Okay lets start with a simple one as it's 2:30 in the morning: Managerial oversight in the Eredivisie. Club - Manager ADO The Hague - Maurice Steijn AZ Alkmaar - Gert-Jan Verbeek Ajax Amsterdam - Frank de Boer Feyenoord - Ronald Koeman, signed a contract till the end of the 2013-2014 season. FC Groningen - Martijn Maaskant, will leave the club next season. Erwin de Looy, now assistant manager, will take over. FC Twente - Alfred Schreuder, interim, took over when Steve McClaren left the club in February FC Utrecht - Jan Wouters Heracles Almelo - Peter Bosz NAC Breda - Nebosja Gudelj, Father of NAC midfielder Nemanja Gudelj NEC Nijmegen - Alex Pastoor PEC Zwolle - Aart Langeler, assistant manager Jaap Stam, both will leave the club next season, Ron Jans will take over. Art Langeler announced he has signed a four year contract with PSV for a youth coach position. PSV Eindhoven - Dick Advocaat, will very likely leave the club after this season, Philip Cocu roumered to take over as manager. SC Heerenveen - Marco van Basten RKC Waalwijk - Erwin Koeman, brother of Ronald Koeman Roda JC - Ruud Brood, was manager at RKC last year Vitesse Arnhem - Fred Rutten, sacked at PSV Eindhoven last year. VVV-Venlo - Ton Lokhoff Willem II - Jurgen Streppel, renewed his contract till 2015 And that's the latest on the managers positions.
Who are the best young managers Cove? Any that would suit the Swans in particular?...say, in the summer of 2014
Currently Ronald Koeman and Frank de Boer are very popular in Europe and several Premier League club tried to pursuade them to come to England. Frank de Boer has been linked with Machester City to replace Mancini. Liverpool made three offers on Frank de Boer last year, he turned all of them down. Ronald Koeman was rumoured to be target for Manchester City as well. Then you have the managers who have had successes in the past and we're trying to put themselves in the spotlight for a managerial job in one of the top four leagues. The first one is GertJan Verbeek. This former semi professional boxer chose football over boxing at age 24 when he went to play for SC Heerenveen in his younger days. now at age 51 he manages AZ Alkmaar, where he has a contract till 2015. He started his managing career at SC Heerenveen as an assistant manager under Foppe de Haan. Later on he took the manager job at Heracles Almelo and after a fairly succesful period SC Heerenveen offered him the same position, and Verbeek accepted. After four years coaching the Heerenveen team boredom set in and he signed a contract for Feyenoord. This was in the 2008-2009 season when Feyenoord started to encounter it's first financial problems and the results were far from great either. Halfway through the season Verbeek was sacked after the players declared they had no faith in a good result with Verbeek as manager. Verbeek was loved by the fans and big protests were launched after news came out Verbeek was fired. please log in to view this image In the summer of 2009 GertJan Verbeek moved back to Heracles Almelo and took the club to a mid-table regular, Heracles Almelo used to be a mid table regular in the second division and is a bit similar oo Swansea city. Small club in a small town in one of the corners of the country with huge local support. After two very succesful years at Almelo Verbeek moved to AZ Alkmaar where he managed to keep AZ in the sub top of the Eredivisie although the club was in deep financial problems and had to sell 3 to 6 players every season to stay up. Every season Verbeek lost his key players in the summer and got no replacements. Only in the 2012-2013 season this selling of key players had an effect on the club. AZ was a relegation candidate earlier in the season and the situation is still pretty grim for the club from Alkmaar. But it is mainly due to his performance at AZ that sparked the interest from foreign clubs. Verbeek managed to perform under heavy pressure and knowing that every season he would lose his star players because the club was in financial lockdown. With a squad aged 21/22 average he still managed to keep them in the title race in the 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 season. Verbeek recently extended his contract at AZ but he stated that he would love to manage a club outside of The Netherlands. please log in to view this image
The second manager that is keen on moving on is Dick Advocaat. You may have heard of him as he was manager of the Rangers, The Netherlands National team, PSV Eindhoven, Russian National team and Zenith St. Petersburg. But in The Netherlands he is now known as a crisis manager. In 2009 Ronald Koeman was sacked at AZ Alkmaar and Advocaat took over for 6 months. In 2012 he was appointed as PSV manager with the sole target to get PSV the first Eredivisie title in 5 years. PSV Managing Marcel Brands told in Studio Voetbal, a state tv program, that it was highly unlikely that Advocaat is manager of PSV next season. Which automatically means that Advocaat will be a free agent in summer. But with his 65 years of age it might be just because he could retire in September. please log in to view this image
Cove is truly the 'Oracle' of football, I actually thought he was a football scout when he first began posting. I do hope Mr Laudrup remains in the premiership for some time yet, we need a few more "Gentlemen" managers like him, 2014 is too soon to part with him.
