Uilleam

Senderos was neither feared, nor respected; mercenary, perhaps.

I hope for a game worthy of a European Cup Final.

Interesting little piece on Ajax, and well worth a read. Some weel kent names appear, none of whom know anything about Scottish fitba' right enough. From today's Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/may/10/ajax-johan-cruyff-peter-bosz-europa-league-lyon Ajax return to the Cruyff ideals as Peter Bosz leads new generation After brushing aside Lyon in the Europa League semi-final first leg, the Dutch club can scent a chance of a first European trophy in 22 years Jacob Steinberg @JacobSteinberg Wednesday 10 May 2017 10.00 BST Last modified on Wednesday 10 May 2017 10.30 BST It is a cold Thursday morning at Ajax’s De Toekomst complex, where the canteen doubles as a trophy room, the sheer weight of football knowledge can be overwhelming, and the atmosphere is unsurprisingly buoyant after the events of the previous evening at the Amsterdam Arena. Nothing is being taken for granted but Ajax can be excused for feeling pleased with themselves after their stunning performance in the first leg of their Europa League semi-final. These occasions are supposed to be cagey, cautious affairs and they have just torn up the script by beating a dangerous Lyon side 4-1. Out on one of the pitches, the team are doing a light recovery session. The rondos are over and the time has come for some shooting practice. Edwin van der Sar is watching from the touchline and the coach leading the forwards is Dennis Bergkamp. One of the players to catch the eye is Justin Kluivert, a young winger who keeps finding the top corner with eerie calm. It is a scene that sums up Ajax’s philosophy, with each character representative of a part of the club’s soul, and the past and present combining to create a brighter future. Bergkamp is the cerebral genius who looks as if he could still do a job on the pitch, Van der Sar the former goalkeeper who has become an unlikely marketing expert and Kluivert the teenage son of the man who scored the winning goal when Ajax won the last of their four European Cups by beating Milan 22 years ago. The manager is elsewhere. Peter Bosz, who was so fascinated by Ajax in the 90s that he would drive from Rotterdam to Amsterdam to watch Louis van Gaal’s training sessions and whose ideals developed from his heaving scrapbook of Johan Cruyff articles, spends the morning inside his office, pinpointing areas for improvement before Thursday night’s second leg at Stade de Gerland. He is worried. Alexandre Lacazette, Lyon’s star striker, is fit again after a thigh injury. “I already saw five or six moments where if my defenders stand like they were standing yesterday, against Lacazette he will score,” Bosz says. “I have to show them.” Not many clubs can match this level of heritage, which explains the romance attached to the thrilling revival that has taken Ajax close to their first European final in 21 years, an achievement made even more impressive by how they are staying true to their identity: seven of the starting lineup against Lyon were 21 or under. For the time being, of course, they cannot hope to take part in the latter stages of the Champions League. Van der Sar calls it “a playground for the rich and famous” and Ajax know to their cost how much money talks in the modern era, how market forces have conspired against them and benefited the biggest clubs in the richest leagues. “For a club of the stature of Ajax, it’s been too long that we were away from the international podium,” he says. One of the finest goalkeepers in Europe during his playing days, now Van der Sar is one of the Ajax greats striving to turn Cruyff’s vision of how the game should be played into a reality. Bergkamp, Richard Witschge and Aron Winter are on the coaching staff, and Marc Overmars is the technical director. Jaap Stam worked with the defenders before moving to Reading. “He taught me how to use my arms,” Joël Veltman, a veteran in this team at the age of 25, says. “I was too shy in duels. He said don’t smash in but use your arms.” They are a fascinating group who regularly collaborate and debate football. There is no shortage of opinions. “That’s the funny thing,” Van der Sar says. “It is not always easy but we speak as one voice. We have a technical heart.” Intriguingly, however, Van der Sar’s role is not on the pitch. Marketing, rather than coaching, appealed to him after he retired. Now the former Manchester United No1 is responsible for increasing Ajax’s financial competitiveness. They do things differently here. “When I got a call from Johan Cruyff and Dennis Bergkamp two months after I retired, this was the idea that they had for the club, to bring an ex-player into the directors’ office and eventually as the main man,” he says. “Those six years at United showed me what a club needs. You need commercial revenue and exposure. I have brought that a little bit, getting three Chinese sponsors. It’s trying to connect two worlds. That’s why we want a footballer as a CEO.” While Van der Sar watches training from a distance for 10 minutes, Bosz eventually emerges from the main building shortly after midday. He is looking like an inspired appointment. His predecessor, Frank de Boer, won the title in each of his first four seasons but Ajax faded in his final two campaigns and made little impact in Europe. Bosz has energised the team since his arrival in the summer and is popular, despite spending five years at Feyenoord as a player. Ajax’s hated Rotterdam rivals are likely to win the Eredivisie, despite their 3-0 defeat at Excelsior last weekend. They are a point above Ajax with one match left but optimism fills the Amsterdam Arena these days. Bosz’s young team started nervily against Lyon but the noise never died down during an awkward opening 20 minutes. The fans love what they are watching. Bosz cannot stand negative football. He was a defensive midfielder – “a destroyer” – but that is not his managerial style. “When I see my team only defending and destroying like I did I will not enjoy it,” he says. “I thought when I’m on the bench at least I will give myself a happy afternoon. If I give myself a happy afternoon, I can give it to the fans.” In an echo of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, Bosz favours a feverish pressing game. “Barcelona have a three-second rule,” he says. “We’re not Barcelona, so I put two seconds on.” Bosz laughs. “The five-second rule is something that if you lose the ball, this is the best moment to get the ball back again. The opponent needs more or less five seconds to get in the right positions. We have to get it back right away.” The 53-year-old is an admirer of Guardiola. His favourite book is Pep Confidential, Marti Perarnau’s account of Guardiola’s first season at Bayern Munich. He learned from Guardiola’s attention to detail, how he would work out in advance which opposition player was always free on the