This is an excellent interview. Everything Bert VAn Marwijk has to say is directly transferrable to our thoughts and practice of the game in the ACT Region. Why not learn from a Master Coach? Perhaps he is a good candidate for the Socceroos job?
Interview With Dutch National Coach - BERT VAN MARWIJK
BY ANDY ROXBURGH,
UEFA TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
Sourced from UEFA at http://www.uefa.com/MultimediaFiles/Download/Publications/uefa/UEFAMedia/94/76/74/947674_DOWNLOAD.pdf
AS A PLAYER, BERT VAN MARWIJK PLAYED ON THE LEFT WING, THEN MOVED TO MIDFIELD, BEFORE ENDING HIS CAREER AS A DEFENDER. HE PLAYED FOR GO AHEAD EAGLES, AZ ALKMAAR AND MVV MAASTRICHT AMONG OTHERS, AND WAS CAPPED FOR THE NATIONAL TEAM. UNFORTUNATELY, INJURY DEPRIVED HIM OF THE OPPORTUNITY TO PLAY IN THE FIFA WORLD CUP IN ARGENTINA IN 1978. HIS COACHING CAREER WAS LAUNCHED IN THE YOUTH PROGRAMME OF MVV MAASTRICHT AND, AFTER EIGHT YEARS OF NURTURING YOUNG PLAYERS, HE MOVED TO THE PROFESSIONAL RANKS. HIS FIRST TASTE OF A CUP FINAL CAME IN THE NETHERLANDS WITH FORTUNA SITTARD FC, BUT IT WAS IN 2002 THAT HE STRUCK GOLD WHEN HE WON THE UEFA CUP WITH FEYENOORD. FOLLOWING A TWO-YEAR STINT AT BV BORUSSIA DORTMUND IN GERMANY, HE RETURNED TO FEYENOORD AND WON THE KNVB CUP IN 2008. IN THE AFTERMATH OF THAT SUCCESS, HE REPLACED MARCO VAN BASTEN AS THE HEAD COACH OF THE DUTCH NATIONAL TEAM FOLLOWING EURO 2008 IN AUSTRIA/SWITZERLAND. IN HIS NEW ROLE, HE TOOK THE NETHERLANDS TO THE FINALS OF THE 2010 WORLD CUP BY WINNING THEIR QUALIFYING GROUP IN IMPRESSIVE STYLE. HE WAS A CREATIVE PLAYER WHOHAS DEVELOPED INTO A POSITIVE, IMAGINATIVE COACH AT THE TOP LEVEL, HE IS BERT VAN MARWIJK
How would you describe your style of management/leadership?
I think it is very important that you have the respect of your players. How you do that can vary. I think you have to be a personality and maybe a father figure.
You have to have a style that makes the players want to do something for you. That’s important. The best thing is that they will do it because of your quality. I’m not really democratic, but I think it is vital that the players can trust you, that they know you can love them, and that you can stand among them when appropriate. But you must also be able to keep your distance. You have to be clear and honest with your players and I try to be both. Also, you have to have the guts to give them responsibility. The youth of the moment are programmed not to take responsibility. When we were growing up in the streets, we took our decisions. Now players ask you what to do next. So we must point them in the right direction and they must know that you can take decisions. You must be clear in technical football things and, above all, you must have respect.
2 • Who influenced your development as a coach?
Nobody in particular. From an early age I was a player, a left-winger, and I thought I knew everything. But, later I moved to midfield and saw the game differently. Finally, I played at the back and had another perspective and it is during those playing times that I learned the most. I learned a lot from good and bad coaches, but not anyone special. I learned from my own mistakes, and I learned, from my own experiences,
how players feel. When I come into the dressing room, the players must have the feeling that I know what they are thinking and feeling. They have to know that I understand. I have great respect for coaches who didn’t have a professional football career, because for me it is very important that the coach and the players can understand each other.
3 • Rinus [Michels] used to say that it took a certain type of personality to handle the Dutch team. Do you agree?
