He manages the world's most popular club side, he is expected to deliver trophies every season, yet he turns up for work totally relaxed - the ultimate chilled Dutchman. His players at Barcelona love him, his wife says he's 'a bit weird'. What is the secret of Frank Rijkaard's success?
He is the feted coach of the reigning European champions, admired by professionals and fans alike, but remove Frank Rijkaard from the safe surroundings of football and his absent-mindedness reaches staggering proportions. 'There are some empty spaces up there,' his former Milan team-mate Marco van Basten once admitted. 'His memory is not his strongest point, if we put it like that.'
His wife, Monique, gives a similar insight into what life with Rijkaard, 44, is like: 'He is a bit weird. You'd sit there and ask him a really important question and he will turn around and say, "You know what, the ice cream up here in Lake Como is really good".'
Rijkaard's detachment may dismay his wife but, according to Dolf Roks, who worked alongside Rijkaard for a season in Holland, it is one of the main reasons he thrives in football. 'He never gets angry in front of the players,' says Roks, who was assistant coach to Rijkaard at Sparta Rotterdam five years ago. 'He is always calm and that makes the players feel calm and confident. He is able to completely switch off when he leaves the training ground or the stadium after a game.
'The pressure? I don't know where he puts it, but it is certainly gone by the time he gets home. I don't understand how he does it. I thought about football 24 hours a day but he doesn't, and because of that he comes into work completely relaxed the next day.'
Nowadays Rijkaard can afford to be relaxed. His Barcelona team come to London this week to play Chelsea in the Champions League as probably the most admired team in the world. But the Dutchman has not always had it so easy. He struggled in his first six months in charge at Camp Nou. In December 2003, after a dismal run of three defeats in four games, the papers called him a 'coward' and splashed the word 'guilty' alongside pictures of him.
It was not the first time questions had been raised about Rijkaard's ability as a coach. 'He was a great player but I think he might be too quiet to become a great coach,' Johan Cruyff once said. It looked as though Cruyff had a point after Rijkaard's second job in management, at Sparta, ended in May 2002. Sparta were relegated and Rijkaard was accused of being too placid, too relaxed. He was more Sven-Goran Eriksson than Jose Mourinho - and it did not seem to work.
After the Sparta experience, Rijkaard took a break from management and worked on a book about how to run a football club, which he spent months researching but never wrote. In July 2003, however, he made the most unexpected and dramatic of returns when he was appointed Barcelona manager by the newly elected president, Joan Laporta.
Rijkaard would never have got the job unless Cruyff, now a convert, had not recommended him, and Laporta's choice was considered a huge gamble. 'Some people doubted Rijkaard as a coach [after Sparta] but I never did,' Roks said. 'True, he is a very nice, very humble man but people have to remember that he is first and foremost a winner. He has always won things and will continue to do so as a coach. We didn't have that bad a season at Sparta, despite being relegated. There were a lot of other things going on, a lot of financial difficulties, and many players knew they would be released long before the season had ended. It is not easy to work under those circumstances.
'Frank still wanted to stay after we were relegated. I think that says a lot about him. The only thing that he couldn't face was that his salary was responsible for several players having to leave. He offered to take a 50 per cent pay cut but Sparta could not even afford that. So he decided that it was best for everyone if he left.'
In December 2003 Rijkaard's coaching career was at a crossroads. Barcelona were twelfth in La Liga and he could not afford another six months of mediocrity. Rijkaard did something drastic - he turned the Catalan press against his players.
'One day, to be honest, I was forced into saying that the real reason for our bad results was too many players were going out at night,' he told L'Equipe earlier this year. 'In private we talked about it and I was fortunate enough to have a group of intelligent and responsible players. Over the following months, we made up 18 points on Real Madrid to finish second in La Liga.'
'The club had lost that winning mentality,' says Rijkaard. 'There was a mix of sadness and disillusionment when I arrived. I always thought if we were at that stage with the talented players that were around, something was fundamentally wrong. They weren't playing as a team.
'It was important to create a new framework and to develop a different atmosphere to give the players that desire to work together and to help each other. But, above all, we had to make them into a team of winners. To rebuild the culture of victory they had lost. They approved of the way I wanted to take things forward, gave me their word and we signed a moral contract.'