counterattack. “I always thought Bayern Munich is such a strong team that you don’t have to watch for the opponents for two or three days,” Bosz says. Sometimes I’m on the pitch just enjoying it like a fan on the side. Then I get goosebumps There are similarities between Bosz and Guardiola. Bosz’s critics believe his high-risk strategy asks for trouble but his principles have not changed since his first job at lowly AGOVV, from where he went on to enjoy success at Heracles and Vitesse Arnhem. “What they call naive is that my defence was on the halfway line with a lot of space at the back,” Bosz says. “But you have to organise really well. If you do that, you have the five-second rule. You lose the ball and press them immediately, then it’s possible. If you look at our performances in Europe, yesterday was [only] the second time we have conceded in our stadium.” That level of intensity requires mental sharpness as well as physical fitness. Any player who allows his head to drop after possession is lost finds himself on Bosz’s wrong side. “Don’t be disappointed in yourself,” he says. “Don’t be disappointed in your team-mate. You have to press. This is the moment. Not one player. The whole team. If you do that right, you will not concede. We have young players, so when we lose the ball, in their mind, they go back immediately because they have to defend. My way of thinking is we go forward immediately because we want the ball back.” Bosz should not be mistaken for a misguided idealist. He is focused on maintaining organisation and spends hours poring over matches to find seemingly innocuous mistakes. He does not smile much and his mother tells him to laugh more on television but he insists he is a positive guy. “But I am also critical,” he says. “There is no such thing as a perfect game. It doesn’t exist. It will never exist.” What about when Barcelona … “Beat Real Madrid 5-0? There were a lot of things in the game that they didn’t do well. I look on the computer and I write down the right-back, ah, he is too high.” The five-second rule works only if Ajax are alert to danger when they have the ball. Bosz calls this rest defence. “There may be 50 things we have to do well,” Bosz says. “First I explain to my players how we will play. Then I will show them an animation of rest defence. Then clips of training and the game. Then we show them the mistakes we make and what we have to do better. You also show them when the pressing game was amazing. We show them clips from big teams in Europe. Then the idea is in the heads of the players.” His approach stems from his appreciation of Cruyff. “I had only one idol,” Bosz says. “I knew from the age of 16 that one day I will become a coach. So I was preparing by writing down what my coaches were doing right but also reading a lot from Johan. With some friends, we more or less wrote our own book. Every article, all his interviews were in there. We collected them and tried to organise them – this is for attacking, this is how you defend, this is tactical.” At the start of last year Bosz joined Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose technical director is Cruyff’s son, Jordi. “Just before Johan died, he came to Israel,” Bosz says. “We spent a week together. It was just amazing. Instead of the book that you made, he is talking to you. I was just listening. In one week I learned enough for 10 years. He saw two Maccabi games and he was there at every training session.” Bosz’s head was brimming with ideas but he is aware that not every player is a football obsessive. “This is dangerous for a coach,” he says. “If I want to give all my knowledge to my players, they will get bored. My speech before the game is not more than five minutes. It’s important from those 50 things that I pick the right ones.” His players took some convincing at first, especially the defenders, and Ajax dropped costly points early on. Veltman says: “It was tough. If the left winger goes to the area, you go with him. I was like: ‘Ninety minutes man, it’s impossible.’ But it is fun. Sometimes I’m on the pitch just enjoying it like a fan on the side. Then I get goosebumps.” Veltman is a product of Ajax’s academy, along with the captain, Davy Klaassen, and a younger generation is emerging. Kluivert turned 18 last Friday. Matthijs de Ligt, a 17-year-old defender, recently made his Holland debut. Van der Sar says: “It has intensified in the last five or six years. We have changed the academy and put an even bigger emphasis on training and development hours and facilities and coaches. We train more in the first year. Then the teachers come here and then they train again – instead of first going to school and then training. So we have two or three more training moments than before. Hopefully that will pay off.” Van der Sar knows that avoiding a talent drain will not be easy. Klaassen is being linked with a summer move. Ajax cannot compete financially with the leading clubs in England, Germany, Italy and Spain. Can they hold on to Kasper Dolberg, their lethal Danish striker, or Hakim Ziyech, their brilliant Moroccan attacking midfielder? Can Overmars keep finding cheap gems such as the outstanding Colombian centre-back Davinson Sánchez? Van der Sar says: “We don’t have the spending power of other clubs. We want to bring our own players through – of course there is money to spend but ideally we want to develop players. If they’re good enough for the top European level, you see the average ages of the players who join the big clubs. “You touch everything in this club. As a player I always had a look at the people doing the laundry or the guy cleaning the boots or the security guards. It’s important to feel that everyone is pulling in the same way. That’s reflective in how the club works. You need a good right-back, a good centre-half, a No10 – I need a good operational director, a financial guy. It’s making sure everyone goes forward. There’s the goal – we need to score. Everything behind me was bad because that’s a goal. We need to push.” Ajax’s scouting must be clever. Selling Arkadiusz Milik to Napoli for £27m last year enabled Overmars to break the £10m barrier for the first time when David Neres, a 19-year-old Brazilian forward, joined from São Paulo in January. Bosz’s tough three-year spell as Feyernoord’s technical director not only allowed him to broaden his mind by travelling the world but also offered him an insight into Overmars’s job. All Bosz asks from Overmars is that he brings him clever players. “I don’t care what they did at school,” he says. “I met some guys who went to university and were not intelligent players. Intelligent players anticipate. Unintelligent players react. Always. If you think faster, you are faster on the field. If you react, you are always too late. Know what’s going to happen, not what’s already happened.” This is the Ajax way. It goes back to Cruyff. “We have to be different,” Bosz says. “It’s the only way we have a chance.”

