Челси стал одним из лучших клубов во многом из-за того, что Абрамович так жестко обращается с тренерами при плохих результатах. Это держит всех в тонусе и не дает расслабиться.
Бесхребетный Хиддинг, мда уж. Почитал бы про него и для чего Гуса приглашали в клуб, а потом пытался язвить в его сторону.
‘Costa thought the country hated him. I told him to score a goal then another’
Guus Hiddink reflects on a life in management and recalls time at Chelsea with genuine affectionhttps://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/sport/costa-thought-the-country-hated-him-i-told-him-to-score-a-goal-then-another-lvn802l32Для тех у кого нет подписки ниже вся статья.
A story. World Cup ’98, Holland need a base. Guus Hiddink, their manager, fancies Monaco’s spectacular La Turbie training ground. Yet the club aren’t keen so Hiddink approaches Prince Albert. They meet on a yacht and strike a rapport. “Have La Turbie,” Albert says, “on one condition: I can come to practice.”
So the Dutch train. It’s a wonderful camp, and one day an eager, balding, 40-year-old turns up. “The prince,” hoots Hiddink. “He has his boots round his neck.” And Albert joined in.
We’re in an impossibly tasteful merchant’s house in Amsterdam, open fire, antique writing desk by a window overlooking the River Amstel; fine art, coffee-table books on the Beatles, The Godfather, Muhammad Ali; football memorabilia. “To Guus, a great manager & a great man. Thanks & good luck — Frank Lampard” reads one message on the framed Chelsea shirt.
A luxury hotel sits across the glistening water. Downriver lives Dick Advocaat.
A two-hour interview hasn’t even started, but Hiddink has, with his zest and charisma, picking out photographs hung in his corridor, on his wall of fame. Albert. Maradona. Mark Viduka. King Juan Carlos. Didier Drogba . . . “Each picture has a story,” Hiddink smiles. “So many stories.”
Upon sitting down, I suggest this piece delves into his philosophy. “If we can find one,” he says, chuckling at me, and of course the whole point about Guus Hiddink is there on the walls of his beautiful house. Pompous philosophies are for other Dutch managers (hello Louis!). Other famous men build shrines only to themselves, whereas his walls are generous, full of other people.
Life, football, his remarkable career: as Hiddink sees things, the key is people. “I like to work with people. I’m not equipped to work with instruments or whatever,” he says — and that is his key.
Trophies-wise, he is Holland’s most successful coach. He’s still in demand, recently rebuffing Leicester. “I’m 70, come on!” he scoffs when asked if he will take another coaching job — but he doesn’t entirely rule it out. And he’s still working, consulting for Chelsea, receiving weekly reports on academy players, and monitoring their Dutch-based loanees.
With Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, he has a bond reaching back a decade. He doesn’t want to call them friends, “because with friends you share all your intimate positive and negative things. But there is mutual respect.”
Abramovich helped to fund the Russia national team during Hiddink’s tenure from 2006-10. “He didn’t come from sports. When we were playing in Tel Aviv [in 2007], he was waiting outside the locker room after the game. I said, ‘Hey, come in and sit with us.’ We lost in the last minute. I said, ‘Come, sit with the players’. The old Soviet system was to shout, ‘You lost.’ But he was not like that. He is a real football supporter.”
After finishing third at Euro 2008 Hiddink was still Russia manager in 2009 when he answered his first SOS from Abramovich. Broken team spirit, call the player-whisperer: Hiddink replaced Luis Felipe Scolari until the end of the season and lost just one of 22 games, winning 16.
He won the FA Cup and lost a Champions League semi-final to Barcelona in stoppage time, after controversial refereeing. “There were some locker room problems with Scolari,” he recalls, but the message to the players was, “I don’t want to know. I will judge you for myself.” They were a strong group and Hiddink inspired the turnaround by challenging them to take responsibility.
He believes that Chelsea team were as good a side as he’s coached. “What I liked very much about them was that after we were kicked out of the Champions League we had to play Arsenal four days later. At the Emirates. How do I get this team and myself upright again? It was amazing how they reacted, British-influenced by Lampard and John Terry, Ashley Cole. We won 4-1.”
He drifts into such reverie you wait for one of the Cuban cigars he enjoys to come out. “Ashley on the left. My Alex from PSV in the middle. With Terry. The other full back . . . Portuguese . . . I forget his name . . . a little loco, but fast . . . Bosingwa!” Hiddink smiles.
“In midfield, Essien, Jon Obi Mikel, Ballack. Up front, Drogba, Anelka, Kalou. Drogba was a very good guy. Though at the beginning, in training, he always came into midfield. I said, ‘Come on Didier, f*** off, you’re not a playmaker, man.’ Deco was there, a No 10 from the old style. ‘Look Didier, there’s a playmaker. Stay up front, don’t even go wide.’”
The problem is everything is so quick. Nobody gives you time to develop
Drogba obeyed. Modestly, Hiddink suggests that “results” were why the whole club and its support so took to him, but personality counts and when Jose Mourinho’s sacking splintered Chelsea maybe only Hiddink could have restored unity last season.
