Oh he's brilliant, the only thing laughable is this post. Against Spurs they had no answer in their squad for Llorente. Atalanta is basically a side in the same boat as them, brilliantly coached but has lost some key players. They didn't bottle anything.
A (serious) look at Eric ten Hag
- Thread starter Suedesi
- Start date
So Ajax played their most important match in the last 25 years, they were literally 2-0 up at half time. And somehow still managed to get knocked out in 45 minutes. And then you're telling me they didn't bottle it? Talking about laughable...
Why don't you explain to me what makes Erik ten Hag such a brilliant coach then? I'd be genuinely curious what type of nonsense you would come up with.
That's so egoistic. What a thing to say, self centered.
I'm not trying to argue one way or another for Ten Hag, but surely it's a weird argument to say blame him entirely for losing to Spurs the way they did, without any praise for convincingly knocking out Juve and Real Madrid on the way to the semis, and gaining a good victory on Spurs in the first match. I mean, those are six important matches against serious opposition, and it went wrong for one half of one match.
I'm not quite sure if that's exactly what I tried to say though? I said he deserves as much blame for throwing away that second half as he gets praise for Ajax' good run in the CL that year, to underline the bigger point: that he's not that special as a manager, which I think is something quite different than purely blaming him entirely for losing to Spurs in the end.
I just think it's genuinely a bit weird to call him a 'brilliant' manager, it genuinely 'triggers' me a bit (not in a serious way though, mind you!) and that's why I posted a reaction to the poster who made that statement. I've seen Ten Hag as a player at FC Twente, I was at that cup final they won back in 2001. I've followed his Go Ahead team play little bit, I saw him at Utrecht more often. He's a fine coach, sure. Got a bit of potential to be somewhat of a cult hero going on for him as well. But brilliant or unique or one of the best coaches in the world or whatever? No idea why he would deserve such praise.
Then some guy who can't even spell his name and presumably has watched Ajax five times over the last years comes in and is telling me that's a laughable opinion to have. Well okay then, fair enough I guess!
Well, ok, fair enough on the brilliant. Ajax is quite a special case and Ten Hag seems tailor-made to fit the club. He is very good among his Eredivisie peers obviously, but I'd want to see him abroad before starting the brilliant tag. For that matter, I'd be about as enthusiastic about Arne Slot, who I think had more of an uphill climb to make AZ into what it became under him; although it's interesting to see Pascal Jansen provide a seamless transition over there. Are they both very promising or is there another factor at play?
Anyway, back to Ten Hag, I hope he goes to an international top club soon. The football would be quite cool if he manages to instill his views on that level as well.
It's the baldness obviously. Feels like there's just an infinite supply of Dutch coaches who are Guardiola/Cruijff/Van Gaal adepts, and whether it's Bosz, Slot, Ten Hag, or Pascal Jansen at AZ now, or Frank de Boer before his hair transplant, they all share one common physical trait.
Seriously though, I'd be interested as well to see what would happen with Ten Hag at a bigger club. I've had many discussions on here over the years about Guardiola, and I've always been of the opinion that his tacticism is extremely overrated. Not that he isn't a great tactician, of course he is (even though his pointless tinkering has also costed him on quite a few occasions). But I always provocatively said to people on here who acted like Guardiola invented football himself, that at any given point you can select ten other Dutch or Spanish coaches who can set up a team exactly like Guardiola does and are tactically as strong as he is.
Whether it's guys like Bosz or Ten Hag or a new guy like Arne Slot, or someone like Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who of course played under Wenger and won the CL with Barcelona in 2006, and then won the Eredivisie with Feyenoord as a manager often playing a typical 4-3-3, using a lame duck type of midfielder with Jan Arie van der Heijden as a CB because it's always about building from the back and posession orientated football first and foremost with those type of managers.
I just feel that with Guardiola his tactical nous is way overrated, while at the same time his people management skills are extremely underrated. And also in general at the highest level of football it's so much more about people management, managing the dressing room, really inspiring players, keeping your authority than it is about pure tactics. I mean didn't City get knocked out of Europe while Guardiola kept guys like de Bruyne on the bench (click) in crucial CL matches without creating a mutiny?! That's insane when you think about it.