The Swiss Army Knife. The Swiss Roll.

Toblerone. Gruyere. Emmental. Tax evasion as an art form.

I am convinced, and will remain so until my dying day, that Senderos deliberately handled the ball in the sellik match, in order to secure a red card. I know, vaguely, you understand, some supporters of rahoops, and they are of similar opinion. 57 caps for Switzerland, you say? In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? Not one fucking centre back, that's for sure. If you mention Ramon Vega, you will not get away with it.

Is it likely that PC will want this guy? Will he fit the template for players, and for systems?

Christophe Berra? It's a "No" from me. If that is what we are expected to settle for next season, then I can only echo a sporting legend: "The future ain’t what it used to be." (Lawrence Peter 'Yogi Berra, since you ask)

Old age and treachery will always beat youth and skill.

A gentleman. I wonder what he would have made of contemporary figures; of, oh, say, "lenny". Hard to tell, but I think we may rest assured that JSS would not have proposed him for the Golf Club

Of course, Feyenoord only go and get horsed 3 - 0 at Excelsior. Ajax won 4 - 0 at Go Ahead Eagles, and are only 1 point behind. Both teams have one game to play. I hope that I haven't jinxed the lad.

There is a lack of fundamental skills, and a like deficiency of tactical nous. Both traits contrive to make performances dross. If PC could enhance their basic abilities (through practice, practice, practice, say) they would still struggle with changing formation, shape, etc, ie with understanding and applying tactics. If he was able to inculcate the basics of tactical awareness (far less tactical sophistication) the lack of elementary skills would militate against practical application.

