Setting the Standard: Looking Through Oranje Glasses

[Frankie 8,136]

An excellent addition to the project from Pete - detailing his opinion of how Rangers could look to Holland for inspiration on improving the club.

 

http://www.gersnetonline.co.uk/newsite/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=755&Itemid=1

[Frankie 8,136]

Part 1

 

After BlueIsTheColour’s article on setting up a working scouting system I thought I would do a check on the success of the clubs mentioned in that thread. At first I didn’t want to go further and spoil the thread but on looking at it again I think I have stumbled on to something that I want to bring forward.

 

Firstly I will for the sake of my point, again say that AZ and Hoffenheim were not really the best examples to give when it comes to clubs being run through good scouting and youth development. The main reason for these clubs' success is still super rich chairmen. Looking at these clubs logically: until recently AZ had a stadium holding 8,000 supporters. Their new stadium holds 17,000 supporters. The whole village or town of Hoffenheim has 3,000 inhabitants with the chance of a few supporters in surrounding regions.

 

Let there not be any doubts here; these two clubs have a small fan base and therefore are most certainly run from the millions of their chairmen. Where we have to look at further is where these super rich chairman have put all their money.

 

At this point I would like to give a small background check on these two chairmen. Dick Scheringa was a policeman who left the force to make money from his hobby. That was giving financial advice to friends and family. Together with his wife they started a financial advice bureau. The advice bureau developed into a loan company and since 2006 it achieved a bank status; the DSB (The Dick Scheringa Bank). He has many critics in Holland due to his lend to anyone adverts - you may have heard of them: “even although you have debt you can get more debt with us” . Dick Scheringa also has two big weakness. He loves football and speed ice-skating. He pumps his money into these two sports He sponsors them both in a big way via AZ and the DSB speed ice-skating team and ice speed skating in general. It is said that he has in his will that AZ will benefit from his money for years to come after his death.

 

Dietmar Hopp is one of the top ten richest men in Germany reputed to be worth about €13 billion. He made his billions by leaving IBM to be firstly co-owner and later owner of the computer software firm SAP. He was in fact a youth player with Hoffenheim and he returned to the club in 1990 as a financial backer. He financed a 30,000 seat stadium to the value of €60 million. He also financed Hoffenheim to win at every level as they advanced from the eighth level of German football to the Bundesliga.

 

What these two Chairmen did was put coaches\trainers into place who were well known for their football vision. Trainers who can spot talent in players playing for other teams at a lower level or for bigger teams, where the players were not playing to their real potential. AZ had firstly Co Adriaanse who brought AZ to the top but left of his own free will, feeling he had taken AZ as far as he could, suggesting that van Gaal should be his successor to take AZ to the next level. Another point that I want to make here is that AZ under van Gaal dropped into a relegation fight last season. It would have been easy for Scheringa to sack him but he stuck by his manager’s vision that it would come good in the long term. That vote of confidence is now being paid back with AZ racing to the league title.

 

Dietmar Hopp brought Hoffeheim slowly through the ranks of German football to the top division of the regional leagues. Then in 2006-2007 he decided the way forward was to start bringing in players and a coaching staff who had Bundesliga experience. Rolf Rangnick was appointed coach; a man who had managed SSV Ulm, Stuttgart, Hannover and FC Schalke. They directly took second place in the regional league south for direct promotion to the Bundesliga 2. Then surprisingly they finished second in division 2 to gain promotion to the Bundesliga itself. It has been reported that Hopp has given the manager a budget of €20 million per season.

 

These two chairmen have also put their money into sitting up Youth academies and a scouting teams to scan the leagues for talent playing below their true standard.

 

Now I would like to bring in two new names of men that have become chairmen of Dutch football clubs that don’t have billions to spend but through positive thinking and good club management have brought their teams to punching above their weight on a long term basis.

 

That is Riemer van der Velde the ex-chairman of Herenveen and Joop Munsterman of FC Twente. Both these chairmen took over the clubs when they were on a low and in financial turmoil (sound familiar?).

