by Ruud Gullit
While we had struggled at AC Milan, at Sampdoria we sailed through the match, sweeping our opponents aside. Naturally I wondered: how can that be possible? That palpable difference is incredible and it was an extremely odd sensation. I played against you the year before with Milan and then you had played much more fiercely.
It’s a question of mentality. You know that you have to raise your game when you’re playing a better team if you want a chance at gaining points. By contrast, when you play a lesser side you tend to think that it’ll be an easy match. The first is always conscious; the second is unconscious. At AC Milan, my record tally for a season was nine goals; at Sampdoria I scored sixteen. Not because I was suddenly playing better. No, at Samp I was given a lot more space by defenders. At Milan, your opponent always kept uncomfortably close.
Sensing victory
People often ask players after a game: “When did you know you were going to win?” That’s both simple and complex. When you’re 3–0 ahead, you feel sure you’re not going to lose. That goes for 3–1 too. Naturally, in April 2016 when Borussia Dortmund were leading 3–1 against Liverpool they thought they were on their way to the semifinal of the Europa League. So too Liverpool probably thought that the chances of survival were minimal. Yet it was the Germans who went home disappointed and Liverpool who progressed to the next round of the Europa League with a 4–3 scoreline.
When it happens, you get the feeling; when it doesn’t happen, you know that it could have. Even though your instinct tells you it’s in the bag, you still have to wait for the moment the ball goes in to confirm it. Sometimes the goal doesn’t come and you feel strangely let down. But feelings won’t win you games.
Superstition
Before a game, during halftime and even after a game, everyone has his rituals. Superstition is practically universal; I had my own superstitions too, though I often forgot them! I thought it was a good thing, because these little rituals help you get into the right mind-set for a successful game. You do whatever it is because it was what you did when you won a particular game. That’s what you remember. It makes you feel confident of victory and lends you a certain calm.
To me, it’s the same as for tennis players and golfers. They always have a pre-routine. Tennis players bounce the ball a couple of times and a golfer will do a couple of swings before actually hitting the ball or a few imaginary putts before actually putting. Just to get into the right mind-set. If you do that, it’ll be fine.
I’ve seen a lot of superstitions in the dressing room. First the left boot and then the right. Wait as long as possible before going to the toilet. A slight touch of something or someone. At Anfield, all the Liverpool team touch the board above the players’ tunnel on their way out. It says: “THIS IS ANFIELD.” Some cross themselves a couple of times or touch the grass. These are all things with which to get yourself into a positive mind-set. I don’t see a problem with it. On the contrary.
Us against them
Psychological warfare is a weapon with which to win games, and tournaments. During the European Championship in 1988, the Dutch coach, Rinus Michels, was having a tremendous fight with the board of the Dutch football association, KNVB. He turned those directors into our collective enemy and the effect was electric.
Managers also often use the media in the same way. Take Italy at the World Cup in 1982. The media were extraordinarily negative and Italy was still reeling from a huge bribery scandal a couple of years before. It almost prevented a player like the striker Paolo Rossi from going to the World Cup. The Italians began dramatically with three draws against Cameroon, Poland and Peru, squeezing through the group phase on goal difference. Everyone had something to say about the Squadra Azzurra.
That gave the veteran manager, Enzo Bearzot, his common enemy: he imposed media silence. Italy became world champions, beating Diego Maradona’s Argentina and an amazing Brazil team. If you get a chance to create a sense of us against the rest, then as a coach and as a team you have to do it every time.
Tense and nervous
The tension you feel before a game is not the same as nervousness. Tension keeps you sharp, nervousness blocks you and may lead players to doubt themselves.
As a player, I was never nervous, but I needed that tension if I wanted to perform as well as I could. Then your antennae are in focus, and your body is finely tuned. For key matches for a national title, the Champions League or an international game for the Netherlands the tension is even greater. It often comes from having to succeed in an all-or-nothing situation. The importance of the match is raised an extra notch by the increasing media attention. And you face it in social settings too. Everywhere you go people ask about the game, and so it gains an extra dimension whether you want it or not.
