Beenhakker wants to outsmart Cruyff
By Jan Dijkshoorn (netherlands.worldcupblog.org)I have been enjoying Leo Beenhakker my whole football life. He never lets me down. In the olden days, you had the same with Andre van Duin or Pipo De Clown. Whenever they came on telly, you got the butterflies in your belly.
It has something homely. The good vibe. Whenever Beenhakker talks, I close the curtains, eat some stew and put on my fleece socks. And then you could listen to and look at Leo, the most Dutch Man of Holland.
Leo wouldn’t agree of course. He sees himself as a man of the world, a cosmopolitan, sighing and moaning whenever the camera aims at his head. The media love to talk to Leo. Because he’s seen it all. And people people, he can talk about his experiences for ever. He is a tremendous guy.
Leo is known to slip every now and then…Lovely. A word that Leo uses whenever he can. Lovely! Everything is lovely. Leo doesn’t know it, but it’s also lovely to watch him.
He’s like the boy with the too large shirt. Leo wants to be grand and overwhelming. He passionately wants to be a remarkable guy. Like Rinus Michels was. And Ernst Happel. People talk about those two still. Mystical, deep, successful and unfathomable. Leo wants people to tell stories about him too. He wants people to call him “the old man”.
Leo wants hug players. He wants to press them to the chest. He loves “vibes”. And vibes are there, whenever he walks into the room. According to Leo. Everyone loves Leo. Again, according to Leo. And who doesn’t love him, can get the typhoid ( “de tiefus”) and drinks too much, like the Polish Football Association Chairman Lato. But Leo would articulate it with more humor than me.
And that is so disarming with Leo. He’s fighting his inferiority complex for years now, and it was Johan Cruyff who gave it to him. He spoiled Leo’s finest hour at Ajax in 1980. At long last, Leo was the coach of a top club.
And at long last, he could stand up from the bench and yell things. Beenhakker was tremendous at doing exactly that. I never ever saw someone act the top coach like him. Until technical advisor Johan Cruyff came down from the stands.
That moment is in my top 10 of Best Football Moments Ever. It’s like watching a Shakespeare play and Sir Laurence Olivier coming on stage during the performance to give some advice to an actor (Anthony Hopkins?) while the audience looks on.
Cruyff did that and humiliated Beenhakker for the rest of his life.
There he was. His head bowed towards a gesticulating Cruyff. Jopie was explaining to Leo what went wrong in the game. Leo looked like a deer, frozen in a car’s headlights. He was terrified. Later he’d say: “That’s where I should have socked Johan on the jaw!”. But he didn’t.
Three words and one gesture from Cruyff can destroy a life. Without JC’s remark of Vanenburg’s high pitched voice, Gerald could have been a top coach. Now he’s some underpaid coach in a cheap trainers in rural Holland. Beenhakker was cut off at the ankles and since then the only thing he’s trying to do, is to prove JC wrong.
Beenhakker was a changed man after that event. His intonation, the words he uses, the look in his face. Now, he’s the man whom you don’t have to tell anything anymore. He knows it all. He is totally allergic to types like Cruyff, trying to tell him what to do. Leo will get up and leave. Or he socks them on the jaw. Leo has learned his lesson and he’s professionally acting the experienced coach for years now.
Leo: “75% will never be made public. Ever!”His ultimate achievement: Leo coached Real Madrid and became Don Leo. I think the players back then sort of tolerated him. It was some sort of weird guy who would place the pylons on the pitch during training sessions. Who cared? At least they could have a laugh.
This period in Madrid made Leo indestructable. Tell him all his mistakes – for example that horrible WC in 1990 in Italy or the missed qualifications in Rotterdam against Belgium in 1985 – and he’ll start talking about Madrid. It’s not like some idiot is going to tell him how the football world works? I mean, he was coach of Real Madrid. Surely, you know what you’re doing then?
That’s why I love Leo. He wants us all to adore him. He wants us to laugh about him. I never liked his colonial attitude at the WC2006 in Germany when he coached Trinidad and Tobago. It was an embarrassment but he was highly satisfied with that. No one enjoys thirty buzzin’ camera’s more than he.
Amused, he told the media that the players from his selection basically played football with an empty milk carton before he interfered in the underdeveloped football nation. But mind you, it’s not just Trinidat and Tobago. He is able to talk about Poland as if that’s a mini-state somewhere on the coast of Senegal.
Should Leo work in Germany for half a year, he would be able to make them feel ashamed for the Second World War after all. Lebensraum, the mere idea… What were they thinking?
Beenhakker makes everything simple from a verbal perspective. He is the wise old coach and Mario Been is called “the little one”, Rijkaard is “the tall bloke with the big arse”, Gullit “the smiling one with the big hair” and Van Tiggelen “the chap that didn’t get food from his parents”. That’s Leo. He loves it. His world is full of “fatso’s”, “cross-eyeds”, “baldies”, “sillies” and – never forget it -lovelies. And it does work. Leo is untouchable.
And two weeks ago, in Studio Voetbal, he did it again. He spoke emotionally and passionately about Feyenoord and the Feyenoord legion. He gets the shivers, every week. Whenever the players leave the tunnel. Tre-men-dous! Lovely isn’t it? No better place on Earth than De Kuip!
Which is literally what he said about the Ajax fans six years back. Or the Mexicans. And in no time, he’ll say it about some Caribbean Island population, when Leo – ad nauseum – doesn’t want anything to do with us.
If you saw Leo’s performance in that tv program, you knew he understood one thing: the people need to love you. Cruyff couldn’t care less. And again, Johan is miles ahead of Leo.
Move over, darling…Note by Jan: Ajax played FC Twente at home. The Tukkers led 1-3 by half time. Johan came down from the vip-area and sat next to Leo. He spoke to Leo, heavily gesticulating as ever, and took over the coaching job, with Leo mockingly beside him. Ajax won that game 5-3. As far as I know, there are no tv-highlights on YouTube of this game.
