‘The Premier League is a completely different animal’

• Ronald van Dam

  editor and commentator NOS Sport

Dutch coaches and English football are not exactly a dream marriage. Never before has a club led by a Dutchman become Premier League champions. Will Arne Slot succeed at Liverpool?

Simon Kuper, expert on English football, author of several football books and creator of the podcast Heroes & Humans, has his doubts. “Jürgen Klopp has not been able to win the biggest prizes in the last three years. I fear that will not happen under Slot either…”

“The Premier League is a completely different animal, the toughest competition there is“, says René Meulensteen, the current assistant national coach of Australia, who managed Fulham for only seventeen games in the 2013/2014 season before he was fired.

Meulensteen: “It’s not just Dutch coaches who are having a hard time in England. To put everything into perspective: do you know how many English coaches have become Premier League champions since 1992? Zero!”

Three FA Cups and a lost League Cup. These are the prizes won by the nine Dutch head coaches since Ruud Gullit, who was the first at Chelsea and Newcastle United from 1996 to 1998. Gullit won the FA Cup in 1997 as the first non-British manager. Guus Hiddink (Chelsea, 2009) and Louis van Gaal (Manchester United, 2016) also won the English Cup. Erik ten Hag won the League Cup with Manchester United last season.

Gullit, Martin Jol, Hiddink, Meulensteen, Dick Advocaat, Van Gaal, Ronald Koeman, Frank de Boer, Erik ten Hag, as Kuper reviews the names. he says: “If you look at the whole list, they are certainly not all failures. But you cannot say that there is a Dutch trainer who has had a lot of success in the Premier League.”

The Dutch trainer is in “not bad shape” in England, according to Meulensteen. “There is a lot of respect for the football that we have created internationally with the Dutch team and the Dutch clubs, plus the top players who have become successful everywhere, including in the Premier League.”

Kuper is more critical. He sees growing skepticism among the English. “Ten Hag is not doing particularly well at Manchester United. Apparently he was a tactical genius at Ajax, but that is not visible at United after two years, they think. It was the same with Van Gaal.”

“You have to assess each Dutch trainer who has worked there or who still works there separately,” says Meulensteen, who still lives in Manchester, where he worked under the Scot Alex Ferguson at United from 2007 to 2013 and as his assistant in that became champion four times in a period.

“Everyone comes in at a certain time, in a different way. Look at me. I was Jol’s assistant at Fulham. Without me knowing, he was fired and I was put in his position. How that happened made no sense. You can safely leave me out of that list.”

Meulensteen prefers to focus on the more renowned trainer names such as Hiddink and Van Gaal. “These are names that you expect to carry weight and be able to achieve success. With Van Gaal, everyone had the idea that he was going to compete for the title. Then it becomes clear once again that if you do not know that landscape, you are not good at it. estimates or does not respect it in the right way, things will still go wrong.”

“With him I always had the idea that it was Van Gaal United. Everything was based on ball possession, 800 passes and only two shots on target. It doesn’t work like that in the Premier League.”

According to Kuper, the role of the trainer should not be overestimated. “It is much less important than we as the media and the fans usually think. The quality of the team is largely determined by the quality of the players. And you can read that from the salaries.”

Dutch coaches everywhere want to make their mark with attacking football, Kuper thinks. “Cruijff’s style. But usually they come to a team that plays a different system. You saw that with Van Gaal and you see it now with Ten Hag. They want to play a kind of football that their team is not set up for at all. transition just takes too long, because results have to be achieved, so things go wrong.”

Both see Slot’s future at Liverpool as bright. According to Kuper, he ends up in a slightly more spread-out position than most of his Dutch predecessors in England.

“Liverpool would probably have preferred to sign Xabi Alonso from Leverkusen, but he didn’t want to. No one has Klopp’s charisma, so the club sticks to a trainer who plays ‘Kloppian’ football. Slot is such a trainer, so they take him .”

Meulensteen: “Slot is not a bad choice. I think highly of him. There was already a clear line at AZ and he extended that to Feyenoord, where he had more and better resources and has taken everything to a higher level. Moreover, he good in the media, his words come out well. I hope he also succeeds in England.”

But Meulensteen also wants to warn Slot: “He must ensure that he has people within his staff who know the Premier League well. With Feyenoord you can collect three points from nine of the bottom ten teams with two fingers up your nose and a blindfold. That is impossible in England. You have to be top every time, especially at Liverpool, which wants to compete for all the prizes.

Kuper: “Whether Slot will succeed? I am moderate about that. You play in a competition with probably the best team of the 21st century, Manchester City. You are almost always inferior to that team. So you will not easily win the Premier League win. But I think he will be a good manager for Liverpool.”