Louis the Arena; Johan De Toekomst

November 25th, 2011 | by: Jan |

ajax fans

Ajax’ members will make history this coming Monday. The members will make a decision whether they support the current Board of Directors and support their decision to make Louis van Gaal Ajax’ general manager? Or will they vote against it and therefore go the Johan Cruyff route?

One key question is: How different are ideas of Van Gaal and Cruyff really? Professor Engelsma thinks they are too different.

Engelsma: “The chairman of the board, Steven ten Have, wants Louis van Gaal as the leader, the general manager and he wants Johan Cruyff in the role of advisor, as consultant. Van Gaal already has a signed contract so to turn this decision around will be quite…awkward. I highly doubt the effectiveness of this construction. Van Gaal might say he embraces Cruyff’s vision, but I know he’s terribly headstrong in real life. Cruyff focusses on the individual talent and Van Gaal focusses on the team. On unity. Cruyff wants diversity. Also, Van Gaal is not a man to take advice from anyone while Cruyff is a hands on guy. He won’t be happy just giving advice. He expects people to do what he says. Ask Leo Beenhakker! Van Gaal’s recent exploits at Bayern Munich demonstrate that he still can’t be flexible and adapt to an existing culture.”

jc lvg

Engelsma continues: “Ten Have recently said something horrible in the newspaper. He said, that youth development is the key of the debate and I don’t get where it links in with the first team and the Ajax organisation. Well, you are not fit for the job if you have to ask yourself this in the national media?!? He clearly never read Johan’s report either. At the Arena, with the professionals, you need a football director who supports the development practices at De Toekomst. This is the linking pin. You’d have Wim Jonk as director youth academy, Dennis Bergkamp as youth coach and assistant at the Ajax 1 team and Frank de Boer as manager of Ajax 1. You’d have consistency.”

Engelsma rants and raves on: “Cruyff’s report “To organised chaos, the road to succes” of March 2011 is meant for the long term and is supposed to bring continuity, balance and progress. It is founded on the individual approach of talents. It’s pretty logical that if you want to do this, you don’t hire someone like Van Gaal. We all know he focuses on the team performance and everyone needs to be servant to that. He always called his players by the number.”

lvg jc young
Young coach Van Gaal would never select the young Cruyff…

Philipp Lahm, skipper of Bayern Munich, described Van Gaal as a general who enforces his tactical system. And Bayern star Franck Ribery recently described his time with Van Gaal like this: “If I can’t enjoy my football I can’t be important. And if I can’t play like I want to, I can’t enjoy it.”

When confronted with the mess at Ajax, the French winger chuckled. “Are people leaving because Van Gaal is signed? Haha, I’m not surprised.”

Cruyff in his report: “Fun and enjoying football are the key and politics and organisational structures inhibited that at Ajax. We need shorter lines of command and the individual player needs to be the central focus. The individual development should be priority over team results and developing to win. Teams are made up of individuals. We don’t even want to talk about an Ajax-system. We will focus mainly on technical skills and use tactics in the youth system as a support system.”

Engelsma again: “Cruyff loves players like Ribery, Robben, Van Persie, Van der Vaart, Berbatov, Ibrahimovic and Messi. These lads play on instinct and intuition. They have sensational skills, speed and vision and they can always come up with a creative solution. These are the core elements which Johan wants to develop by means of individual coaching. When the players reach that level, you can add them to a collective system and allow them to mature. The key ages for Cruyff’s plan are from 8 – 14 years old. From then on you can work more with tactics.”

