Ajax Coaches

[Philippe]

It's official : Bayern and Louis van Gaal will part ways at the end of this season.

[souras84]

Does that mean, Van Gaal with assistant De Boer?

[Orange14]

Does that mean, Van Gaal with assistant De Boer?

This would be the worst news possible. Van Gaal is so controlling that there would not be room for anyone else at the club. We are doing just fine right now and let King Louis go off into retirement with our blessing for the good work that was done in the 1990s. I don't want him back!

[souras84]

Well I expect him to become the Netherlands manager after 2012. Till then I wouldnt be suprised to see hime go to Chelsea!!! It would be a hit!!!

[rjf1]

Binging Louis back would be a big mistake IMO. It would be a recipe for more back room strife and tension. Things are moving forward nicely now and I wouldn't want to turn everything topsy-turvy. Louis is a great manager, but this isn't the time or team.

[aveslacker]

Like everyone else has said, why on earth would we be interested in Van Gaal now? The current setup is really showing promise. We are playing young players in the Ajax style and getting results. Adding Van Gaal and his huge ego to the mix would be a huge step backward, imo.

[Kowalczyk]

Van Gaal and Cruijff working in one team...?

Nah. Ain't gonna happen.

K.

[ofey]

You have to pick one:
1. Van Gaal
or
2. Cruijff

Both cannot co-exist

At this point in time, we're going about our change pretty good. Frank and Hennie and Danny and Cruijff + Denis next year should be able to sort it all out.

And if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Philippe]

In spite of limited ressources, De Boer is doing fine IMO and should be second to none.

[SPL]

A big 2 page article in the Daily Mail today ,headline When Keown(old Arsenal player) met Bergkamp in Coaching Paradise.Ok it can only be about one place de Toekomst.

sorry I cannot cut and paste the article but its on dailymail.co.uk if anyone can put the link up here.

Martin Keown spent the day last week at the worlds most famous youth academy to interview his old mate and to look at our youth and coaching. He and the reporter were both mighty impressed with the amount of ex players coaching and Keown describes the training ground as a factory of football and paradise for coaches . They talked to DB and gave an insight on what is going on .

As both the reporter and Keown stated they turned up at de Toekomst to see Frank de Boer Bergkamp, Davids,Vonk,Stam and Roy working with the first and Jong squads with Ronald de Boer with the youth ,Overmars having a day off and Danny Blind around.

Ok you guys get the picture but I am not sure there is another club in football with so many ex players , and all Ints coaching. Keown is clearly very impressed with this but then again where coaching and youth development is concerned one club still leads the way for all others .

I hope someone can put the link here as its a great article.

[Orange14]

Your wish is fulfilled: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... Keown.html

[Ride]

sorry I cannot cut and paste the article but its on dailymail.co.uk if anyone can put the link up here.
I hope someone can put the link here as its a great article.

Easy..


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... Keown.html

When Keown met Bergkamp in coaching paradise... the Ajax talent factory

It is half past 10 at Ajax's De Toekomst training ground and the morning's session is in full swing.

Head coach and former Barcelona star Frank De Boer is running the attack versus defence drill. Manchester United treble winner Jaap Stam is telling the central defenders to be more aggressive. Champions League winner and footballing pitbull Edgar Davids is outpassing the midfielders and Wim Jonk, once of Sheffield Wednesday, takes notes.




On the adjacent pitch, Arsenal's favourite Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp - looking as cool and relaxed as ever - works with the strikers, who try to turn in crosses delivered by Bergkamp's good friend, former Nottingham Forest winger Bryan Roy. Frank's brother Ronald de Boer is working with the youth team and Marc Overmars is on a day off.

And on the touchline? A couple of hundred fans, watching in captivated silence as their idols train, a very excited Arsenal fan who has flown over from London for the day in the hope of Bergkamp's autograph and Sportsmail's Martin Keown in deep conversation with Ajax legend Danny Blind.

So, that's 37 league titles, five Champions Leagues, 51 cup wins and 565 international caps within a 100-metre radius. And, as Keown points out, even the groundsman probably has a couple of European Cups to his name.

We are in town to see Bergkamp, once a team-mate of Keown's in one of Arsenal's greatest sides. He is now an assistant to Frank de Boer in an Ajax coaching machine recognised by most as the best youth production line in world football. Coaches travel regularly from England to see how it's done. Bergkamp is in top form, teasing Keown about his outfit as they exchange coaching opinions and reminiscing about the life he left behind in London.



