Van Geel’s resigning signals stressful times in Dutch League

Van ‘t Schip, Van Basten, Van Geel and Witschge, all smiles

It is a sign of strength, walking away from a job you can’t perform in. Martin van Geel is not a happy trouper.
Play offs or no play offs, the technical director at Ajax feels he is the new court jester and decides to call it a day. The new chairman, Uri Coronel, was largely responsible for Ajax’ float on the stock exchange and recently published the report to make Ajax healthy again.

He wrote: either we hire a strong and experienced Hiddink-like technical director or we get a good coach to work with the current technical director. Van Geel was already on the case and signed Oranje team manager and club icon San Marco van Basten.
It seemed a wise decision, Van Geel on the moped with Van Basten. But, it wasn’t to be. The inexperienced coach Van Basten will become the new strong arm at the club, the figure head.

The exit of Van Geel is another chapter in the story of instability of Dutch football. We don’t impress with stable, effective, charismatic and long term leadership. It’s an era in which we easily push people away. Van Geel, Van Marwijk, Ronald Koeman, Henk ten Cate, Fred Rutten, Maarten Fontein, Gert Jan Verbeek, Ernie Brandts, John Jaakke… All of them left of had to leave this year in top positions. Johan Cruyff can be mentioned in that list as well. He seemed to give it a go but walked straight out when he learned Van Basten had different plans. A first sign of things to come at Ajax.

And with every name, there’s a backstory, whereby Fred Rutten seems to be the only one who leaves with applause. Although there will surely also be tears in the FC Twente boardroom.

And even Louis van Gaal threatened to walk. And let’s for now ignore the rift between Aad de Mos and the Vitesse management. And at champions PSV, it was goalie Gomes who started his “Reker out or I walk” diatribe.

It seems that our management and fans have enormous difficulties in accepting that the status of Dutch football has changes. We think we can compare ourselves with the big nations. We compare ourselves with the big boys from Spain, England, Italy and Germany.

That’s a fun pastime for in the pub, but reputations are hurt and every week another professional bites the dust. What we need, is a huge re-orientation of the Dutch Football Identity.

Let’s look at some figures: PSV signed Lazovic (Vitesse) and Koevermans (AZ Alkmaar) voor 12,5 Mio euros. Fiorentina’s Mutu cost 8 mio euros. Lazo and Koev are good national league strikers but seem to weak for the CL. If PSV wants to play with the big guns, they’ll need more firepower.

Real Madrid is the richest club in the workd. The tv-rights were sold for 740 Mio euros (for 7 years)! Man United can host 76.000 fans per match. That results in 4,7 Mio euro per game. Barcelona gets 150 Mio euros per season for their tv-rights. Chelsea has Abramovitsj and Samsung pays 74 Mio euros to print their name on the Blues’ shirts. Arsenal can host 60.000 fans in their Emirates Stadium. Resulting in 135 Mio euros per year. And there’s 41.000 fans on the waiting list! PSV can only sell 35.000 tickets per match and the waiting list is only 4.000 people.

AC Milan scores 150 Mio euros in tv-income. Even Celtic, in small football nation Scotland, can host close to 60.000 fans and receives 35 Mio euros in tv-money.

Dutch management has it tough. You can’t demand Ajax, AZ, Feyenoord and even PSV to play an important role in Europe. To do this, a club needs to qualify for Champions League football every year to build up the fat. It’s an unfair and unrealistic competition.

When Reker started at PSV, for instance, the equitity of the club was minus 19 Mio euros! And this is after the Arjen Robben transfer. Van Raay’s successor Westerhof brought the deficit down to 10 Mio euros, but still….

And in Holland, the other clubs aren’t sleeping either. Feyenoord is building a new stadium for 75.000 fans. Ajax signed to new massive sponsor deals with Aegon and Adidas. Twente and Groningen are planning to expand their venues and AZ, well…AZ has Dirk Scheringa. As another comparison: Ajax is free to sign any sponsor and they clinched it big with Aegon. The insurance company pays 10 Mio euro p/a. PSV is not free to shop. Philips is their traditional sponsor but they “only” pay 7,5 Mio euros p/a.

Clubs from the Big Four competitions laugh about these amounts of money!

If PSV, or any other club in Holland, wants to make a next step up, money seems to be key. Not just to sign bigger names, but also to develop talents and to keep them. Players like Huntelaar, Afellay, Gomes, Jonathan de Guzman… If the trio Gomes/Farfan/Afellay decide to leave PSV for greener pastures, it won’t be too easy for Reker and Stevens to find replacements. Dark cluds gather above the Dutch football stadiums…

Huub Stevens, laughing now…