 

Riemer van der Velde took over Herenveen in 1983 when they played in the second Dutch league. They were in financial mess and had little going for them. By 1985 Riemer had the club financially in the black and looked to the future by bringing in Foppe de Haan as trainer. Foppe is a trainer who had a vision for positive and attacking football (he is to this day coach from the Dutch U21 team). Although Foppe was replaced after a year for poor results he was put in charge of coordinating the technical side of the club. Johan Cruijff who had just been sacked as manager of Ajax was asked to take over the club and was totally impressed by the vision of van der Velde. Only the pulling power of taking over at Barcelona stopped Cruijff from taking the managers job at Herenveen.

 

In 1992 de Haan returned as coach and Herenveen have grown into a club who regularly play in Europe. They have achieved this by having the vision of picking up young talent who play for lesser teams in the lower leagues, players who are released by the top clubs and an seemingly unending supply from Scandanavia. To name just a few players, Van Nistelrooy, Huntelaar, Allbeck, Alves and Samaras. As for their scouting system in Scandinavia well you may think that Herenveen have a huge scouting network there but the fact is they had only two scouts there: Riemer van der Velde and his wife. Much of the free time Riemer and his wife had, was spent travelling to Scandinavia to watch football games and pick out possible talents. In Holland it is well known that scouts from the top teams tried to find out who Riemer was watching as they knew he had an eye to pick out a gem. Riemer has retired as Chairman of Herenveen but is still seen regularly at the stadium and also at stadiums in Scandinavia still scouting together with his wife.

 

The fourth Chairman is Joop Munsterman, from FC Twente. He is special because he started as a cleaner at the local newspaper. He worked his way up the ladder from cleaner to director of the newspaper and later Chief Executive Officer of the British investment firm Mecom who owned the publishing company. Joop, who was already a director of Twente, took over when Twente were minutes away from bankruptcy. He built a plan to save Twente, whioch translates to 'Twente under the scaffold'.

 

That, as it sounds, was his building plan to get FC Twente back to being a castle instead of a ruin. Munsterman is not a fantastically rich person but what he did do was get business sponsors behind the club. If you walk into a supermarket in Twente then you are putting money into FC Twente. On the football side of things he put the right people in the right places. Fred Rutten one of Holland's best young coaches started the build and when he left, Munsterman came up with the name Steve McClaren, another talent that had lost his way elsewhere. That is the road FC Twente have gone down.

 

In addition that that strategy, Twente have one of the best youth academies in Holland while having people with vision in place who can pull misfits from other teams and turn them into million pound players. Orlando Engelaar came to Twente for €400,000 and was sold to Schalke for €7 million and Karim El Ahmadi a youth product was also sold for millions. They formed the midfield positions for Twente last season and were thought irreplaceable. Twente now lie second with a totally new midfield nine points behind AZ. Eljero Elia was a young player sitting on the bench at Den Haag when Twente bought him for €100,000. He is now valued at €12 million...!

 

[CONTINUED]

[Frankie 8,136]

Part 2

 

Now I will put together where I am going with this. The common denominator of these four chairmen is a love of the club, and putting men with football vision in place to take the club forward. Sir David Murray has himself arguably minimal football vision given the club's backward spiral of the last 10 years. He would rather sit on his grapes in France than his seat at Ibrox. The only manager with any vision (Paul Le Guen) was cut off at the roots. What we have is a Chairman without any knowledge of football. A Chairman who has no genuine love for the club as it was only ever a business venture for him. A Chairman who has employed many key people with the same lack of vision that he has. In the examples above the chairmen have either pumped their own money into the club or run the club on an efficient budget. Sir David Murray has certainly not run the club efficiently and has only put in what he hopes to get back.

 

A youth system is a must for any football club but in saying that there is no club in the world that can live on their own youth system. Rangers need a management team and scouting system that can pick out those special talents that other clubs miss. Any club with money can pick out players by paying millions. The trick is to pick out players for little and sell them on for millions. Again, the common denominator is a vision for the future and that is the main ingredient that seems to be missing at Ibrox.