Almost three years later and Rijkaard still enjoys the unwavering support of his players. Last season, Barca, who outplayed Chelsea to knock them out in the last 16, went on to win the Champions League. They could be even stronger this season.
Xavi, one of the best midfielders in the world, is back after missing six months of last season with ruptured knee ligaments. Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta arrived from Juventus and Eidur Gudjohnsen was signed to replace Henrik Larsson.
Samuel Eto'o is out for five months with a knee injury, but Rijkaard still has an array of attacking options - Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, Gudjohnsen, Ludovic Giuly, Javier Saviola as well as the youngsters Santiago Ezquerro and Giovani.
It is Barcelona's defence that holds the key to Rijkaard's coaching philosophy, though. Barca have had the best defensive record in Spain for the past two seasons. In the Champions League semi-finals against Milan, they were so effective that one wondered which team was Italian.
It is a surprising development given that Rijkaard, when he played in the great Milan team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, used to fall asleep during Arrigo Sacchi's tactical briefings. Rijkaard graced the San Siro pitch for five years, winning two European Cups. He admits that Sacchi has had a major influence on his style of coaching. 'Someone said that my coaching is a combination of Milan's defensive discipline and the Dutch propensity for attacking football and I think that is a fair description,' he says. 'I try to merge the two schools of thought. There is a part of football I would describe as "serious" and one part I would describe as more "playful", ie more technical.
'When I say serious I mean that the players have to take more responsibility, play like a team and work defensively together when it is needed. The goal is always to win. I am completely uninterested in playing beautiful football if the team doesn't win. There have to be moments when you are just looking for a result. My players are fully aware of this.'
Rijkaard extols the virtues of players such as Edmilson and Rafael Marquez, who often occupy the crucial position in front of the back four and make sure Barca keep their balance. All his players - bar one - have to perform their positional duties in order for Barca to work as a whole. The exception is not difficult to guess. 'Ronaldinho is the only one who has a free role,' Rijkaard says. 'He normally starts in midfield but then becomes more of an attacker as the game progresses.
'Because he doesn't do any defensive work I want the rest of the team to balance that. So when he leaves his flank it is important that the other three midfielders move in that direction, or we can end up with a lot of open space for our opponents to attack if we lose the ball.'
Midfielder Deco, agrees that Barcelona are well organised but says that they are still far more entertaining than Chelsea.
'Of course he [Rijkaard] likes the team to defend well, but his priority is to attack,' Deco says. 'I'm sure a defender would have a better time playing in a Mourinho team. We take more risks than Chelsea but we play better - with more quality.
'For example, when we play at home and the opposition come to close down, he doesn't think it's necessary to play with a defensive "pivot" midfielder and puts in Andres Iniesta to give the team what it needs, which is good distribution from the back so the ball gets circulated quickly. They're details which make a great difference and imprint a certain style. Rijkaard is always looking at the opposition goal.'
Rijkaard's man-management skills are facing a stern test as he tries to revive Ronaldinho, who still seems to be suffering from a mild bout of post-World Cup malaise, like Wayne Rooney. But Rijkaard has been quick to defend his star player.
'We've seen his performances drop but there's no reason to be worried,' he says. 'He's doing what he can and that's enough because he works for the team. He isn't a machine or a robot. Sometimes we forget he is a human being.'
Rijkaard is fully aware that he needs to be as much a psychologist as a football coach at a club such as Barcelona. He sees the players first and foremost as human beings - and then footballers. He knows from his playing career - he once, famously, left an Ajax training session shouting at Johan Cruyff to fuck off and vowed never to play for the club again - that it is important for the players to feel appreciated.
'He can read people and knows how to get the best out of them,' says Roks. 'And even though he is very calm, he has made sure that he has a bit of a pitbull working with him, someone who can have a go at the players if necessary. Last season it was Henk Ten Cate and when he left he appointed Johan Neeskens as his assistant, someone who has a bit of bite in him.'
Deco, who chose to join Rijkaard at Barcelona rather than his former coach Jose Mourinho at Chelsea in 2004, says: 'Frank's a unique coach, different to all the rest. For me he is the ideal manager for Barcelona.'
'There won't be any ice cream in his head on Wednesday,' the goalkeeper Victor Valdes said last week. 'With us he's always focused on football. His mind never wanders off the job. He's always on it.'
