Happy Van Basten's laid-back revolution

14 April 2012

One of the Dutch journalists watching his national team in training at Villa Park last night remarked on a strange X Files-like phenomenon when Marco van Basten oversaw his first World Cup match as national coach against the Czech Republic. Holland were outplayed but still won 2-0, he explained, and a nation recognised a supernatural force at work.

"We convinced ourselves it wasn't luck but because Marco is a genius," he explained. "It was odd because we're not a nation who believe in superstition - but we do believe in Van Basten."

Greatness can be very persuasive. Here is a 40-year-old whose post-playing cv had read "1995-2002 lots of golf" and "2003, coach of Ajax reserves" before, amazingly, he was given the keys to the Oranje last summer.

They say he hasn't even yet orchestrated a single impressive performance in six matches in charge.

Yet who cared? The idol was back, the greatest striker of his generation who'd deserted football for years only to rediscover its joys and to bring back a sense of fun and anticipation to the Dutch game. Was it any coincidence that Holland, despite retirements of old stalwarts and injuries to their superstars, still hadn't lost a game under him?

On the training park, looking at the age of 40 so youthfully long and lean that it was possible to imagine him, even on that reconstructed ankle, putting another hat-trick past England tonight, the aura was still unmistakable.

Then as he started to ignore training, indulging instead in a bout of keepyuppy-with his two old Ajax pals, assistants-Rob Witschge and John van't Schip, you could sense how he has fashioned a revolution since the troubled Dick Advocaat reign ended at Euro 2004. We're talking a very laid-back, very Dutch revolution.

For Van Basten seems like football's version of the bloke in the Grolsch advert, crying "Guys, guys, shtopp, there's no need to fight". Cliques have been outlawed, old underachieving troublemakers like Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert sidelined and a new openness with the media instituted. Attack, in the shape of 4-3-3, is the watchword.

Bizarre things are happening - like having the team play beach games as preparation on match days. "Yes, it's fun, we laugh a lot," Van Basten smiled, flanked by chuckling Dutch TV personality Kees Jansma, the team's media director. Imagine the FA announcing Des Lynam as Sven's new spin doctor and you get the idea. Jansma's role has been to help reconnect the team to the people again after an era where fans could only see spoiled, bickering players and a hopeless communicator in Advocaat.

"We all started playing football because we loved the game and that is something we should radiate," has been Van Basten's stirring message to his players. Never mind if top guns like Arjen Robben and Ruud van Nistelrooy were injured. In this new democracy, even a 34-year-old midfielder like Barry van Galen or a previously unconsidered j ourneyman winger Romano Denneboom could land a debut. Van Basten is surprising everyone.

"It hasn't been an easy progression but we are doing our best," he shrugged, when asked if he felt he had yet successfully answered the questions about his inexperience. The 'we' includes the kingmaker himself, Johann Cruyff.

"We are on the phone a lot talking about players," admitted Van Basten quite openly.

It was Cruyff who recognised last year that, despite his inexperience, his former

Ajax disciple was best equipped to be Holland's unifying force because he was independent, baggage-free and a hero. Once, though, it would have been unthinkable because after his stellar career at AC Milan had been cruelly cut short at 28 because of an injury to the most assaulted ankle in the game, Van Basten simply shunned football.

At the time, he bemoaned: "After success, everybody wants to bring you down. The press want your story, the people want to cherish you and the whole world jumps on you." Yet the physical and mental pain subsided eventually and when asked to help a FIFA task force for ideas to improve the game, football began to woo him back from the golf course where he had become a national amateur team champion.

He started playing park football again for Amsterdam 5th XI with his old mate Ruud Gullit, produced his own detailed manifesto for change in football, featuring ideas old, innovative and plain daft, and then earned his coaching badge at Ajax. When the Dutch FA offered him the big one, he left the decision in the hands of his young daughters. A nation seems grateful they told dad 'Yes'.

Yet he could be on a hiding to nothing, taking over in what he describes as a "rebuilding period" for the Dutch game. Even with the emergence of the likes of Robben and Wesley Sneijder, many in Holland cannot recall when their talent pool last looked so shallow.

Van Basten, though, simply has no time for doomsayers, insisting quietly: "Of course, I'm confident about the future." And why shouldn't he be? Anything is possible when you present a Dutch master with a blank canvas.

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Happy Van Basten's laid-back revolution

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