According to psychologist Huizinga, Franck Ribery and Lionel Messi are examples of the “Playing Human”. They are led by a feeling of excitement and fun. They want to enjoy themselves first. These feelings and their skills will be tempered and crushed when they need to limit themselves through all sorts of protocols. For some coaches, the tactical tasks become more important than playing football and trying to score goals.

louis jc

Cruyff’s intuitive approach vs Van Gaal’s totalitarian, structured approach. Cruyff: “I don’t mind the use of computers in youth development but at the end of the day, you need to judge players with your heart and your intuition. Based on the current criteria at Ajax, laid down in the past by Louis van Gaal, I would have been sent away. I was 15 years old and skinny and rather weak. I couldn’t hit a corner kick. With my left, I couldn’t kick further then 15 meters. I was also pretty slow, as I lacked power in my legs. My strong points were my tremendous skill on the ball and my vision. Two aspects a computer won’t be able to measure.”

According to Engelsma, Ajax had good papers to sign Marco van Basten for the leadership role but chairman Ten Have blew that one. “He was too pushy. Didn’t allow Marco time to analyse the situation. Even if Van Gaal is pragmatic and takes the job accepting Cruyff’s plan, it won’t work. Van Gaal won’t be able to implement it. Ten Have, who calls himself a rule-maker, apparently things “rules” come before “vision”. He doesn’t appear to be a good chairman at all. Poor Ajax.”

So who knows, it might be that the Oracle of Enschede, Co Adriaanse, is right. Maybe Ajax will be chopped up: Louis van Gaal gets the Arena and Johan Cruyff will take De Toekomst.

horse jockey
From left to right: horse, jockey

Netherlands World Cup Blog RSS Feed

Comments

Displaying the most recent 25 comments from a total of 72 comments.

Read the rest of the comments

By ferenc | November 28th, 2011 at 1:31 pm

all the best Steve,i hope you’ll recover as soon as possible!

Posted from Hungary

By Andrew | November 28th, 2011 at 2:03 pm

@Steve, best on your recovery; Be careful and give yourself time. Calf muscles are tricky. You injure it; it feels perfectly fine, you think you’re fine, you start playing, running, ll of sudden it goes again, no warning.

Watched the Twente game. I was surprised Fer played as far forward as he did (and has been when he’s entered as a reserve). I always thought he was more of a holding mid.

By Steve | November 28th, 2011 at 2:11 pm

thanks ferenc, lucky for me it is not torn and my achilles is fine.
anyone know how long it takes for calf muscles to heal from being as bruised/damaged they can be without having torn??

Posted from Canada

By Steve | November 28th, 2011 at 2:18 pm

damn, thx andrew. good to know!

Posted from Canada

By Alex | November 28th, 2011 at 2:25 pm

@Tiju, i dont think you have the ability or authority to judge on anyones ‘football intelligence’. Thats just ludacris. Maher is a toptalent, but in no way a winger so dragging him into a discussion is irrelevant

Posted from Netherlands

By Tiju | November 28th, 2011 at 2:54 pm

@Alex buddy i am 31 year old,i can at least recognize who is wise and who is fool.kuyt and elia has proved it.Elia is good talent and where is he now???kuyt is the least skilled guy i have seen in pool and orange.85 caps for orange and 5 year regular with mighty pool,its just because of brilliance and hardwork..you cannot develop ur skills,but you can develop ur brain if you are open.thats what kuyt did and elia is not doing…i am taking the words of my buddy finn that elia can go to haitdresser…thats what the fools do.

By Tiju | November 28th, 2011 at 2:57 pm

@steve you are right at 24 we cannot write off a player.but we can write of Elia…coz the senario is like that.

By SamDC | November 28th, 2011 at 3:16 pm

@Tiju
You have written off Elia? I guess that’s your opinion. The guy is still young. One bad start to his season and he’s already written off? If he had a major injury and is struggling for an extended period, you can make that argument.
I also don’t agree with your football brains analysis. Elia is a left winger. His job is to beat his defender and cross the ball towards the penalty area. It’s one of the most straight forward things to do.
The other is support Sneijder to open up defenses. I have seen enough games of him at Hamburg to believe that he has quality to perform that task.
Juve would not take him from Hamburg if he was that bad or talentless.
He needs a good coach to work with him and bring out the best in him. He also needs to work hard in training and show motivation for the coach to change his mind and give him a chance.