 

How can we create that oranje vision? What would we need to start our own Youth academy at Rangers?

 

Actually many pieces of that puzzle are already in place. Murray Park (although not built as a youth academy per se) is almost custom built to fill such a role. On the educational side of things I am sure many schools would love to be part of such a project. Bellahouston Academy (mentioned on an earlier article by AMMS) is just one valid example of putting together football and education in a positive long term project.

 

The negative part of this is, that the costs start to mount, and I believe they would be quite substantial. It is possible that these costs are the reason Rangers are not already taking that path. Whether the fruits that are plucked out-weigh the running costs remains to be seen. As most Dutch clubs have live-in academies it would appear they believe that it is an expenditure worth having. Let me state here that I don’t believe for one second that the difference between Dutch football and Scottish football is a youth academy for professional football players. The difference between these two countries is the coaching and set-up at grass root level and that is the remit of the SFA, SPL and the Scottish government. Projects such as this should be worked on not wild good chases regarding 'Unacceptble Conduct'. Wouldn't it also be refreshing to read the media concentrate on something like improving our game rather than decrying it?

 

Going on to the scouting set-up, it is easy to say we need scouts all over the world who are constantly looking for young talent. I think you now have to ask yourself is it financially feasible to do that? I have often read on this forum that PSV, Ajax, Feynoord all being named in having Schools of excellence in South America, Africa and probably Timbuktu. To my knowledge not one player has ever come through this system and I believe all these clubs have now retreated from these means due to the running costs far out-weighing the profit. These clubs do pick up gems from South America and Africa though? Yes but the fact is that these teams have good contacts with football agents. They do also have a team of local scouts who will fly out and evaluate a player named by his agent. Do you really believe a scout from AZ was ambling in the park in South America and stumbled on a player who was unknown to all. No! Agents have websites and put their wares up for sale. Club scouts plough through hours of video material and then fly out to check up on these tips.

 

To achieve this I believe Rangers need a technical director in place, instead of Martin Bain. We need a man who has a knowledge and vision of football putting things in place, and not someone with a commcerical background. We need a team working from Ibrox or Murray Park who travel the world checking up on players on a regular basis. We do not need to be paying hundreds of people across the world to do minimal work in my opinion. We need the right men in the right place developing and scouting our players. Men with that oranje vision. Only our Chairman can put them in place.

 

He has to put those Oranje glasses on.

 

[gisabeer 409]

That was a bloody good read.

 

But there was a word that kept popping up that doesnt appear to be in the Ibrox dictionary at the moment.

 

Vision.

 

It does though make you realise how static and stagnant we are given the size of the club that we percieve ourselves to be.

[Tannochsidebear 2,306]

An excellant article, and very well researched by the looks of it. I am sure I am not alone in knowing nothing about these clubs history ( I hadn't even heard of the German team).

 

I am not sure how relevant the examples are to a club of our stature and demand for success, and using agents as the first line of scouts is very dangerous IMO, but I am sure it is something that could be looked at in more depth if it was felt that it could provide value.

[calscot 0]

What, you haven't heard of the team who are sitting top of the Budesliga? They are a sensation at the moment as they are from a town of 3000 people.

[pete 2,494]

An excellant article, and very well researched by the looks of it. I am sure I am not alone in knowing nothing about these clubs history ( I hadn't even heard of the German team).

 

I am not sure how relevant the examples are to a club of our stature and demand for success, and using agents as the first line of scouts is very dangerous IMO, but I am sure it is something that could be looked at in more depth if it was felt that it could provide value.