He says: 'When I retired in 2006, I stayed for a further two years in England. I stayed because I wanted to be in England without being a footballer, without the rhythm. I wanted to enjoy the city.

'The main difference was that I could play golf once I had dropped the kids off at school. Playing football was like being trapped in a rhythm and my whole career was like that. You have very little time to switch off. I needed afterwards just to be in London and enjoy it, because I love it. In that time, I got involved with my son's team once a week doing a bit of coaching. I thought it was interesting.

'Then just as we had to decide whether to stay another year or return to Holland, the Dutch FA invited me to do my badges over here. Then Ajax asked me to coach some of their youth players.

'I was working with the Under 12s, then the Under 18s but then last season Johan Cruyff (three European Cups, 10 league titles, seven cups and a World Cup final) came back and wanted to get more ex-players involved. So Frank asked me to be an assistant to him.'

It sounds simple but Cruyff becoming 'more involved' was hugely significant. Dismayed by six seasons without a league title, lack of progress in Europe and an absence of A-listers graduating from the academy since Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart, Cruyff stepped in to revive his club, returning in an advisory role.

He was not slow to dish out the advice either, calling for former stars to play a more important role. It led to the chairman and board quitting, players such as Bergkamp being given more prominent positions and, more importantly, with Ajax winning the league again.

'Frank, Wim and myself are responsible for the technical side of Ajax: how to train, what to train, when to train - which players have to come and go, which have to sign new contracts,' adds Bergkamp.




'It's not easy to perform at the highest level because you have to deal with stress, pressure, with nice players around you, bad players around you, competition, so we can teach them that. There's always the little five or ten per cent that they don't have because they haven't performed at the top.'
While Bergkamp and Co deal with the hands-on aspects, teaching the traditional Ajax 4-3-3 and developing TIPS (Technique, Insight, Personality and Speed), technical manager Blind deals with the business side and spends his days fielding phone calls from 'bigger' clubs trying to sign his best players - such as the dynamic teenage midfielder Christian Eriksen, Danish slayer of England in a recent friendly international.

Eriksen joined the club when he was 15 and is now one of eight in the regular starting eleven who have come through the academy, which sits just over the road from the Amsterdam Arena; a constant reminder to the young players of what is on offer.

Eriksen is a rarity for Ajax - most players they recruit for the academy come from within a 50-mile radius of the city so they can live at home and go to a local school, if they choose. If they don't, there are 15 teachers at De Toekomst to educate the players who make up the 12 youth teams.



The emphasis on youth here is startling, to the point that the first photos you see when you arrive at the ground are not of the first team or the club's four European Cup winning sides, but of the current crop of young players.

The way they are developed is fascinating, as Bergkamp explains. 'We don't just classify our players by age, we divide them into three 'wheels' depending on how much they have grown. There is one for players who haven't started growing, one for those who are growing and one for the players who have finished developing.

'It means you don't have a situation where certain players don't play because they are weak for their age and haven't developed yet. It solves that problem of one boy being born in September and playing against others who were born in January and haven't had as long to grow. It makes them more complete.'

Bergkamp talks with real passion once he overcomes an initial shyness. He seems happy, almost convinced that he has found the solution to every footballer's horrible conundrum: what to do once they've finished playing



'It's difficult because although it's happy, you still wish you were a footballer,' he says. 'When we left England, all those football things went through my hands again, the pictures, the trophies - which is nice, because you start to think back to those times - but it is sad, too.

'I remember Martin always said to me "just enjoy it and keep playing until you can't play anymore". We talked about it many times and used to sing What's Another Year? (the Johnny Logan track that won Eurovision for Ireland in 1980) so Arsene Wenger would hear. Because he only gave out one-year contracts once you reached a certain age.

'But I wanted to leave at the highest level because so often when players go down a level they get frustrated. I always played 100 per cent in training, in games.
'I can't deal with players who don't do that. And the further down you go, the more players there are like that.



Once it was over, returning to Holland with his wife Henriette and four children, after 15 years away with Inter Milan and Arsenal, was a shock.

