Socceroos come from the land Dutch Under
Roar Rookie By Janex, 2 Jul 2009 Janex is a Roar Rookie
- Tagged:
- 2010 World Cup, Australian Football, Australian Football Federation, Brett Emerton, football, Guus Hiddink, han berger, henk duut, Jan Versleijen, Pim Verbeek, Socceroos
Related coverage
Socceroo's coach Pim Verbeek chats with Harry Kewell during a training session at ANZ Stadium, Sydney, Thursday, June 19, 2008. The Socceroo's take on China in a World Cup qualifying match this Sunday, June 22. AAP Image/Dean Lewins
A recent article out of the Netherlands named Dutch football as the most successful of the past forty years. With Verbeek and Henk Duut (ex Feyenoord) leading Australia to another World Cup, the Dutch school must be close to being 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 with 22 hours plane flights, 7 to 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 at first when he was appointed, but now they can’t say enough positive things about him.
After securing the ticket to the FIFA World Cup tournament 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 Verbeek can answer that question. He and Hiddink worked together for South Korea in 2002 and reached the semi finals at 2002 FIFA World Cup tournament.
“Guus is able to align and fine tune everything quickly and gets a result, that’s his speciality. He controls the management of the games and understands how to work the players and media.”
Verbeek smiles when he says that, he‘s still in touch with his former boss who immediately sent his congratulations 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 World Cup tournament as a head coach and I look forward to it, however 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 Antilles and worked at Feyenoord under Ruud Gullit and Erwin Koeman. Duut highly enjoys working and living 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. Also 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 Football Director of the Australian Football Federation is Dutch as well. Han Berger, a 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 are more and more players like Culina returning, so that’s good.
“The facilities 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 “attitude” is: “Soccer, they call it still on the streets. There’s still a huge English culture apparent (cricket, rugby) and AFL is number one sport, but there are lots of scandals and bad stuff happening there so most parents would love their kids to play football and sponsors turn away from these sports.”
Therefore, the performance and results of the national team are essential, and Australia is also bidding for the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup tournaments and are serious competitor to the Holland/Belgium bid.
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 in the future. We are focused on the 2010 World Cup first. We have qualified as one of the first nations and people start to complain that we’re boring.
“We weren’t able to qualify for decades and then now these comments. Pim Verbeek doesn’t mind all that criticism but I sometimes get agitated by it. But hey, we’re missionarie. It’s part of the job”.
Recommend this story.
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:13am
Andrew said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:13am | Report comment
@SJ
He is refrencing source material and commentating (not plagiarising). That source material is Dutch, why would someone of know interest too Dutch readers get a mention in an article that was obviously about Dutch coaching. I think your pulling a long bow to read into the lack of name dropping Arnold means anything at all.
I would think it too be more odd for a discussion about Dutch coaching to go totally off topic into “and by the way I want to say I love Graeme Arnold even though he is not Dutch and you dont know who he is!”
The author cant invent quotes that aren’t there.
If you choose too see it as a slight on Arnold your seeing things that aren’t there.
Not that I like Arnold or anything but I do like a “fair go”
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:17am
Andrew said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:17am | Report comment
Obvously this article is Australian but a large chuck of the source is Dutch, I didn’t see the need to be so pednatic before. Well I assumed that it was obvious…..
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:24am
Pippinu said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:24am | Report comment
Coincidentally (well, I assume it’s a coincidence), Frank Farina has been quoted in the SMH on this very subject – and he is not so complimentary:
It’s believed the new AIS head coach, Jan Versleijen, is being paid seven times that of his predecessor, former Socceroos defender Steve O’Connor, and while Farina has no issue personally with the Dutchman, he believes there is an inherent discrimination at work. Versleijen is one of five Dutchmen, headed by Socceroos boss Pim Verbeek, contracted by the FFA over the past two years.
“Local coaches have always been undervalued and underpaid, but you look at the wages the FFA is now forking out, and it’s never been so blatant,” he said.
“This is not about sour grapes. I’ve had my time, and I’ve got no regrets. But it’s about time we had some perspective. You think of what people like ‘Rocky’ [O'Connor], Ron Smith and Ray Junna have done at the AIS, for instance. You look at what they were paid, and it’s a scandal. Between them, these guys have basically produced the bulk of the national team for the last 15 years and they were paid peanuts for doing that.
“Now the next generation is going to be produced by coaches who will be getting, what, 10 times what the previous guys were getting. Will the players be 10 times better? I doubt it. I think we have done a pretty good job up until now of producing our own talent, and the results prove that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m as happy as anyone we’ve qualified for the World Cup. But the truth is we were doing pretty well against Asian teams before we moved into Asia. That’s the facts.
“To me, the FFA needs to respect local coaches a lot more, and value them more. There hasn’t been enough recognition. It’s all very well getting in a heap of Dutch coaches but are they all going to hang around after the World Cup? What happens when the fascination wears off? Where’s the succession planning? Will local coaches step back into these positions, and will they be paid as much?”
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:37am
Midfielder said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:37am | Report comment
Pip
I read Frank’s article … he makes some valid points … but remember as we discussed the other day the 20 to 26 or there abouts are not producing the goods whereas the under say 21′s are …
I think and I assume that there is being set in place a structure that within a given time Australian coaches will be back in charge … overall I think its is the best man for the jon approach.. and at this time it’s Dutch … why Dutch … well it’s … TIPS… total footnall … and that is what so many cannot see
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:51am
Pippinu said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:51am | Report comment
Mid
there’s no doubt that a generation gap has emerged that lies squarely with the regime of pre-FFA days.