 

I am not saying the first line of scouting should be agents.It is just not financially feasible to pay hundreds or thousands of scouts across the world. If we also had hundreds or thousands of Scouts, you would create an organisation that is extremely difficult to oversee and open yourself up to people taking financial advantage of the club. In my vision we have to have a small group of Topscouts working from Ibrox\MP who have a full time job in making contacts all over the world and when given tips the knowledge and vision(that word again) to follow it up. Riemer van der Velde was not a top player but he can spot talent when others miss it. One example was the signing of Afonso Alves.(now at Middlesbrough) The scouts of Ajax were also scouting Malmo at that time. Ajax signed Rosenberg who done nothing for them and herenveen signed Alves who brought in +15mill euros. I know Alves is not doing too good at the moment but i don't think Herenveen will be losing sleep over that.

Scandinavia is a few hours flying from Glasgow it would be simple to have a scout at games on a regular trip.

Every single professional and youth professional player are on a registered list. these lists are available to all clubs as far as i know. A Rangers scout picking up an unknown player from Copenhagen park is a fantasy in my opinion. It can happen per chance but not on an organised fashion.

A Scouting team creating contacts and going to watch prof games and professional youth games over the world, is the answer imo. Let Malmo pick out the boy in the park. we have to know when to pay malmo 500.000 for a million pound player.

[Tannochsidebear 2,306]

What, you haven't heard of the team who are sitting top of the Budesliga? They are a sensation at the moment as they are from a town of 3000 people.

 

 

Nope, never heard of them.

 

Other than the Spanish football on Sky, there is not much exposure of the German, French leagues on a professional channel here.

 

I would normally only keep an eye on the German league if we had an opponent in our CL group or upcoming EUFA tie etc.

[Tannochsidebear 2,306]

I am not saying the first line of scouting should be agents.It is just not financially feasible to pay hundreds or thousands of scouts across the world. If we also had hundreds or thousands of Scouts, you would create an organisation that is extremely difficult to oversee and open yourself up to people taking financial advantage of the club. In my vision we have to have a small group of Topscouts working from Ibrox\MP who have a full time job in making contacts all over the world and when given tips the knowledge and vision(that word again) to follow it up. Riemer van der Velde was not a top player but he can spot talent when others miss it. One example was the signing of Afonso Alves.(now at Middlesbrough) The scouts of Ajax were also scouting Malmo at that time. Ajax signed Rosenberg who done nothing for them and herenveen signed Alves who brought in +15mill euros. I know Alves is not doing too good at the moment but i don't think Herenveen will be losing sleep over that.

Scandinavia is a few hours flying from Glasgow it would be simple to have a scout at games on a regular trip.

Every single professional and youth professional player are on a registered list. these lists are available to all clubs as far as i know. A Rangers scout picking up an unknown player from Copenhagen park is a fantasy in my opinion. It can happen per chance but not on an organised fashion.

A Scouting team creating contacts and going to watch prof games and professional youth games over the world, is the answer imo. Let Malmo pick out the boy in the park. we have to know when to pay malmo 500.000 for a million pound player.

 

 

I see where you are coming from, and to suggest we can afford hundreds of scouts around the world would of course be ridiculous. I would have thought we could, however, target up to half a dozen countries where sell-on fees are likely to be low and who have a decent record of bringing through quality players who can settle and play abroad (Scandanavia certainly fits this bill) and place our scouts accordingly.

 

With the greatest of respect, I see no reason to even look at South America for talented youngsters. There is no proof of anyone coming straight from this region and going straight into British football and doing well. South Americans generally have to go to their native language speaking countries, (Portugal, Spain) to settle into European style football before being able to come to our much faster, less technical game.

 

That is why I suggest we stick our modest budget to target an area with proven success rates, and where we can pick up players for modest fees and we have a good idea that they will settle in without too many problems.

 

Can I just say that you are absolutely 100% spot on with your assessment that we need a technical director with football knowledge instead of a (supposedly) commercially backgrounded CEO. As long as this TD keeps out of the manager's remit, things should work fine.

[CammyF 6,763]

Can I just say that you are absolutely 100% spot on with your assessment that we need a technical director with football knowledge instead of a (supposedly) commercially backgrounded CEO. As long as this TD keeps out of the manager's remit, things should work fine.

 

And I would nominate Mr Graeme Souness or Sir Alex Ferguson for that role.

 

Cammy F