Search: ' Ruud Gullit'

How the World's Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America
by Grant Wahl
Crown, £16.99
Reviewed by David Stubbs
From WSC 273 November 2009 

Buy this book

David Beckham’s transfer to LA Galaxy was a surprising late chapter in the adventures of a footballer whose global superstar status exceeds by some distance his admittedly considerable abilities on the pitch. It was a slight return to the mid-1970s and the influx of internationals who chose to spend their sunset years in American soccer – Pelé and George Best among them. They had failed to galvanise interest in the game stateside but, it was optimistically argued, the infrastructure of MLS would enable Beckham to raise the profile and standards of the game more successfully than had his forebears.

Read more…

Simon Tyers on Jeff Stelling, Paul Gascoigne and the future of punditry

Jeff Stelling has a new book about Soccer Saturday, called Jelleyman’s Thrown A Wobbly. I’d have gone with What’s Been Happening, Charlie? as a more knowing title, but that may be why he’s on the television and I’m not. In his book, Jeff reminds the reader that in its first season after dropping the Sports Saturday title and starting to cover football at any great length, the pundits would leave the studio at ten to three and throughout the next two hours only be heard as disembodied voices over a still caption. We were supposed to think they were at the game they were covering even though they were clearly just in the VT suite, before coming back at ten past five as if nothing was untoward.

Read more…

The murky cycle of sponsored news articles by Ian Plenderleith

It sounds like a late-night conspiracy theory to maintain that corporate interests dictate the news agenda, especially when we’re talking about something as relatively unimportant to human destiny as football. But it’s not untrue to say that the internet has allowed the game’s major sponsors to have a say in the way that news is generated. A closer look at one of October’s headlines demonstrates why.

Read more…

What are the expectations for the team?
After being drawn in a group containing both 2006 World Cup finalists, the expectations are not high, especially after some shaky qualifying performances, such as a single-goal victory over Luxembourg and a collapse against Belarus in Minsk at the end of 2007. However, the national team have survived the first round of every European Championship since Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Co won the title in 1988 so there is always the possibility of another penalty shootout defeat in the quarter- or semifinals.

Have any players appeared in commercials or any other adverts?
Edwin van der Sar features in a commercial for healthy mints, in which he stops penalties taken by Bad Breath, Tooth Slice and Coffee Stain. The revenues may go to a good cause.

Is the coach popular?
Not really. Van Basten’s preference for Ajax reserves is suspect, while the way he stubbornly clung on to the two-winger system when there wasn’t a recognised one in the squad was a bit strange – but players have recently talked him out of that. However, every Dutch national coach suffers from the nation’s expectation of being entertained. Winning is not good enough, we want “dream football”, too.

Are there any players with unusual hobbies or business interests?
Clarence Seedorf is the owner of a 125cc Moto GP team. He has also founded the Clarence Seedorf Stadium in Paramaribo and aims to lead Surinam to the World Cup. The Netherlands Antilles also hope to dip into the talent pool of black players in the Eredivisie, which may affect the Dutch national team in the future.

What will the media coverage be like?
There is a tendency to use coaches as pundits. “This would never happen against any team of mine” is always a subtext of their comments. Louis van Gaal quit during the qualifying tournament, saying he had pointed out the same mistakes in the team tactics over and over again and felt he was repeating himself. However, it is very difficult for Van Gaal to keep his opinions to himself, so when asked, he will surely turn up somewhere on the telly. As will Johan Cruyff who was simultaneously a TV pundit and an advisor to Van Basten during the 2006 World Cup. After the bad-tempered loss to Portugal in the last 16, Cruyff defended Van Basten in his newspaper column the next day and blamed the defeat on government minister Rita Verdonk, who had refused to give Salomon Kalou a Dutch passport.

Will there be many fans travelling to the tournament?
Most Dutch tickets are taken by sponsors, the biggest one an insurance company, who use them to reward their agents and employees. It is a new form of hooliganism. At the 2006 World Cup there were frightening stories of unsuspecting foreign fans isolated in pub corners by men dressed in orange who bombarded them with stories about life insurance, investment plans and favourable loan rates.

Ernst Bouwes

Ken Monkou was one of the first in a flood of Dutch players to move to Britain. Thomas Blom charts the career of one of football's unsung stars 

You may as well blame the Dutch for England failing to qualify for the European Championship finals. No fewer than 158 Dutchmen have come over to supplant local players since English clubs were permitted to sign foreigners in 1978. After George Boateng, the humble, uncapped Ken Monkou is the Dutchman who has made the most top-flight appearances (280 in total). Monkou joined Chelsea in 1989 and played 94 League games (two in Division Two) before moving on to Southampton. He was named player of the year by his club’s supporters no fewer than five times over the course of his career – twice at Chelsea and three times at Southampton – so it’s no wonder he likes life in England and has stayed put. From his base in Harrogate in the Yorkshire Dales (All Creatures Great and Small was always his favourite TV show), he keeps a distant eye on his recently purchased pancake restaurant in the Dutch town of Delft.

Read more…