Similar how he has casually benched none other than Aguero because Jesus fitted his high pressing plan better against certain opponents, it's remarkable how players seem to accept that from him, only the truly great managers can make such decisions and get away with it (remember when even a guy as succesful as Mourinho benched Pogba against Sevilla in the CL, that basically was the interlude of the end of his time at United). Nearly every player I've heard about Guardiola, other than Zlatan of course, talks about how inspiring he is, what a fantastic leader, stuff like that. At the same time while obviously he has implemented very cool tactics and made his teams play in both a revolutionary tactical way as well as in a traditionally Cruijffian/Barcelona way, he didn't exactly teach guys like Xavi and Iniesta how to play tiki-taka to throw out a nice cliché, yet plenty of people obviously talk about the man like he did.
I don't know if you saw the recent Ruud van Nistelrooij interview with Rio Ferdinand, he talked about how Fergie benched him for the final match of his first season while he still could've won the golden boot, only because United didn't win anything that year. Only the real great managers can make such decisions without losing authority, and motivating top players, superstars in their prime even more. And I just don't think Ten Hag at this point in time has the status or the personality in general to pull something off like that, and I do think that's the type of skill you need as a manager at the very highest level. I mean, he could do well at Bayern I think, but can I see him benching Lewandowski for a more energetic high pressing striker at the start of the season because that would be better for the team and put everyone on edge, extra motivated and sharp? I think he would lose the dressing room within weeks if he did something like that. You saw it with Frank de Boer too at Inter, that dressing room ate him alive, even though he was a pretty well respected player and coach before that.
So yeah that's a bit of a longer version of what I was trying to say in earlier posts about Ten Hag.
Last edited:
I think you seriously underrate Guardiola's tactical capabilities. There are maybe 10-15 Dutch coaches who can set their teams up to play like a Pep team until the final third but then the difference becomes apparent. Many possession coaches can push their opponents into their own third and visually dominate them but only a select few can reproducibly unlock low blocks. And Guardiola is by far the best at this discipline.
That's where many possession oriented coaches like van Gaal or Bosz fail. They don't implement patterns of play which can sustainably "unpark the bus". It's really amazing how Pep's team move in and around the box, how they behave with the ball at their feet once they entered a dangerous position and so forth. It's systematized with a quality no other coach can reliably offer. The others usually try to force goals or trust on luck or individual quality.
Moreover, Guardiola has had quite a few falling outs with players. Ibrahimovic, Eto'o and Yaya are the obvious cases but you could also name someone like Ronaldinho.
I get what you mean, and I agree that player management is hugely important and probably an underrated aspect of management (not just for Guardiola). With @Zehner though, I do think you underrate Guardiola here. I think it's because you're focusing too much on system/tactics, and are overlooking patterns of play - i.e., how to deal with specific situations through patterns of running, passing, and positioning. The thing with Guardiola is that he is great at all of these aspects, while most coaches have 'gaps' in one area or another.
Back to Ten Hag, I agree that his big-player management skills remain to be seen, but that's also because he isn't really faced with that kind of situation at Ajax. So I think it's too early to say that he doesn't have that in his skillset. For that matter, this is of course much easier if you're winning. If Guardiola was benching Aguero while losing or drawing low-scoring games, I'm sure he couldn't continue to get away with not playing City's most prolific striker ever. And player power at Bayern seems to be through the roof, seeing how Ancelotti and Kovač fared over there.
(Urgh, De Boer. Such an uninspiring choice for the national team...)
@Henrik Larsson I think you should be careful not to devolve your critique into "he didn't win the cup" type terrority. Losing with an Eredivisie side to Atalanta or Spurs isn't a botch.
I think his best quality is his match day tactics. He definitely has that thing going on where in hindsight he played the right players in the right positions with the right assignments with the right subs. Cruyff, SAF, LVG all had this as well.
@RooneyLegend He's definitely right Ten Hag is uncharismatic. He's improved a bit in front of the camera, but the English press would absolutely gobble him up as he is now.
Yes, AZ is a well run club with the 3rd best squad at the moment.
I have a good feeling Ten Hag will do fine abroad after an adjusting period. More like Koeman, rather than De Boer/Bosz.
I think his best quality is his match day tactics. He definitely has that thing going on where in hindsight he played the right players in the right positions with the right assignments with the right subs. Cruyff, SAF, LVG all had this as well.
@RooneyLegend He's definitely right Ten Hag is uncharismatic. He's improved a bit in front of the camera, but the English press would absolutely gobble him up as he is now.
Yes, AZ is a well run club with the 3rd best squad at the moment.
I have a good feeling Ten Hag will do fine abroad after an adjusting period. More like Koeman, rather than De Boer/Bosz.