The flip side of that is that the “golden generation” (the current 28 to 33 year olds), also lies squarely with the same generation.
This is not to suggest that the FFA aren’t doing the right thing (the results are certainly there, to a certain degree), but it’s far more complicated that many make out.
Frank makes a valid point that going back a long time we were competitive with Asian nations (although in recent times, we are talking about the full national squad, the Australian B team hasn’t been competitive against the big four or five for a while).
In other words, there is a valid argument that being part of the current Asian confederation set up (for the purposes of qualifying for the WC) is as much an ingredient in a second consecutive WC spot as pretty much anything else we’ve done since the creation of the FFA.
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:51am
Vicentin said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:51am | Report comment
Pippinu – read the same article and frankly I think it is a Mike Cockerill pushing Frank’s barrow of sour grapes. I suspect when Australia has as well-credentialed, both in terms of pieces of paper and practical experience, coaches as these Dutch fellas, they too will be getting bigger pay packets. Interesting that he talks about succession planning – I would have thought the review of the licencing standards and the general push of the FFA (see “the Curriculum”) is part of the succession planning – developing a large pool of better credentialed local coaches and job opportunities (through academies etc) to go with it. We shouldn’t forget that Van Egmond just got the AIS job on considerably better pay than the Jets were giving him – I’d say this is a bit of gamble too on the AIS’s part.
Also interesting juxtaposition at the bottom of the article it has “Socceroos up to 16th – Page 30″. That article then points out “it is a far cry from June 2000, when nations such as Burkina Faso, Gabon and Haiti were considered to have superior sides to Australia, who were ranked a lowly 92nd” Now I’m not saying Frank was directly responsible for this ranking, and football in Australia truely was a mess in those days … but who was the national coach then?
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:55am
Slippery Jim said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:55am | Report comment
Andrew, on retrospect, the topic is clearly Dutch influence so I can understand the ommision of Arnold.
HOWEVER
I’ve just noticed that (assuming they are the same person) Janex has copied this article word for word from the same blog on the WorldCupBlog by someone named Jan.
http://netherlands.worldcupblog.org/world-cup-2010/dutch-school-rules-in-australia.html
I assume they are the same person recycling his article for the Roar.
Interesting to note that someone accused him on that blog of plagiarism for his simply translating a Dutch article into English and posting it as his own blog article without giving credit to the original author. Can’t really support that or not as I do not speak much Dutch.
Also, in his last article he posted a comment that was completely a cut and paste from a blogger named Edgar’s article presented as his own comment, whether accidentally or otherwise. Edgar picked him up on this, and posted a link to the article.
http://www.football-rankings.info/
It is all interesting info, nevertheless, however the originality for material in both articles is unfortunately clearly suspect.
July 2nd 2009 @ 10:56am
Pippinu said | July 2nd 2009 @ 10:56am | Report comment
Wow – did we really drop to 92nd back then??!!
My memory is fuzzy, but putting aside the disasters of Iran in 97 and Uruguay in 2001, both Venables and Farina got a string of great away results against solid European teams (in friendlies), not just a few, I’m talking an absolute string of results.
This is my memory – if anyone can confirm, I’d be much obliged.
July 2nd 2009 @ 11:08am
Pippinu said | July 2nd 2009 @ 11:08am | Report comment
Ok – I decided to do my own research (goddam, that was a tough decision, but I saw it through!!).
Venables was appointed at the very start of 1997, and ignoring results against the Pacific Islands, here are all his results right up to the Iran qualifiers:
Aust 1 NZ 0
Aust 2 South Korea 1
Aust 1 Norway 0
Macedonia 0 Aust 1
Hungary 1 Aust 3
NZ 0 Aust 3
Aust 2 NZ 0
Tunisia 0 Aust 3
We then went on to defeat Mexico 3-1 and Uruguay 1-0 and draw with Brazil 0-0 in the Confed cup, but lost to Saudi Arabia 1-0 and Brazil 6-0 (which were our only defeats for the year).
Now I put this to everyone – that year in 1997, putting aside the heartache of the Iran game, must rank as pretty much close to the very best year in Socceroo history, not only in terms of wins to losses, but the fact that it includes a few decent away results agaisnt decent opposition.
My memory is that Farina had a similar year in the lead up to his Uruguay games.
July 2nd 2009 @ 11:26am
Andrew said | July 2nd 2009 @ 11:26am | Report comment
I was initially going to reply “don’t write off the lost generation yet” but looking at the team lists of the 1999 and 2001 Joeys lists it’s very sobering where are they now moment. I am sure there will be a couple of late bloomers similar to how Macdonald was written off but has now come good (Valeri perhaps). But a pretty bad return on such early promise.
The bar has been raised a lot higher for entrance into the Soceroos. In 1996 being top scorer in Scotland would have been really exciting now Macdonald is not even assured a starting place in the Socceroos.
Went looking for the team list and found this article
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-81716.html
Seems since they were given up on in at least a couple have come good, but still very sad.
The 2001 Joey’s team sheet looks even worse. I remember when Jay Lucas was at Wollongong he left for Southampton with much fanfaire….. never been seen since.
I don’t know if it’s because too many left too early, (but then if your good enough you would still make it) or the poor state of the NSL, or the gap year between NSL and A league is to blame.
At least we have the NYL now which is a great step in the right direction.