In the Netherlands it is never good enough, even when you win 7-0 – enough is not enough. But we played in EURO 2008 and we beat Italy and France and everything was so good. Suddenly, we lost the next game because we lost focus. We seem to live in extremes. Because we are a small country we need to be creative. Some would say we have an arrogance, but this can be a strength if it means confidence and tactical intelligence. We are always thinking about tactics and how we can beat the other team. I like to use the same organisation but with a difference in the details. We always want to outsmart the opponent, because when you don’t have great depth in your squad, it is not enough to battle; you have to be clever. From our history, we have always been creative people. And from what I have previously said, Rinus is right that it is very difficult to handle a Dutch team, because everyone wants to be an individual. Also, our players are coming from different countries to join the national team and they earn a lot of money. We have a lot of different personalities to deal with, but the one common ingredient is that they all love the game, just like me and my staff.
4 • From a playing perspective, what is your philosophy of the game?
What is important for me is that we play in a way that suits the players, but also me as the coach. They have to have the qualities to do what you want – you can’t ask them to do things they can’t do. They have to be motivated to do what you want them to do. It is important to use the whole field and I like to have players on the wings. In midfield, we have either two deep and one in an advanced position, or the other way around, both shapes creating a triangle. We are always trying to create a third man situation. I like to play in a creative way, but I also like to win. I have never told the team to go for a draw. We come with our approach but are able to deal with every type of opponent. My organisation stays, so that we can play our game. Some countries can perform well without the ball, while Dutch players only feel good when they have possession. Our philosophy is to build the play, to use the ball in a constructive way and not just to play long. One of the most important things today is the transition, particularly when you lose the ball. Because we like to dominate the ball, the counter against us can be the biggest danger. We try to get the ball back as quickly as possible. This means that the front and middle players must understand the need to react and to press the ball. If FC Barcelona’s stars can do that, we can do that. When people look at Barça, they see their creative players, but they are also impressive in the way they respond to losing the ball. Their philosophy is the same as mine. What I like is to create situations where we have an extra man in the midfield; we train a lot to achieve that. The execution of the pass, the timing, is so important.
5 • You started out as a youth coach. What was your attitude towards player development?
I started as a youth coach when I stopped playing and I did that for eight years. The emphasis was very much on technical work. For 19 years I was a professional player, but I never thought of becoming a coach. However, when you stop playing you want to stay in the game, because football is your world. So with the youths I started my coaching career and I focused on technical, tactical training. I am also a believer that, when possible, young players should stay at home. When you are really talented you will always become a good player anyway. But it is also important to take care of your education, to have your friends. Maybe when you are 14 years old you can move to another town to join a big club. The organisation in youth clubs in Holland is very good, even the structure of amateur football is good. We can, however, improve the quality of the coaches. You can always make improvements. Also, we need to pay the youth coaches better, because then you motivate them even more. Youth players at top clubs don’t take responsibility any more, they don’t think for themselves. Everybody tells them what to do, but I like them to be trained to think for themselves. When we played on the streets we were very self-reliant. They don’t do that any more. There needs to be time for free play and they need to be challenged more.
6 • When you won the 2002 UEFA Cup with Feyenoord, what was special about that campaign?
One thing for me was very important – we were not the biggest club, with the most money, but we had the best team that year, in that competition. The current Dutch team is capable of beating anyone, but they have to be able to sustain a high level over a long period. This is what we did at Feyenoord. We were very confident, a positive arrogance you could call it, and this showed. For example, we won away to Inter Milan, motivated by their disregard for us.
7 • How do you reflect on your time as the head coach of Borussia Dortmund?
I had a very good time at Dortmund. The crowd there was fantastic, with up to 80,000 every game. I learned a lot because I was exposed to a different mentality. We in Holland are taught to say what we think and this is not the norm in Germany. I really liked being there and I gained a lot from the experience. The German players were very focused on the physical side of the game, while we in Holland are obsessed by the technical/tactical. But we can definitely learn some things from them. The amazing thing about German players is that they can win when playing a bad game, whereas for us it is very difficult to win a match when we don’t play well. The Germans have a great winning mentality. We can all learn from each other and I can’t understand when some people are not open and willing to learn from others.
8 • Do you find the demands of the national team greater than those at club level?
When you are a club coach here, at AFC Ajax or PSV Eindhoven, everyone talks about you and you are on TV every week, but when you are the coach of Holland, they talk about you every four or five weeks. But the pressure is ten times greater and that is the big difference. I cannot train with the players every day like a club coach, but I still have to produce results. With a club, the attention, the impact, is regular week after week, while the national coach comes into focus less frequently but then the intensity is far, far greater. That is the big difference.