Absolutely. The first half, after 10 minutes, was a dog's breakfast. The inability to defend crosses into the box at all is astounding in professionally trained/coached footballers. The lack of basic skills is likewise astonishing: some players have the first touch of a jackhammer, some the passing ability of blind man fleeing in fear his life, some both.

i have no doubt that the Referee Supervisor will apologise personally to Pedro C., and via him, to Joe G., for that rather pernickety yellow card. I imagine that he is on the 'phone as I type.

Either the players are irredeemably dud, worse than we thought, or they are at the madam. Nonetheless, giving them the coup de grace, tomorrow, and expecting performances between then and the beaches is, as you point out, a dangerous game.

I have to say that this side is reduced now to a laughing stock.

i have long gone past the stage of amazement. I have never had any doubts about why they peddle negative, ill-informed guff at the slightest hint of an opportunity.

Tell me this time next year, Smudger.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...." WSC, House of Commons, June 4 1940 https://www.winstonchurchill.org/

Yes, they used to play at Firhill, but have been at Scotstoun for a few years. More Parliamo Kelvinside, I think.

Pedro Caixinha is in the stand at Scotstoun watching Glasgow Warriors v Edinburgh. Also there: Murray, P., and Robertson, S. Is he looking for hairy-arsed defenders? Or merely inspiration? (If the latter, then he could have picked a better match.)

This is, apparently, a true story. During the War -the actual War, WW2, that is, Young Team- BBC radio kept morale high among the population by broadcasting live commentaries of football matches, among other things. One day a match in Edinburgh was cancelled, due to fog. However, no mention was made of the prevailing weather conditions as it was thought that news that Edinburgh was fogbound would have been intelligence of use to the Luftwaffe. On the other hand, it was recognised that cancellation of the football coverage would have been likely to tip the wink to Herr Goering. The dilemma was resolved by broadcasting a spoof match, completely improvised by the commentator(s). Makes one proud to be British.