'I had definitely outgrown Holland. It was so different for the kids too. They were used to uniforms and discipline in England and when we came back here, my eldest daughter started going to a mixed school.
'She could wear what she wanted and there was less discipline. She used to get all dressed up and say "I'm going to school," and I'd say "not like that, you're not". I was really worried at first because it was a big difference. I had become English in my mentality after 13 years.'

That means there will always be the temptation to return one day especially, you imagine, if a certain north London club comes calling.
'The plan is to be settled here now I've built my house,' he says of a home which he was designing during his time at Arsenal.

'But there is something that stays with me, something in my body that wants to go back to England one day as part of a coaching staff. That is always in my mind. I don't miss specific things but I miss the feeling, which I can't really explain. I haven't sold my house there yet.'



On our minds on the way to see Bergkamp, especially considering a particularly turbulent journey, was the issue of his non flying. The 42-yearold is terrified of planes and hasn't been on one since his days playing for Inter Milan.

It meant missing many Champions League and international matches and surely raises doubts over him ever becoming a manager.

'In Italy one day I just took the decision not to do it anymore,' he tells us. 'Because it was in my mind two or three days before a game, during a game when we had to travel back and it was really interfering with my football.

'I told the Arsenal board about my decision before I signed the contract. So that was never an issue.It could be a problem as a manager, yes. But I'll deal with that if the time comes.'

It doesn't look like it will.

'I've never seen myself as a manager,' he adds. 'As a manager, you have to put all your time into the job and that would be difficult for me. As a player I wanted to switch off at home and it's the same now. I would maybe feel trapped.

'You have to always be involved and, if you're not, you are not doing it right.

'I want to just drive home, switch off and spend time with my family. So this is perfect.'

[SPL]

Thanks for that .The other 2 parts of the story are at the bottom of Orange's link ie one is just Q and A about Arsenal but the other is worth a read as its Keown's comments on our coaches etc.

[aveslacker]

Very nice article, although I thought it was funny to read "Wim Jonk, formerly of Sheffield Wednesday" and "Bryan Roy, formerly of Nottingham Forest."

[Manneken Pis]

Keown still looks like "the missing link" .....

[Blind3]

GREAT article . THANK YOU for posting it.

[Manneken Pis]

Interesting blog about de Boer...

http://jouracule.blogspot.be/2012/12/th ... 2.html?m=1

[Blind3]

A fantastic article. Saved this to my favorites. I'm so often caught up in the ebb and flow of a match that I forget the more tactical side of Ajax. THANKS for posting !

[SPL]

Yes a very good read.
See today that Frank is going to extend his current contract which runs to2014 .He is happy here and turned down Spartak Moscow back in the summer and one or 2 other clubs. Overmaars only wants to extend to 2014 as he prefers to operate on yearly contracts but he too has stated he is happy here.

[Kowalczyk]

The day before Ajax flew to Brazil, the annual New Year's Match was played. This game is a Dutch football tradition: a friendly new year's game between the first team of the oldest football club in the country (Royal HFC, founded in Haarlem in 1879) and a team of former Oranje internationals.

Frank de Boer played for 'Ex-Oranje' and he scored an own goal, making it 3-1 to HFC (I think the internationals lost 4-3, in the end).

This is very funny, because Frank de Boer can't stand losing, even if it's a game of foot volley during Ajax training. He's a fanatic and famous for it. he must have been very pissed off.

And then, the next day, he had to board a plane to Brazil. It's a safe bet that the players took the piss. Loooong flight.

K.

[Kowalczyk]

Now this is good news!

Jaap Stam (40) will be added to the Ajax coaching staff. As per July 1st, Stam will be 'assistant and defensive coach' for the Ajax youth, Young Ajax and the first team. He penned a three-year deal (expiring June 2016).

Bergkamp working with the strikers, Stam with the defenders... I like that.

News report on Ajax.nl: http://www.ajax.nl/Nieuws/Nieuwsarchief ... p-Stam.htm

K.

[SPL]

very good news indeed. I think I read that V d Sar will do a little coaching with the goalies

[martinkohout]

This.

Bergkamp working with the strikers, Stam with the defenders... I like that.

[Blind3]

Fantastic news !!! If a young player wants great coaches to assist in his development , Ajax sure sounds like a destination of choice .

[SPL]

Arsenal's long time head youth coach Liam Brady is leaving at the end of next season and Bergkamp's name is already mentioned. He said last week he would like to work at Arsenal in the future but wanted to see out the current challenge at Ajax.