San Marco new Ajax manager

This news is getting a bit of a followup in Norway as they are quite pleased that he will not start at Ajax until July 1, which is only 2 and a half month before WC qual game against Norway. According to todays newspapers, they are very happy about that fact in Norway…Not that it matters, you will beat us 9 times out of 10 anyway, but perhaps it can affect other games?

Honestly, this is why I do not understand why a new Oranje coach is not already fully appointed and brought into the fold, and use EC08, perhaps as an assitant one way or another to the overrated MVB but at least do something so that the players do not think EC08 is just another lazy tournament before the new coach comes in. Gives the players who want to be in an Oranje jersey for the future some additional incentive.

It does not make sense to me to have a lame duck coach in any situation, forget about a major international tournament. Plus, what time does that give the new guy to put his team together for the next campaign? KNVB is screwing not only EC08 up but WC10 too. If you are leaving/quitting/getting fired, you need to leave as soon as possible, not hang around for some personal lap of honour and ego trip. Oraje will suffer, but MVB or KNVB does not seem to care.

Capello is already testing out his WC squad and he has a head start on many other countries. I predict that actually will make a diffrence in WC qualification.

Posted from  United States

Is Marco van Basten going to be in charge when Ajax begin their qualifying campaign for the Champion’s League? Including the games amongst other top 5 dutch teams.

Eduardo da Silva’s leg was broken today, and he won’t be playing in Euro 2008, which is terrible for Croatia who had a chance of being the Greece of last year.

Posted from  Canada

All I am saying is that there is a chance (and in my opinion a good one} that the new coach will use a different squad (Bommel et al.) and a different system for the WC10 campaign.

EC08 constitutes many matches (at least we all hope so) against top opposition. I am NOT saying EC08 is a time to experiement by any means, but it is a chance for the new coach (if he has already been put in place) to talk to the squad, get to know them better, build a good rapport and give some of the older players who may be thinking about international retirement after EC08 an idea about what is to come for WC10. I don’t see why at the very least having the new guy come along to EC just like England did with Ericsson & McLaren would do any harm. The fact that McLaren is a crap manager and wouldn’t be able to manage to find his way out of a phone booth no matter what you do, has nothing to do with it. But at least when he came in, there was pretty much zero player rumblings after Ericsson, which there easily could have been.

While I appreciate MVB being upfront with his future plans early on, I still don’t believe humans perform at their highest level if they know they will get a new boss. Pulling on the Oranje shirt will always be plenty of motivation for everyone, however that little “extra” from some of the younger lads would be a tad easier to bring to front if the “new” boss was at least sitting on the bench and living with the team during both the prep as well as the EC08 tournament itself.

The transition would at the very minimum be a lot smoother. As muh as I adored MVB as a player, I don’t think he deserves a lap of honour as a coach. In fact, I think he would need all the help he could get given the group Oranje is facing.

Posted from  United States

I dont agree. The group should look pretty much as it does now, its to late to make any big changes like bring in a new or another coach. I dont think the players give a rats ass if van Basten quits after Euro 2008, I think they will be equally motivated anyway; theres been a lot of times when teams actually have performed better when they knew that their coach was going to leave; NAC Breda and Heerenveen being the most recent examples (though it seems NAC is changing their mind).

Finnster:

I an organization when your boss is about to leave is true that you might relax yourselft but in sports when you are playing such a big tournament like an European Championship or a World Cup the motivation is not to impress your manager but to win the tournament…this players are top sportsmen so they know that all the football world will be watching them at this tournament and they will want to impress so they can continue playing in their teams or get new deals with better clubs.

Van Basten will want to win the tournament and if he goes to Ajax right after the tournament it doesn´t matter because while he is coach of Oranje he will have the chance to win a medal that the Netherlands have only won once. I think the players and the coach will do their best to win the trophy and it is going to be very hard but the chance is there and we have the team to do it.

Hup Holland!

True. And having Van Marwijk assist Marco would be a bad idea. In the assistant role the relationship between assistant and players is different to the coach – players relationship. It almost never worked out, to promote an assistant to head coach, due to that changing relationship.

Bert will want to start with a clean slate.

Posted from  Australia

Coaching Oranje for Euro08 in the knowledge that there is a new job at the end, one with perhaps less aggravation and criticism, may actually be beneficial to Marco. It may help him to “loosen up” and that may in turn inspire a better effort from the boys.

Posted from  Australia

who cares what Marco does after the EC,its not gonna make any differnce we wont win anyway… im just very glad that Marco could learn his trade at our national team, at the highest possible level….just so glad he could f up at Oranje and be a better manager in the future for it

Kessler should be sacked…hes the biggest assh. in dutch football

Posted from  Netherlands

hear hear…

Posted from  Australia