hopefully it will get more visitors to our board and it is always good to hear about players from Holland
Yesterday the country stood still for 90 minutes as PSV and Ajax fought for the title. And Ajax came out on top with now a lead of five points over Vitesse Arnhem with four games to play, they are practically champions. For now the fight moves on for the Europa League and Champions League spots. Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven and Vitesse are all in the running for second place. And that fight is going to be fierce as Vitesse hold a 1 point lead over PSV and Feyenoord. And who ever comes in second place qualifies for the third round of qualifications in the Champions Leage and third and fourth place gives direct placement in the fourth and third qualification round of the Europa leage. Place 5 to 8, possibly 9, will fight for the remaining Europa League spot in play offs in May. Down at the bottom it looks like Willem II cannot avoid relegation as they are 5 points behind and they have a very tough program ahead of them. Place 17 and 16 in the Eredivisie are play off positions for relegation, these two team will have to fight their way through two rounds of matches against Jupiler League(first division) teams. And for the moment AZ looks to be in safe havens after their 6-0 win over FC Utrecht. The 6-0 was helped by possibly the worst own goal in football history: [video=youtube;8no3IeF7b40]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8no3IeF7b40[/video] VVV Venlo and Roda JC seem to be the main candidates for the relegation play offs. RKC Waalwijk have reached a new low however, they had a very solid first half of the season but after the winter break the team seems to lack any power or will to bring the points home. PEC Zwolle have had a decent spell in the last couple of weeks managing a draw in Eindhoven and winning 3-2 against Feyenoord at home. So even though the title race looks to be over, the Eredivisie will be far from dull for the coming weeks.
Hey Cove. What do you think the transfer fee will be for Viktor Fischer when Ajax eventually sell him? and who do you think will buy him? I saw on the transfer market site that he is valued at â¬2.5 million....that can't be right can it? I imagined he'd end up at one of Europe's top 5 clubs and costing the best part of â¬20 million! Oh, and how did he play against PSV the other day
Hi Terrorwit, Viktor Fischer is one of the revelations in the Eredivisie for this season. Ajax bought the youth player for 1.2 million euros from FC Mydtjalland in 2011, which is the one of the highest paid fees for a youth player in Ajax history. He played a couple of games for Ajax pre-season but he wasn't particularly great in those games. Frank de Boer decided to start the season with Sana, which Ajax also bought last summer from IFK Goteborg. However, in November Frank de Boer decided to let Viktor Fischer start in the game against PEC Zwolle and promptly scored two goals. Three weeks later he was the man of the match against PSV Eindhoven where he scored 1 goal and had an assist. Ever since then Frank de Boer dropped Sana and Fischer is in the starting eleven. In February he signed a 4,5 year contract with Ajax till 2017. please log in to view this image The new contract is probably not incorperated in the transfermarkt website, 2,5 million euro's right now is way below his current value. I think they still incorperated the previous contract which was a standard age 18 upgrade contract. If I had to put a price tag on him right now I'd say between 6 and 8 million pounds. But to speak of an actual transfer this summer is way too early. He lacks experience and he lacks consistency. His technique and speed are remarkable but his youth shows on the pitch. He needs at least 2 or 3 full seasons at Ajax to be even a solid prospect for any Premier League club.
Update on the managers: PEC Zwolle manager Art Langeler signed a four year contract for PSV to be a youth coach in Eindhoven till 2017.
