Don Leo, the prototype football coach in raincoat, also enriched the football language

The Football Trainer prototype is no longer. Leo Beenhakker, who died on Thursday at the age of 82, smoked like a heretic, stirred silently in a plastic coffee cup, wore a long raincoat with a belt, stretched his hands through the wavy hair and enriched the football jargon with one-liners who got the Dikke from Dale. Such as ‘fries generation’ and ‘the cup with the big ears’.

Leo Beenhakker was a so-called CIOS man. He had no background as a top footballer, but worked himself up via the Sports Academy in Overveen for an international trainer career. When asked if that background did not bother him, he answered as always caught: « You can also be a good milkman without having been a cow. »

Beenhakker was one People Manager That good could get along with (upcoming) stars. When the Sweden still unknown Teen Zlatan Ibrahimovic made his debut at Ajax in 2001, the then technical director reassured the critics. « Don’t worry, there is a good head on that boy, the rest comes naturally. » Conversely, the young Zlatan showed respect for his ‘discoverer’ whom he was in his face because of the grooves Scarface mentioned.

At Real Madrid, that personal approach worked out well in the late 1980s. The Spanish, Argentinian and Mexican stars walked away with him, a pat on the sphere and just run. After three national titles, he was renamed Don Leo, A nickname that he also liked to be fitted in the twenty following quacks. He traveled half the world, earned a God’s asset in Mexico, Turkey and Saudi Arabia to say after every new signature that it would be « perhaps my last trick. » There is also no shortage of cliffhangers in his almost forty -year trainer career.

Heartache

Beenhakker, child of Rotterdam-Zuid, had a love-hate ratio with the Netherlands. For example, he ‘fled’ back to Mexico in 2003, after he was threatened in Enschede as a Technical Director of Ajax and kicked by Twente supporters. He then also had private problems, read: heartbreak. And asked about the why of his anonymous Swiss adventure in the 90s at the modest grasshoppers FC, he replied: « I don’t mind at all if I see my car on Monday morning without a skin. »

But he would rather be in the spotlight in De Kuip or Bernabeu (Madrid). He had fitted the casual pose over the years. His beautiful sentences obscured his tactical shortcomings. « Training and talking, I don’t have more weapons. » And: « One of my qualities is that I can talk to a player pleasantly disturbed the field. If I can’t fuck, I have lost a chance. »

One of my qualities is that I can talk to a player pleasantly disturbed the field

As the son of a social assistance mother – his father died at a young age – from Volkswijk Charlois (pronounced: ‘seniosloos’), young Leo had to caps his own beans. He worked himself up via Veendam, Cambuur and Go Ahead to the youth training of first Feyenoord and later Ajax.

In Amsterdam he, a pantsie still, was thrown in for the lions in 1978. He reached the semi -final of the Europa Cup in 1980 with Ajax. Half a year later he first came into contact with his torture: Johan Cruijff. As an unemployed Profs, he trained temporarily in the lake, but could not let it be involved with Beenhakkers working method.

So JC On a sunny November day in 1980, with a 3-1 deficit against FC Twente, closely followed by an alert cameraman of the NOS, and then take a seat in the dug-out next to the on duty trainer and to conduct the Ajax players on the field to a 5-3 victory. The poor Beenhakker was sitting there and looked at it. « Of course I should have given that little one a beech, » he later said about the public humiliation.

Disastrous World Cup

A new one followed in 1990, this time invisible confrontation between the two opposites. Cruijff was nominated as a national coach at the World Cup in Italy by a majority of the Orange selection, but technical director Rinus Michel chose ‘Beenhakkers’, as he called him. The World Cup was disastrous, the European Championship heroes of 1988 could not be burned ahead, they did not take the unwanted national coach seriously.

« I knew I didn’t have to do it, but was so idolate from Michels that I could not refuse his request, » Beenhakker said in NRC are Mission Impossible. About the deteriorated relationship between Michels and Cruijff, he clapped in the same interview from the school: « Michels said in the car on his way to a competition: » Leo, don’t tell me that I have to go to Barcelona on my knees. « 

The atmosphere in the Sicilian training camp was to cut. Beenhakker trained the training with sunglasses-a ashtray would have been thrown at him by a player-and in the lost knockout match against West Germany, Frank Rijkaard spit in the face of Rudi Völler. Years later, assistant Nol de Ruiter called his national coaching « a large balloon ».

He himself was cryptic about the low point in his trainer career. He mentioned a moving box in his hometown Tienhoven in which the secrets were stored. In NRC he said: « I had to deal with two large shadows at that World Cup: the Cruijff syndrome and the European Championship of 1988. »

At the 1990 World Cup I had to deal with two large shadows: the Cruijff syndrome and the European Championship of 1988

Not happy combination

Beenhakker and final rounds: it was not a happy combination. With the Netherlands, Poland and Trinidad & Tobago, he did not win any competition at a European Championship or World Cup, but with the placement of that small Caribbean country for the World Cup, he delivered a major performance. During his first employment at the KNVB, the global tournament in Mexico in Mexico of 1986 went on a hair after a Belgian goal in the final phase. Not despite, but thanks to Beenhakker. The bad header John van Loen, a striker notabene, had to guard the good Kopper Georges Grün at a distant throw -in. It was during that period that he was allowed to replace the sick national coach Michels.

Leo Beenhakker in 1990.

As a club coach, Beenhakker achieved a few successes at Real after his glory time. For example, he helped his great love Feyenoord in 1999 after six dry years in the national title. ‘Leo, Leo’, it sounded from tens of thousands of throats on the Coolsingel. When Feyenoord won 3-1 a year later in Stuttgart against the local VFB, a German journalist asked what was false with German football. « Haben sie eine stunde »?, Snice Beenhakker. The Germans then won the return in Rotterdam 3-0.

« As a dick rose water I got everything out of my career, » he said a few years before his death in NRC. It was a farewell interview with a bitter bone haker, who could almost see the Kuip from his Penthouse, but never went there since 2011. He had left with a fight that year as a technical director and said he was dressed by management.

He still showed himself at Sparta and Excelsior in Rotterdam, but since the Corona Pandemie, world citizen Leo Beenhakker led a reclusive, according to intimi lonely existence ‘in South’. « That virus got me nicely behind the geraniums, » said the man who was so happy to be in the spotlight.

National coach Leo Beenhakker and his assistant Dick Advocaat are coming to the field for the international Netherlands Austria in De Kuip in Rotterdam in 1985.

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