By Marcus Christenson
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I think tactically, he is not that remarkable, but he is a good man manager...Exactly, the opposite of Capello...
He is the feted coach of the reigning European champions, admired by professionals and fans alike, but remove Frank Rijkaard from the safe surroundings of football and his absent-mindedness reaches staggering proportions. 'There are some empty spaces up there,' his former Milan team-mate Marco van Basten once admitted. 'His memory is not his strongest point, if we put it like that.'
His wife, Monique, gives a similar insight into what life with Rijkaard, 44, is like: 'He is a bit weird. You'd sit there and ask him a really important question and he will turn around and say, "You know what, the ice cream up here in Lake Como is really good".'
Rijkaard's detachment may dismay his wife but, according to Dolf Roks, who worked alongside Rijkaard for a season in Holland, it is one of the main reasons he thrives in football. 'He never gets angry in front of the players,' says Roks, who was assistant coach to Rijkaard at Sparta Rotterdam five years ago. 'He is always calm and that makes the players feel calm and confident. He is able to completely switch off when he leaves the training ground or the stadium after a game.
'The pressure? I don't know where he puts it, but it is certainly gone by the time he gets home. I don't understand how he does it. I thought about football 24 hours a day but he doesn't, and because of that he comes into work completely relaxed the next day.'
Nowadays Rijkaard can afford to be relaxed. His Barcelona team come to London this week to play Chelsea in the Champions League as probably the most admired team in the world. But the Dutchman has not always had it so easy. He struggled in his first six months in charge at Camp Nou. In December 2003, after a dismal run of three defeats in four games, the papers called him a 'coward' and splashed the word 'guilty' alongside pictures of him.
It was not the first time questions had been raised about Rijkaard's ability as a coach. 'He was a great player but I think he might be too quiet to become a great coach,' Johan Cruyff once said. It looked as though Cruyff had a point after Rijkaard's second job in management, at Sparta, ended in May 2002. Sparta were relegated and Rijkaard was accused of being too placid, too relaxed. He was more Sven-Goran Eriksson than Jose Mourinho - and it did not seem to work.
After the Sparta experience, Rijkaard took a break from management and worked on a book about how to run a football club, which he spent months researching but never wrote. In July 2003, however, he made the most unexpected and dramatic of returns when he was appointed Barcelona manager by the newly elected president, Joan Laporta.
Rijkaard would never have got the job unless Cruyff, now a convert, had not recommended him, and Laporta's choice was considered a huge gamble. 'Some people doubted Rijkaard as a coach [after Sparta] but I never did,' Roks said. 'True, he is a very nice, very humble man but people have to remember that he is first and foremost a winner. He has always won things and will continue to do so as a coach. We didn't have that bad a season at Sparta, despite being relegated. There were a lot of other things going on, a lot of financial difficulties, and many players knew they would be released long before the season had ended. It is not easy to work under those circumstances.
'Frank still wanted to stay after we were relegated. I think that says a lot about him. The only thing that he couldn't face was that his salary was responsible for several players having to leave. He offered to take a 50 per cent pay cut but Sparta could not even afford that. So he decided that it was best for everyone if he left.'
In December 2003 Rijkaard's coaching career was at a crossroads. Barcelona were twelfth in La Liga and he could not afford another six months of mediocrity. Rijkaard did something drastic - he turned the Catalan press against his players.
'One day, to be honest, I was forced into saying that the real reason for our bad results was too many players were going out at night,' he told L'Equipe earlier this year. 'In private we talked about it and I was fortunate enough to have a group of intelligent and responsible players. Over the following months, we made up 18 points on Real Madrid to finish second in La Liga.'
'The club had lost that winning mentality,' says Rijkaard. 'There was a mix of sadness and disillusionment when I arrived. I always thought if we were at that stage with the talented players that were around, something was fundamentally wrong. They weren't playing as a team.
'It was important to create a new framework and to develop a different atmosphere to give the players that desire to work together and to help each other. But, above all, we had to make them into a team of winners. To rebuild the culture of victory they had lost. They approved of the way I wanted to take things forward, gave me their word and we signed a moral contract.'
Almost three years later and Rijkaard still enjoys the unwavering support of his players. Last season, Barca, who outplayed Chelsea to knock them out in the last 16, went on to win the Champions League. They could be even stronger this season.