Giovanni Van Bronckhorst is doing well at Feyenoord, and should wrap up the club's first title since 1999, sometime soon. https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/may/06/giovanni-van-bronckhorst-feyenoord-18-years-title Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s quiet revolution returns Feyenoord to summit The former Arsenal and Rangers midfielder has taken the Dutch ‘club of the people’ to the verge of their first title since 1999 despite his unassuming nature Feyenoord need one win from their final two Eredivise games to be assured of the Dutch title and ensure their current crop of players can party like it’s 1999 Ed Aarons Saturday 6 May 2017 10.00 BST Just when Feyenoord supporters thought it was safe to crow after 18 years in the wilderness, along came Bertrand Traoré, Kasper Dolberg and co. Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side travel to Excelsior on Sunday knowing victory would secure a first Eredivisie title this century, although Ajax’s 4-1 victory over Lyon in the Europa League semi-final first leg at the Amsterdam ArenA on Wednesday has already threatened to put something of a dampener on the celebrations. “All the emotions are a little bit spread at the moment,” admits Bert Konterman, the former Rangers and Holland defender and a member of the Rotterdam club’s 1999 title-winning side. “Half the country supports Feyenoord and the other half Ajax so some people really don’t know whether to be happy or sad.” With two matches to go, a 10-match home winning streak at their De Kuip stadium has cemented De club van het volk (The club of the people) into pole position in the title race. But while Ajax’s surprising achievements in Europe with a squad with an average age of less than 23 have evoked memories of their mid-90s triumphs under Louis van Gaal, Feyenoord’s success this season has been firmly built on a mixture of youth and experience. Five of Van Bronckhorst’s squad have Premier League experience – the former Liverpool goalkeeper Brad Jones and veteran forward Dirk Kuyt, the ex-Aston Villa midfielder Karim El Ahmadi, plus the wingers Eljero Elia, who was on loan at Southampton last season, and the Watford loanee Steven Berghuis – yet each of them arrived in Rotterdam with a point to prove. The 21 goals and 11 assists provided by the Denmark striker Nicolai Jorgensen have proved invaluable to a side that employs the traditional 4-3-3 Dutch system, with the emphasis firmly on attacking. “In July, the chairman announced that they were hoping to win the title this year, although the goal for the season was to qualify for Europe,” recalls the NRC Handelsblad journalist and Feyenoord supporter, Mark Lievisse Adriaanse. “Everyone was saying: ‘Yeah, sure, winning the title: look at last season. You finished third but lost seven games in a row so there is no chance of winning the title this year.’ So nobody expected this. They have dominated the league by being top of the table since day one and it feels like a wave of suffering is falling off after 18 years of waiting. This will probably be the most beautiful league title the club has ever won because the suffering has been so hard. We were almost bankrupt, lost 10-0 and were not serious competitors for years.” That 10-0 defeat by PSV Eindhoven in October 2010 proved to be a watershed. With the club already mired in €40m of debt, the most humiliating result in the proud history of the 1970 European Cup winners hastened the arrival of Martin van Geel to replace Leo Beenhakker as technical director. One of his first acts was to sack the coach, Mario Been, at the end of the season and replace him with Ronald Koeman, who had been out of work since leaving AZ Alkmaar 18 months earlier. “At the time Feyenoord had a very young side that wasn’t much different to the team that had lost 10-0,” remembers Lievisse Adriaanse. “Players like Stefan de Vrij, Georginio Wijnaldum, Leroy Fer and Bruno Martins Indi had started to come through but Koeman introduced a very professional attitude that meant he would not accept losses or small influences in the club that blocked progress. Hiring him was very important for the process and Van Geel must take a lot of credit for that. But on the other hand he also hired Fred Rutten, who was less successful. When he left in 2015, there was no other candidate for the job than Van Bronkhorst.” Despite spending four years as an assistant to first Koeman and then Rutten, who coincidentally was in charge of PSV for that 10-0 defeat, the former Rangers and Arsenal midfielder was an unexpected choice. But Konterman believes the appointment of the former Holland midfielders Jan Wouters and Jean-Paul van Gastel, club captain in 1999, to his backroom staff was a masterstroke. “Giovanni has surprised me,” says Konterman. “I played with him at Rangers and for Holland but in my eyes he wasn’t a leader. What he is doing now is fantastic and he has done well to organise a strong team around him. The combination of these three, who are very different characters, has been so influential. There has been a lot of pressure on the group, especially over the last few weeks, and it can be difficult to handle that. So the experience of players like Kuyt and El Ahmadi has also been crucial.” In particular, the transformation in the midfielder Tonny Vilhena has caught the eye. Having burst into the first team under Koeman as a teenager, he appeared to be on his way out of the club after refusing to sign a new contract and falling out of favour with Van Bronkhorst. Lucrative moves to Leicester and Milan were on the table but the 22-year-old’s dramatic U-turn ensured he remained at the club he had joined 15 years earlier. “Everyone was surprised he stayed. But the most important thing was that his mother had cancer and he didn’t want to leave her,” says Lievisse Adriaanse. “He knew that if he went overseas then he would not get the chance to see her much. He’s been one of the star players this year. A couple of years ago the criticism was that he was too selfish but all the problems that he’s had seem to have vanished. In the Netherlands we’re used to having teenagers in the team but it’s usual to have a period after they break through when it’s more difficult.” Vilhena’s commitment to the cause was underlined this week when he agreed another contract extension until 2020, with rising stars Terence Kongolo and Emil Hansson following suit as they prepare for next season’s Champions League group stages. A new 63,000-capacity stadium is also in the pipeline. They may yet be followed into the group stages of the Champions League by Ajax should they win the Europa League but Konterman, who now coaches the Twente under-19 side that produced Leicester’s Wilfred Ndidi, is convinced that rivalry will only benefit Dutch football in the long run after recent years in the doldrums. “More young players must be given a chance and then there will be confirmation in what we are doing in training and educating the young players,” he says. “We have been searching for the right way to make changes and have lost our vision. The average age in the Dutch league is much lower than it used to be – in my day it was around 27 or 28. A lot of the boys from 1999 were internationals already and used to the big games. There are also more Dutch players in the teams now – we had players from Argentina, Russia, Brazil and Poland and I think that reflects the fact that the Eredivisie has become more of a feeder league. We know our place in Europe and that means we have teams with young players who end up going to England or Spain to earn the big money. It’s not nice because we want a strong league as well but we can’t compete with the TV money in those countries.” For now, though, the focus is firmly on Sunday. Defeat at Excelsior would give Ajax a sniff of overhauling Feyenoord at the summit but, with a match against Heracles at De Kuip to come next week, surely they cannot blow it this time. “The significance for Rotterdam is huge,” says Lievisse Adriaanse. “I was five in 1999 so I don’t remember anything about the last league title. For a whole generation of supporters, we are experiencing what is happening right now for the first time. I don’t really know how to feel.”

Leicester City, of course, would be a case study showing the opposite. But last year was a one-off.