Dutch School rules in Australia

June 14th, 2009 | by: Jan | Comments(6)

Dutch club football may not amount to much anymore in international football, but players and coaches with a Dutch passport are still highly in demand. Success guaranteed.

In Australia, they know this already. In a recent daily article, Dutch football is named the most successful of the last 40 years. And with Pim Verbeek and Henk Duut (ex Feyenoord) responsible for leading Australia to another WC tournament, not conceding one goal, the Dutch school is declared holy Down Under.

Verbeek: “It’s just great. We’ve started this series in February 2008 and obviously, playing these games is a real challenge on the body for the players from Europe. 22 hours in a plane, 7 or 10 hours time difference. And they never complained. Their mental attitude is top notch. They’re a tight team and they know exactly what they want.”

The admiration is reciprocated. The big names in the team – Kewell, Cahill and Neill – are very happy with their Dutch coach. They did have to google him first, when he was appointed, but now they can’t say enough positive things about him.

After securing the ticket to the WC in Qatar, Everton star Tim Cahill said: “I love working under this coach. You know exactly what you get. On the pitch and off. You can discuss anything with him. For me, that’s crucial and most players feel this way.”

“It was different under Guus. Nothing against him, he’s respected all over the world and rightly so, but I wasn’t always happy.”

A remarkable quote. Wasn’t it Guus Hiddink who gave Australia their confidence?

Pim Verbeel can answer that question, he and Hiddink worked together for South Korea in 2002 and reached the semi finals at that WC. “Guus is able to allign and finetune everything quickly and get results. That’s his speciality. He controls the management games and understands how to work the board, players and media.”

Verbeek smiles when he says that. He is still in touch with his former boss who immediately sent his congrats via a text-message. “I learned a lot from him and from Dick Advocaat. The main thing is, be who you are. This will be my first WC as a head coach and I look forward to it But I realize very well that I can do this thanks to the people I work with.”

One of those people is former Feyenoord defender and Fortuna assistant coach Henk Duut. “I worked with Henk before. He’s my left and right hand man, both in tactical decisions as in training build up and he’s a great scout too.”

Duut worked with Verbeek for the Dutch Antils and worked at Feyenoord under Ruud Gullit and Erwin Koeman. Duut highly enjoys working in Australia. “You can see the team come together and that’s the best thing about this job. I think both myself and my buddy Mario Been never dreamed of becoming a coach, but being able to move these processes along is just great. And I live in one of the world’s prettiest spots, so what more can I ask….”

The name Feyenoord is mentioned… “Unbelievable that they never contact me. They have my number. There’s a lot of talent here. Tactically, maybe not that good, but still a lot to work with. But they’re strong mentally and physically and love to learn and work hard. Most talents are now scouted by Twente and AZ. And it’s weird because Brett Emerton and Holman started their European careers at Feyenoord.”

The boss of the Australian Football Federation is Dutch as well. Han Berger, former coach of Utrecht and Groningen, took over from Rob Baan and is responsible for the strategic planning.

“I work on Baan’s foundations. The local competition needs to be stronger. But now there’s more and more players – like Culina – returning, so that’s good. The accomodations need to be upgraded and we need to work on the youth competitions and the youth selections. In Canberra, Jan Versleijen is working with the talented youth. We are all going to play 4-3-3, all following the Dutch school.”

Money is not the problem in Australia, but the “vibe” is. There’s still a huge English culture apparent (cricket, rugby) and AFL is sports number 1. “Soccer, they call it still on the streets. Aussie Rules is the most popular sports, but there’s lots of scandals and bad stuff happening there so most parents would love their kids to play soccer and sponsors turn away from these sports.”

Therefore, the performance and results of the National team are key. And Australia is also after the WC2018. A serious competitor to Holland/Belgium. Han Berger: “That would be the ideal impulse. And make no mistake, they can pull that off here. Remember the Sydney Olympics? But that’s all futures. We’ll focus on the WC2010 first and we also need to work on the know how of the public. We’ve qualified as one of the first nations and people start to complaint that we’re boring… We weren’t able to qualify for decades and then this. Pim Verbeek doesn’t mind all that criticism but I sometimes get agitated by it. But hey, we’re missionaries…part of the job…”.