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02 January 2014



In his first World Cup column of the new year, Jonathan Wilson reflects on the tactical influence of Netherlands boss Louis van Gaal and suggests the Dutch look too big at 34.0 to win the tournament...

When considering the avant garde of modern football tactics, it's usual to discuss Marcelo Bielsa, a man who has influenced a generation, from Pep Guardiola to Gerardo Martino to Mauricio Pochettino.

But as Bielsa readily acknowledges, the ideas he was formulating in Rosario in the early nineties were little different to those Louis van Gaal was developing at roughly the same time at Ajax.

From a purely tactical point of view, the most interesting game in the group stage of the World Cup is likely to be the clash between the Netherlands, managed by Van Gaal, and Chile, managed by Bielsa's most enthusiastic disciple, Jorge Sampaoli. This is a meeting of the South American and European variants of Total Football, reinterpreted for the modern age.

Born in Amsterdam, Van Gaal had been on Ajax's books as a 20-year-old but he never made an appearance for them, spending the bulk of his career as a midfielder at Sparta Rotterdam.

"As a professional soccer player," Henry Kormelink and Tjen Seeverens noted diplomatically in their book on his coaching philosophy, "he was known for his confidence in his own opinions, his abilities to convince players and coaches alike that he was right, and above all for his tactical insight."

He was, in other words, typically Dutch: opinionated, tactically astute and fundamentally awkward.

Ajax recognised the type and made him youth coordinator in 1988, when he was 36. When Kurt Linder departed after only a few months as head coach, Van Gaal and another youth coach, Spitz Kohn, were appointed on a temporary basis. The board felt he was too inexperienced to take the job on permanently and so appointed Leo Beenhakker, who won the title in his first season before quitting to take up a more lucrative position at Real Madrid.

Van Gaal, having served as Beenhakker's assistant, was again placed in control, although it was widely assumed he was filling in until Cruyff was available once again. The 40-year-old, though, seized his opportunity. When he offloaded a number of established and popular players, such as Wim Jonk, Jan Wouters, Brian Roy and Dennis Bergkamp, fans and the media were outraged. By the time he followed Cruyff's path to Barcelona six years later, though, he had restored Ajax to the very pinnacle of the European game.

Players were initially just sceptical as fans and journalists, as Van Gaal imposed a strict disciplinary code.

"Football," he said, "is a team sport and the members of the team are therefore dependent on each other. If certain players do not carry out their tasks properly on the pitch, then their colleagues will suffer. This means that each player has to carry out his basic tasks to the best of his ability and this requires a disciplined approach on the pitch. In my opinion this can only be achieved if there is also discipline off the pitch."

He played a typical Dutch 4-3-3, but in his conception of it, the playmaker was no longer the number 10 but the number 4, the spare central defender whom he encouraged to advance. That appalled traditionalists, but his success, culminating in the 1995 Champions League, won over all but the most conservative. His principles have remained the same since, with Barcelona, AZ Alkmaar and Bayern Munich and an argument could be made that he laid the foundations both for Barcelona and Bayern Munich's period of dominance (Frank Rijkaard, of course, who led Barcelona to the Champions League in 2006, was his number 4 at Ajax).

With the Netherlands, the 4-3-3 has tended to be replaced by a 4-2-3-1, and the playmaking is done less by the central defenders than by the holding midfielders, but the general principles remain the same.

Given the Dutch dropped just two points in qualifying - the best record of any European team - and that they have a strong coach and a style that clearly suits them it seems odd, even with their ageing stars, that they are as long as 34.0 to be champions.

Their group, with Spain, Chile and Australia, is tough - although they are only 1.57 to qualify - and they could face Brazil in the second round, but there is still surely value there.