Dutch football and their managers

[Kafkaesque]

This is such a weird thing to pop into one's head on a random Sunday afternoon But for whatever reason it did. The recent track record of Dutch coaches is absolutely horrific
- De Boer, a disaster at Inter and Palace
- Koeman, good at Soton, even if just following the path of his predecessor, and then a disaster at Everton
- Bosz, shambles at Dortmund
- Van Gaal, whether he was given too rough a ride by the media is open to debate, but I think anyone would struggle to argue his time at United as a success
- Meulensteen, disaster in Denmark and close to it at Fulham
- Jol, good at Spurs, stagnated since
- Hasselbaink, early promise but dropping through the leagues in new jobs
- Stam, also early promise (as I understand it), but threading water now
- Rijkaard, did well at Barca, but how do you really judge that at a club that big. Compare it to his successor and it doesn't look that impressive. Hasn't done much of anything since.
- Even big names with track records like Advocaat and Hiddink have been more nomadic than succesfull lately.

I'm struggling to think a Dutch coach who's a had a succesfull career since Van Gaal pre-United and Cruyff.

Toss in the national team being in freefall, and club teams dropping in Uefa rankings, first from consistenty being about 5th to around 8-9th, to now over the last 4-5 years going all the way to 13th.

All of this begs the question: Is Dutch football stuck in the past? Methodically? Tactically?

Relevant to this forum, is there a trend here, which would become interesting when the next Dutch coach is exported to a major league?

[DaveJessop]

IMO the majority of Dutch coaches are good in Dutch football for a simple reason - most good players in that league are plucked at an early age by big clubs and the coaches are left with young players and do well with them because they are the boss and the kids know that - the problem is when these coaches get jobs at bigger clubs with big players and they haven't got the mentality to handle the man management side of things - they don't want to concede that some of the players are more important to the club than the manager

Recent example - LVG at United - could have had a title challenging squad but totally destroyed world class players like Di Maria and Falcao - they just weren't handled right - look at Johnny Evans - he was scared to go near the ball because he was terrified of making a mistake and now look at him - one of the best defenders in the league under a different manager - Pulis got the best out of him - maybe why these journeyman managers get so many chances is because they don't upset the star players
They make great players but not so great managers and it's all down to their mentality and not technical ability

[max_usted]

Dutch football is really struggling at the moment. Which is strange considering how well organized they are and what amazing facilities they have in that country at every level (helped by the fact that it's so flat). Their teams all tend to be very dogmatic about playing out (often extremely slowly) from the back, I've noticed.