Posted from United States

By Tiju | November 28th, 2011 at 3:31 pm

@sam DC…..i never said Elia is not talented,he is talented more than average talent.To make crosess and to make right decisions at right time u need vision and brilliance.he doesnt have that thats what said.Many players having the same syndromme.

By Jan | November 28th, 2011 at 3:59 pm

Bruma scored against Stutgart earlier….

By Jan | November 28th, 2011 at 4:05 pm

The people voting are the council of the membership.

Ajax is a club and consists of members. These are governed by a council of 24 people.

These people install a board for the pro side. The Board hires management.

The board is divided ( ten Have vs Cruyff) and the membership council now has to decide which line to follow.

1000s of fans support JC

By jake | November 28th, 2011 at 4:35 pm

Hi Steve,
Can you put me in your new EPL Fantasy league?
I missed out the first one. Just tell me what to do

Posted from Australia

By Eduardo | November 28th, 2011 at 4:38 pm

Jan and how many votes has JC from this 24 council??

By primo | November 28th, 2011 at 5:08 pm

@ jake

go to http://www.fantasy.premierleague.com

than go to join private league

enter his code (797189-544923)

Then pick your team

By Steve | November 28th, 2011 at 5:09 pm

Sounds good Jake!
Here is what you have to do:
If you haven’t signed up or chosen a team you will have to start with that.
Go to http://fantasy.premierleague.com/ and sign up.. then pick your team. The rules should be in there, but you can let me know if you’ve got any questions. noisysteve@gmail.com
Once thats done, or if you already have a team, go to ‘LEAGUES’ and paste this code to join our ‘private’ league: 797189-544923

Anyone know of any other Fantasy sports sites in english for other euro leagues?

Posted from Canada

By jake | November 28th, 2011 at 5:10 pm

thanks primo

Posted from Australia

By primo | November 28th, 2011 at 5:11 pm

@ eduardo

when i last checked it was 10 votes to keep the RvC, 10 to dissolve and 4 undecided. Of the 4 undecided, 2 are absent.

It’s only a poll really- no decisions are being made today. Pretty good indicator for the future nonetheless.

By primo | November 28th, 2011 at 5:15 pm

ignore that last bit..looks like the RVC will be dissolved today. Not that I really care anymore.

By primo | November 28th, 2011 at 5:17 pm

@Steve

uefa website has a fantasy champions league. Doesn’t look like as much fun though. I looked into it today but opted out.

By Eduardo | November 28th, 2011 at 5:53 pm

RvC means?

By jake | November 28th, 2011 at 6:30 pm

thanks Steve,
I have picked my team and joined your league, just small problem, I can not re-assign the players into different positions, like CB to RB or LB to RB, is that automatic and fixed?

Posted from Australia

By Steve | November 28th, 2011 at 6:47 pm

I believe the point counter has a different award schemes for keeper, defenders (includes all kinds.. CB, RB, LB etc), midfielders (all kinds), and forwards but not specific positions so specific positions don’t matter.
unfortunately it is sort of limited.

Odd that the most popular sport in the world is in many cases the slowest technology-wise.

Posted from Canada

By Carlos | November 28th, 2011 at 7:27 pm

RVC = Raad van Commissarissen – It is probably best described as the Advisory Board it includes Davids and Cruyff. They have been asked to leave their posts (doesn’t mean they will) Cruyff has accepted the decision. The other members have not decided.
An interim governing board is set up of 3 ppl incl Rob Been jnr. It is believed they are pro Cruyff.
They will function until Dec 12 when the Annual general Meeting is held and firm decisions can be made.
Still unresolved is the appointment of van Gaal.

Heaven knows where this will lead to.

Posted from Singapore

By Kelvin | November 28th, 2011 at 9:43 pm

Is there any Eredivisie fantasy league? I think that would be more interesting =)
btw, I have an UCL fantasy league account(as well as Europa league). I try to build an all-dutch team but defender is always a problem!

Posted from Hong Kong