That second interim spell was harder. “They were one point from the relegation places, in big trouble, it was a different group,” he says. “More silent. For me, a bit quiet. They were watching their step. I had to get them a little more spontaneous, find the right tension.
“Costa, Hazard, Fabregas were being booed. I didn’t know what their role was with Mourinho. And I didn’t ask. I said to the players, ‘Don’t come with stories about the past.’ Because then it becomes, ‘Did he mistreat you?’ All that.”
There was another upturn. It was not as spectacular as 2009, but it was good enough to set a Premier League record for an unbeaten streak as new manager; to finish 10th and prepare the ground for Antonio Conte.
Costa? “Everyone said, ‘He’s difficult, blah blah’ but once players feel you don’t have a second agenda, they open up and it was like that with him.
“He had this feeling that the whole country was against him and I talked to him, ‘Because of your nice, explosive character people can easily pinch you. So control that a bit. Explode, because that’s your character, but not for too long’.
“And, ‘Diego, the world’s against you, I think the best answer is to flick a goal, and then one more.’ Outside the pitch, when I see how Diego helps the kit man off the bus with his gear, then I know he’s a good guy.”
Hazard, “came back in my last three or four games, the old Hazard. Maybe he was affected by people saying he was to blame for the Mourinho situation. Also, he had injuries. But I think he can go to the level of the big two, Messi and Ronaldo. He can turn on 10 square inches. He has a 360- degree radar.”
An Anglophile, who likes Monty Python, he enjoyed coaching in England very much. “I loved the commitment of the players,” he says. “I had Frank [Lampard], John [Terry], icons of the club and I speak to people inside the club . . . if they stop their careers they should have some involvement, whether commercial things or marketing or technical or coaching or academy work.
“Integrate those guys — and Drogba, even Ballack who is living there. Then you make your own culture even stronger. John, I talked with him a lot last year and he’d love to be involved, because he had some beautiful offers, but he preferred to stay in Chelsea. He is football-ageing, the career is ending: but now see if he can be of value in other parts of the club.”
Lampard said that no manager has Hiddink’s knack for simple, decluttered mesages and his role model was Ernst Happel, a coach of famously few words. “You have to be very defined and clear to players,” says Hiddink. “If you have a high level of player, there’s no need to go on a lower level and instruct them.”
Tactics? He’s shrewd, but isn’t ruled by dogma. Analysis? “You use the statistics. But not as the leader. Statistics say, ‘This midfield player ran 11km’. OK, but with what efficiency? To what purpose?” Fitness? His Koreans rather pioneered the ultra-intensity of modern teams.
He has an interesting idea for youth coaching. The game gets ever faster yet skill remains paramount, “so you need to create more organised chaos, where the guys who survive have the technical skill, but also physical and coordinative skills. Like street football.” He beams about having just become a granddad for the first time.
His own childhood was spent in a village, Varsseveld, near the German border. His father was a war hero, who hid Jewish families and helped Allied pilots. He was the third of six brothers and he had a way with horses, learning to plough when he was just 10 years old.
His lack of pomposity seems to be down to his background. “I don’t like to show off. Those rural, basic things are still there,” he reflects and if Carlo Ancelotti is similar — fun, successful in different settings, canny with people — “it is no coincidence he’s also from a rural area,” Hiddink suggests.
He first coached at a special school. “The kids were aged 12-20, some had learning difficulties, some Down’s Syndrome, some criminal tendencies with a knife in their pocket. A lot of diversity. There I learnt to manage in a group, handle characters.”
His legacy? “I don’t like legacy. Because that supposes I’m going to be dead tomorrow.” His nature is to look forward. “Don’t always think the new generation is wrong,” he says. “Now, they have tattoos. ‘Oh, I don’t like tattoos.’ But it’s an expression of the times and go look at these young guys’ tattoos, you’ll see a message, a story.”
One more story. Against West Bromwich Albion, Hiddink was exasperated by Anthony Taylor and complained to Jon Moss, the fourth official. “I said, ‘Hey this referee must be the worst in the Premier League. And Moss said, ‘You haven’t seen me yet.’
“Ha ha ha. Beautiful. After, Moss was our referee and he made some terrible decisions. But I said, ‘Hey, he can make what he likes. He’s my man.’”
Around the world with Hiddink
The Dutchman made his name managing PSV, then took jobs at Fenerbahce in Turkey and Valencia in Spain before taking charge of Holland from 1994 to 1998. In 2002, he steered South Korea to the semi-finals of a home World Cup. He has also coached Australia, whom he took to a first World Cup in 32 years, and Russia, whom he guided to the Euro 2008 semi-finals. In 2009 he became caretaker manager of Chelsea, winning the 2010 FA Cup. After spells with Turkey and Holland, he returned to Stamford Bridge and Roman Abramovich for the second half of the 2015-16 season.
),это чисто деловые отношения.Есть результат-есть работа,нет результата-нет работы.Всё просто.Бизнес есть бизнес.Хорошо или плохо - не знаю,но такова реальность.