9 • You have successfully worked with a lot of top players, many with strong personalities. Is there anything in particular which you have learned from this experience?
When you are working with superstar players and you deal with them and talk to them in a normal way, and you show them that you love football, they like that. I remember my son-in-law, Mark van Bommel from FC Bayern München and Holland, telling my daughter that he thought I was a good player. He only saw me kick the ball once but, like all top players, he could instantly recognise someone who could play. The things you say, the way you walk, the way you kick the ball are all indications to players that you are a football person. They can relate to you and you can communicate with them, but it must be in a natural way. Ultimately, the players have to realise that we can only succeed by doing things together. I agree with Sir Alex Ferguson when he says that it is good for players to have an ego, a pride in what they do, and that we need to have those star players to succeed.
10 • As a graduate of the Dutch coaching school, what is special about the training that young coaches receive there?
When you train as a coach here in Holland, the most important thing they teach you is how to watch a game – to analyse what is going wrong and then how to train the players. What we do well here is to make the training of coaches as realistic as possible. I have contributed to our pro licence courses and talked about practical things, such as how to deal with pressure, how to deal with other cultures, how to manage your staff, etc. We want young coaches to think for themselves, to be themselves.
11 • As you look forward to the World Cup in South Africa, what are your expectations in relation to the standard of competition and the Netherlands’ chances of success?
I’m very realistic, but at the same time I believe in something. We are capable of winning against any team, but we will have to be well structured and the players will have to realise that. In the qualifying group, we had an important moment up in Iceland. We only needed a point to reach the finals and we had four games still to play, so we could have relaxed but instead we played very well. The players now realise that it never stops, that we always have to be at our best. Sometimes we don’t have our top players available, either at the front or the back, but we must always defend as a team – this is very important and something I have tried to impart to them. When you defend as a team there needs to be trust among the players, and when there is trust, the confidence grows. I think we have improved in this aspect of the game. Added to this we have players who can make a difference. But we are a country of only 16 million people and when we lose three or four of our key players, it is not possible to open a door and bring in others of that level. We have to stay fit and be at our best, mentally and tactically, if we are going to succeed. In my opinion, Spain is the best team at the moment, but England and Brazil are very dangerous.
12 • What kind of “team-behind- the-team” will you have in South Africa?
Our team-behind-the-team includes four scouts, a goalkeeping coach and three assistant coaches – Frank de Boer and Phillip Cocu are part of this staff because they have so much experience in the EURO, World Cup and UEFA Champions League. They are at an age when it is easy for them to relate to the players, and they also get a lot of respect from everyone in our team. Also Frank played at the back, Phillip was a midfielder and I was an attacker, and this means we have specialists in each area. I give them a lot of responsibility because the team-behind-the-team is one of the most important things if we are to perform at our best. All of our backroom staff are ex-players – the chief scout was a team-mate of mine and I trust him totally. If any one in your technical/ medical staff becomes negative then they must go, because one little negative thing and you don’t win the final.
13 • How do you see the future of international football?
The signals now suggest that the biggest clubs in the world must be controlled in terms of financial fair play, and it seems that the financial crisis is helping to bring football people together. Technically the game is getting faster and better. But everyone needs to keep their own style. Because many of our players are playing abroad, the first thing I have to say to them is ”now we play the Dutch way”. This, of course, is possible because they were brought up and developed in Holland. The best compliment we can get is when someone says, without knowing the names of the competing sides, that it is a Dutch team. As I said before, I am realistic, but I am also idealistic, and because of that, I am very hopeful that international football will continue to blossom in the future.
14 • What are the main competences/ qualities that a top coach needs today?
Personality is a vital quality. The way you deal with things can be different, but you must gain respect. You must be able to influence people and to get them to do what you want. As I said earlier, when I was young I thought that I knew everything, but now I have learned to listen, although I still make my own decisions. When you are coach of a top team and you lose three or four games everyone is talking to you and some coaches are swayed by what they hear. For me, it is important not to show fear and not to be influenced by others’ opinions – you must trust yourself. You also need the courage to risk making mistakes. Team selection is a priority – the right people on the pitch and the right people in the backroom staff. Your philosophy of football, your personality and your attitude are the main coaching competences at the top level of the game.
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