a couple of young players, like Stroppa, say with open mouths and looked at him while their food was getting cold. The slow thinking van Basten sat beside Gullit and just kept eating.
- Guarda, Marco, Tassotti said to Rijkaard.
Tassotti took two pieces of bread from a basket and put one behind each ear and looked at van Basten. No one in this succesfull Milan team could miss that Tassotti was imitating the big ears of Gullit. Van Basten looked at Tassotti, lift one of his eyebrows a millimeter and kept eating.

At another lunch Gullit told a joke at his table that made his young pupils laugh so much that they almost fell out of their chairs. At the main table, Sacchi raised up, hit his glass and nicely said:
- Ruud, tell the story to us too, so we can hear what was so funny.
Rijkaard interrupts his story to explain that every other player would have said “oh, nah, it was nothing”, but Gullit was Gullit. He stood up in front of his whole team and told the story one more time. It went something like this:
“There is a guy who’s penis is 1.90 long. It is hard to walk around with and people on the street turn around and look, so the guy goes to a doctor who says a surgery might be possible.
The surgery goes well. The cock is now about 40 centimeters long and the guy his happy. But a couple of months later he happens to meet the doctor again.
- Theres one thing I wonder, the guy says. What did you do with what was left over from the surgery, it was one and a half meter penis?
- Well, the doctor says, I put on some hair on the sides of it and choose him as trainer of Milan.”
Gullit looked happy, sat down and the team laughed. Sacchi, who had nod his head appreciatingly during the whole story, dropped his cheek totally.

In the stories of Rijkaard, Sacchi always seems to be like an enthusiastic scout leader. Rijkaard still sees how Sacchi patroled Milanello after the lunch to see that his players were resting. Sacchi always wandered around with his noisy toffels “and when you heard that noise, you turned the light off and got into bed”.

But one day Rijkaard and his room mate looked at an inappropiote movie at TV, and therefore did not hear Sacchi. He knocked on the door, oppened it, and saw his players laying in their beds. The air was filled with cigarette smoke and on TV there was a couple of naked breasts.
- Scusi, mumbled Sacchi, closed the door and disappeard.
Or the summer day on the pre season when the players stood around Sacchi who started to talk with his wide mouth and special voice. He waved with his arms but just when he says “Tu…” a bee flies into his mouth. The club doctors had to take care about the old man and ritual laughs could be heard on Milanello and in Amsterdam a decade later.

The most popular sport in Holland is not football, but analyzing football. Rijkaard was national team manager, Kieft does match analyzises in Dutch tv, Blind is the boss of Ajax youth academy and maybe even Pettersson is still in football – who knows? Late in the night there is a discussion between Rijkaard and Blind, a discussion that says quite a bit about how Rijkaard works as manager.

The subject is Winston Bogarde, the defender they both played with in Ajax fantastic team in the mid-nineties, and whos career shorty after our discussion was about to culminate with him running around the Chelseas pitch as an unused reserve with a wage of two million pounds per season.
Rijkaard tells about World Cup 1998 when he was assistant manager under Guus Hiddink, and Bogarde was on the teams bench. Bogarde was wild and crazy on the training, he was supermotivated, won every duel. “Dennis didnt want to go near him”. Rijkaard and Hiddink thought Bogarde deserved to play. So in the group game against Mexico he came on as a sub. The first thing he did was to take a throw in. After he threw in the ball, he just stared angrily around with his chest like a door guard on a night club. Meanwhile a Mexican player ran behind him in an attack that almost resulted in a goal.

Rijkaard, who saw the game from the stands, understood directly Bogardes problem. He had given his all on the training, because he had something to prove against the team mates, the manager, the Dutch press. But he didnt think a minute about the mexicans. And now, when he was in the team, he had not motivation left. A while later he passed the ball to Edwin van der Sar, turned around and when van der Sar gave the ball back, he didnt see it. So Rijkaard went to Hiddink and told him what was going on in Bogardes head. He said that he didnt thinkt that Bogarde should play even if he were the best in training. Shortly later, Bogarde broke his leg on training, because he went in to hard in a situation.
Blind, who made 13 seasons in Ajax a-team and played until he was 37, looks terrified while he listens to the story. He says that a player with that attitude is impossible to have in a team.
- But its just that type of things that challenges the good coach.

Not every player is as professional as Blind, he continues. A good trainer is recognized by his ability to get maximum even from the flamboyant players in the team. Easy for him to say, I think, he doesnt coach any team himself.