I might get loads of grief for this as I can’t say I’ve seen too much of Ajax, but have been impressed with what I’ve seen. However is he not just another advocate of that Ajax/Barca style that Michels/Cruyff introduced and now Guardiola has mastered?
So will any big club who take him be getting a version of Guardiola’s football without Guardiola?
So will any big club who take him be getting a version of Guardiola’s football without Guardiola?
Pep Guardiola is the best from the whole group of the ''Dutch school of thought'' coaches with a reason. Ok, if you believe it's because he was and is a manager of some of the richest and full of top quality squads in those countries it's fair enough. But for me what makes him unique is his understanding of the game and how he always finds a way to adapt himself and his ideas to the current situation. Also it is worth a mentioning that there are 2 main groups of the DST coaches - pure Cruyiffistas (the idea) or followers of LVG's more methodical approach. Pep is both - he is combining these two strategies like nobody else and is adapating them for the current environment in football.
Peter Bosz for example is a pure Cruyffista and he always try to make his teams play in the original Cruyff way. Oscar Garcia is also in this group (he was Johan's assistant at the national team of Catalunya), even Maurizio Sarri in his early spells at Empoli and Napoli. Paco Jemez and Quiqe Setien are admirers of this football but their ideal is specifically Pep's Barcelona wich in my opinion is impossible to be recreated with another team even for Pep himself. I really love to watch Sassuolo's games in Italy because their coach Roberto De Zerbi is using also the basic principles of the positional play with a team wich quality of the squad is below average.
Frank De Boer, Philip Cocu, JVB, Kluivert, Reiziger - all former players and students of LVG. Their style is more rigid and cautios and relys too much on possession and defensive football. Ronald Koeman is an interesting case because he was one of Cruyff's most trusted players and understands the game like LVG but during the years he developed his own view of how football should be played and is a bit of different from the standart Dutch coach.
Now what about Erik Ten Hag? During the years Pep developed a special friendship and fellowship with a lot of coaches in Germany - Thomas Tuchel, Julian Nagelsmann, Daniel Farke to name just a view.Ten Hag is one of them too. He doesn't try to be a carbon copy of Guardiola although his appearance may tells you otherwise. What he emulates from his friend is the willingness to adapt and combine the best ideas from the Greats before but doing it in his own way. I have no doubt that he will be succesfull at a top club therefore i wish he would stay as longer as possible at Ajax.
Peter Bosz for example is a pure Cruyffista and he always try to make his teams play in the original Cruyff way. Oscar Garcia is also in this group (he was Johan's assistant at the national team of Catalunya), even Maurizio Sarri in his early spells at Empoli and Napoli. Paco Jemez and Quiqe Setien are admirers of this football but their ideal is specifically Pep's Barcelona wich in my opinion is impossible to be recreated with another team even for Pep himself. I really love to watch Sassuolo's games in Italy because their coach Roberto De Zerbi is using also the basic principles of the positional play with a team wich quality of the squad is below average.
Frank De Boer, Philip Cocu, JVB, Kluivert, Reiziger - all former players and students of LVG. Their style is more rigid and cautios and relys too much on possession and defensive football. Ronald Koeman is an interesting case because he was one of Cruyff's most trusted players and understands the game like LVG but during the years he developed his own view of how football should be played and is a bit of different from the standart Dutch coach.
Now what about Erik Ten Hag? During the years Pep developed a special friendship and fellowship with a lot of coaches in Germany - Thomas Tuchel, Julian Nagelsmann, Daniel Farke to name just a view.Ten Hag is one of them too. He doesn't try to be a carbon copy of Guardiola although his appearance may tells you otherwise. What he emulates from his friend is the willingness to adapt and combine the best ideas from the Greats before but doing it in his own way. I have no doubt that he will be succesfull at a top club therefore i wish he would stay as longer as possible at Ajax.
Is he as bad as Bosz? I feel like that is one of his biggest problems. When you play daring football things can look quite bad if they go wrong and when you have the charisma of a potato the press has a field day calling you a simpleton and players probably lose faith extra quickly.
Signed a new deal with Ajax today. The thoughts of taking the Spurs job must have repulsed him.
ffs Robbie. I thought seeing this bumped - it was going to be news of a Spurs approach! 
if ajax were smart they probably got him on less money that his previous contract too. anything is better than managing spurs.
He didn't actually - they activated an extension. Dutch reports are suggesting very little has changed except for this contract expiry.