I missed this one on monday but that may be because I'm without a laptop for the next week, blew itself up Anyways: Ajax have signed a new 'Vertonghen' with luring in Belgian youth interational defender Nathan Leyder. The club paid his former club Zulte Waregem a fee of €225,000, the 16 year old defender penned a contract till July 2016 for Ajax. Leyder is dubbed by scouts the new Vertonghen due to his phisique and technique. Leyder was in the news six months ago because he left the youth academy of Club Brugge and moved to Zulte Waregem because he was being bullied. Ajax have been very actively recruiting youngsters for its youth academy this season. Riechedly Bazoer(16) moved over from PSV Eindhoven, 15 year old Vaclav Cerny made the transfer from Czech Republic club FK Bribram and Serbian defender Dejan Meleg(18) was bought from FK Vojdovina.
More managerial news today: Frank de Boer expressed his wish to stay as manager at Ajax for the 2013-2014. De Boer is rumoured to be on top of the list of Manchester City to replace Mancini next summer. De Boer told the press earlier today that: "He will still be an Ajacied next year, you can have my word on that." In other news: Jurge Streppel has extended his contract as manager with two years with Willem II. He will also be the new Technical Director at the club next season.
http://www.espn.co.uk/football/sport/story/198769.html Gael Kakuta wants out of Chelsea, angling for a permanent move to Vitesse Arnhem where he is on loan. How has he done this season Cove? Is this a done deal or could a Premier League club, who will play him every week, still tempt him? Is he good enough for the Premier in your opinion?
Kakuta has been another revelation in the past 4 or 5 months at Vitesse. He is fast and can flick in a good cross, but he can also shoot from distance. His main strength is his mentality though, alongside with Bony he never gives up and complacency in his game is something I have yet to see. His composure is a bit off though, he often gets caught out by the defenders in the Eredivisie, and defending in the league isn't particularly good so... He tends to be offside a lot too but that is more due to inexperience. He is the type of player that always thinks forward, he is on attacking mode at all times. He is very weak in defending though, I have yet to see him make a proper tackle or mark someone in the box in a corner kick situation. So based on his inexperience and age I reckon he would be invisible in the EPL, needs at least 1 or 2 more full seasons to be able to be good enough for the Premier.
Round 31 of the Eredivisie and on Friday night the game is on, Ajax will play SC Heerenveen at home and with a win they are three points closer to claiming the league title. The game starts at 19:00 GMT and there is a lot at stake here. Well, everyone in the country knows they already did after last week's 2-3 win over PSV but still there is a chance they could lose the last 3 out of 4 games, a very, very tiny one that is. So tomorrow night a win would practically seal it for the Amsterdam Football Club. For SC Heerenveen a win would mean nearly certain qualification for the Europa League play offs as they are in 7th position, 2 points above FC Groningen and 4 points above NEC Nijmegen. It might not show but this has been a rough season for SC Heerenveen. On TV the club was accused of financial malpractice and poor management by Johan Derksen, who has his own football magazine and TV program on Dutch television. The club also faced relegation fears in the early stages of this season. Newly appointed manager Marco van Basten struggled to find the points until the team fought it's way back up mid-table in January and February. The match on Friday night will be an interesting one because it will see two former legendary Ajax players go head to head as managers: Frank de Boer vs. Marco van Basten. Whilst Frank de Boer is being linked to big clubs like Manchester City, Marco van Bastan's managerial career has steadily moved into international obscurity. Van Basten started out as the national coach in 2004 and 2008 but never managed to go further in the EC's and WC's than the first round in the knock out phase. In July2008 he was appointed manager of Ajax Amsterdam and despite spending over 30 million pounds on a new team, the club didn't win a title or performed particularly well and in May 2009 he was sacked. In 2011 he was rumoured to be the new manager of Sporting Lisbon but after a coup at the club he never got the offer for the job. In 2012, after three years without a club he was appointed as he new manager at SC Heerenveen. The news was met in The Netherlands with sceptism: 'why would Van Basten, a world wide renowned player of his caliber, manage a team in the countryside like Heerenveen?' Was the main question being asked by pundits on television. Now that the season is nearing its end Van Basten has done reasonably well, but if it will lift his career onto new heights remains to be seen. But the next few weeks will be vital for him if he wants to move up the chain. please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