Xavi, one of the best midfielders in the world, is back after missing six months of last season with ruptured knee ligaments. Lilian Thuram and Gianluca Zambrotta arrived from Juventus and Eidur Gudjohnsen was signed to replace Henrik Larsson.
Samuel Eto'o is out for five months with a knee injury, but Rijkaard still has an array of attacking options - Ronaldinho, Lionel Messi, Gudjohnsen, Ludovic Giuly, Javier Saviola as well as the youngsters Santiago Ezquerro and Giovani.
It is Barcelona's defence that holds the key to Rijkaard's coaching philosophy, though. Barca have had the best defensive record in Spain for the past two seasons. In the Champions League semi-finals against Milan, they were so effective that one wondered which team was Italian.
It is a surprising development given that Rijkaard, when he played in the great Milan team in the late 1980s and early 1990s, used to fall asleep during Arrigo Sacchi's tactical briefings
. Rijkaard graced the San Siro pitch for five years, winning two European Cups. He admits that Sacchi has had a major influence on his style of coaching. 'Someone said that my coaching is a combination of Milan's defensive discipline and the Dutch propensity for attacking football and I think that is a fair description,' he says. 'I try to merge the two schools of thought. There is a part of football I would describe as "serious" and one part I would describe as more "playful", ie more technical.'When I say serious I mean that the players have to take more responsibility, play like a team and work defensively together when it is needed. The goal is always to win. I am completely uninterested in playing beautiful football if the team doesn't win. There have to be moments when you are just looking for a result. My players are fully aware of this.'
Rijkaard extols the virtues of players such as Edmilson and Rafael Marquez, who often occupy the crucial position in front of the back four and make sure Barca keep their balance. All his players - bar one - have to perform their positional duties in order for Barca to work as a whole. The exception is not difficult to guess. 'Ronaldinho is the only one who has a free role,' Rijkaard says. 'He normally starts in midfield but then becomes more of an attacker as the game progresses.
'Because he doesn't do any defensive work I want the rest of the team to balance that. So when he leaves his flank it is important that the other three midfielders move in that direction, or we can end up with a lot of open space for our opponents to attack if we lose the ball.'
Midfielder Deco, agrees that Barcelona are well organised but says that they are still far more entertaining than Chelsea.
'Of course he [Rijkaard] likes the team to defend well, but his priority is to attack,' Deco says. 'I'm sure a defender would have a better time playing in a Mourinho team. We take more risks than Chelsea but we play better - with more quality.
'For example, when we play at home and the opposition come to close down, he doesn't think it's necessary to play with a defensive "pivot" midfielder and puts in Andres Iniesta to give the team what it needs, which is good distribution from the back so the ball gets circulated quickly. They're details which make a great difference and imprint a certain style. Rijkaard is always looking at the opposition goal.'
Rijkaard's man-management skills are facing a stern test as he tries to revive Ronaldinho, who still seems to be suffering from a mild bout of post-World Cup malaise, like Wayne Rooney. But Rijkaard has been quick to defend his star player.
'We've seen his performances drop but there's no reason to be worried,' he says. 'He's doing what he can and that's enough because he works for the team. He isn't a machine or a robot. Sometimes we forget he is a human being.'
Rijkaard is fully aware that he needs to be as much a psychologist as a football coach at a club such as Barcelona. He sees the players first and foremost as human beings - and then footballers. He knows from his playing career - he once, famously, left an Ajax training session shouting at Johan Cruyff to fuck off and vowed never to play for the club again - that it is important for the players to feel appreciated.
'He can read people and knows how to get the best out of them,' says Roks. 'And even though he is very calm, he has made sure that he has a bit of a pitbull working with him, someone who can have a go at the players if necessary. Last season it was Henk Ten Cate and when he left he appointed Johan Neeskens as his assistant, someone who has a bit of bite in him.'
Deco, who chose to join Rijkaard at Barcelona rather than his former coach Jose Mourinho at Chelsea in 2004, says: 'Frank's a unique coach, different to all the rest. For me he is the ideal manager for Barcelona.'
'There won't be any ice cream in his head on Wednesday,' the goalkeeper Victor Valdes said last week. 'With us he's always focused on football. His mind never wanders off the job. He's always on it.'
By Marcus Christenson
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I think tactically, he is not that remarkable, but he is a good man manager...Exactly, the opposite of Capello...
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