Three weeks later he takes the job in Sparta Rotterdam, and under is one and only season in the club, they end up degraded for the first time in history. I think: too bad, he is a good man, too bad he isnt enough to be a good manager. But nowadays, when I see him coach a happy team with players like Messi, Xavi and Edmilson on the bench while Ronaldinho and Deco and others is doing the playmaking, I think of the night in Amsterdam and the discussion about Bogarde. All of Rijkaards stories were about what gets people to explode. It shows his great psychological skills, just like his ability to get all of us in that room to be seen. Rijkaard can get out the best of every kind of personality. Blind later became manager but got fired this spring after 15 useless months.

But that night in Amsterdam, no one of us knows if Rijkaard will ever coach a team again. Someone tells me that Rijkaard has got an offer from abroad, maybe even from Milan, but that he wants to stay in Holland for family reasons. His job as national team manager wasnt really splendid, before Euro 2000 Holland only played friendly games, the players were lacking motivation and at one time the national team went 16 months without a victory, which had not happened since 1951.

The clock passes midnight, but we stay for hours, drink all the wine and then all the liqueur. Rijkaard says that all other national teams get strenght and motivation out of something thats out of the football. Look only how the brazilians, frenchmen and englishmen scream their national anthems. It is only the Dutch who seems to lack that motivation. Maybe Holland needs a “dictator”, he thinks. In that case he would be ruled out himself as manager.

I try to cheer him up. I say that Holland didnt lose any competitive game under Rijkaard, and that they played out Italy before they lost at penalties.
- The only thing you can question is the substitutions, Rijkaard responds.
In the end of the Italy game, Rijkaard sent his old mate Peter van Vossen, the everlasting Aron Winter and Seedorf, Hollands least popular player, into the pitch.
It is easy to see that Rijkaard is still regretting this.
We break up at four in the morning and the next day I wake up with a torgover at twelve. I went to a café and write down all I can remeber.

Simon Kuper, in Swedish football magazine Offside #7 2006
Translated by Simon “Lerkot” Berglind

Oh yeah, the word etabliss???? isnt supposed to be there, I prefer the word “establishment” which means the same thing.

nice article.

i hope it does smell like 442

vd sar (stekelenburg)
melchiot, heitinga, bouma, emmanuelson (no more mathijsen, ooijer, boulah as starters)
vdv, de zeeuw, snejder, seedorf
kuijt, van gol (or vp if hes fit)

Thanx for the translation Lerkot!! very good!! cheers

Posted from  Netherlands

Thanks indeed!!! Very nice… So, did you translate this from Dutch?

Posted from  Australia

Brilliant article. Translated from Swedish I now understand. Very good insights… Loved that Bogarde piece. Great!

Posted from  Australia

Hehe, yup, Simon Kuper rocks. The article is probably written in English originally, then translated to Swedish, and then translated by me again to English…

ha ha again de cler and jaliens ?
wats wrong with san marco for got he is always wrong.
De jong?
Why?
i think in englaar he is looking a raikard is nt it?
any hope?
kuyt?haha portugal match?
is a natural goal scorer?
is equal to groin hair of RVN,castelen,vanpersie,roban etc
poorman kuyt l like his behaviour unselfish hardworking team player

Hey i ahve been reading this blog for quite some time now and ithink it is great! i do agree with all the players out of position but i do think that marco is right with the 4-3-3 system… we are a nation of attacking football and the system is as offensive as it gets. Van bommel shoul come back to the team as he is crucialfor the transition of the ball from defense to atack. van bronckorst should go back in defense.line u should be 4-3-3

v der saar

Van bronkhorst heitinga ooijer emanuelson

van der vaart van bommel/ de zeeuw sneijder

kuyt van nistelrooy babel

Posted from  Switzerland

Engelaar is not a Rijkaard in my view… I think Engelaar is more like a Michael Ballack. A tall, strong hardworking and smart midfielder. Big runs from box to box. Something like that. I think… Goose doesn’t like him though…

Posted from  Australia

@Jan; thats right, dont like him at all (when i read back all my comments i start to look like someone who doesnt like any player!! haha..only Dennis!)
but i have to say that Engelaar has grown since he came back from Belgium.. i dont think hes oranje material but he IS one of the best midfieldplayers playing in Holland at the moment… think Rutten is doing a great job at FC Twente…other than Koeman he is able to make players actually play better!

@Marc; 4-3-3 is just theory, you can play it any way you want..same goes for 4-2-2 were you can have midfieldplayers used as wingers… Marco just needs to MAKE a team, 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 is secondary…
totally agree on vanBommel…saw him play yesterday in the German Cup (he started from the bench) and he played well

grz

Posted from  Netherlands