As an analyst I was once asked to present FIFA’s Ballon d’Or—Golden Ball—at the gala in Zurich. I had to do it live. It was quite different from analyzing games in a studio, but I didn’t change my approach. We had rehearsed and they gave me a small room to prepare in on the day of the broadcast. The walls were soon closing in on me and five minutes later I found the room where all the other people working on the show were sitting. The producer came by just before we were due to go on and found me playing games on my phone and checking out news sites. She asked: “Aren’t you nervous? Are you feeling tense?” Of course, but that’s my way of channeling the tension: focus on something else. We spoke after the show and I said: “You thought I wouldn’t make it and that it would all go wrong, didn’t you?”
That’s just my way of focusing. Everyone has to do whatever makes him feel good. It’s something you learn in the dressing room surrounded by ten players with whom you’re going to win a game. If you force someone to do something that goes against his character, it’ll more than likely have a negative effect.
Spectators
Spectators can play a significant role in motivating a team. And they can be the death of a team with their jeers and whistles, white handkerchiefs, negative chants and cynical comments.
Fans can influence the game by their attitude toward the other side and the referee by whistling, shouting and chanting their disapproval. Whether consciously or not, it all has an effect on players and referees. Some players avoid the ball, find a place to hide and pray for the clock to reach the ninety-minute mark. If every decision the referee makes is followed by a chorus of disapproval then it’s only natural for the official to react, even if unconsciously.
The home side’s goalkeeper may waste time and never get a yellow card, but when the visiting keeper wastes time and 50,000 people start whistling and shouting, then he may very well get a yellow card without even having taken very much longer than normal. The spectators in the stadium can have a significant impact on a game.
In the Netherlands, the fans at Feyenoord’s De Kuip stadium are especially intimidating. Kuip-phobia is a real phenomenon in Dutch soccer. It’s ridiculous for players to be afraid in their own stadium, but it happens: it’s reality. The expectations are always high—too high—and so they can never be realized. As a result a negative vibe develops that bears down on the players. So a team can be drawn into a negative spiral, the kind of situation Feyenoord have found themselves in for the last fifteen years.
Big games
Club games in the national league have a certain rhythm. You follow a weekly program and if you have international matches in between they often don’t disturb that rhythm.
With the national team it’s different. That’s another rhythm entirely and the tension is distinct, too, if only because of the days you spend at the separate training camp. When you play an international game you’re playing for your country: you’re an ambassador for the entire nation. At decisive qualifying rounds for a World Cup or European Championship and other major tournaments I always felt that I was carrying a responsibility. That can get quite intense and the pressure can be huge. I didn’t have too much trouble with it, though.
At the top, you have to get results. Every week, every game. That changes things. When “may” becomes “must,” everything is different. The hardest part is to remain focused. That starts in training. The way you train is the way you play.
Just how serious that can get is something I experienced at AC Milan. When we drew, all hell broke loose. Silvio Berlusconi would come to see us personally to give us a talking to. On the Saturday before the next game he would fly in to the Milanello training complex in his helicopter. Then you knew what to expect. Three points from the next game were a must. The pressure was intense. You had to be able to deal with that if you wanted to play for AC Milan.
Often you need only to remain in focus and not get distracted. Players who let the huge expectations wear them down would never last there. Was a draw that bad? Yes, if two points made the difference between winning the league and coming second. Naturally people got upset.
As a club you have to grab every opportunity, just like a player. Failure isn’t an option. At AC Milan they used to say: “No next time for you.” So you have to be professional. Put everything on hold. Because if you make a mistake they’ll dump you and you’ll have ruined your future. Soccer at the highest level is not always fun. Especially for those who are balancing on the edge and their contract is up for renewal.
The tension in the Champions League is highest of all, and it gets even more intense the further you progress and the nearer you get to the final. The national cup competitions are always exciting, whether in England at Wembley or in the Netherlands at De Kuip. This is the shortest route to European soccer. Especially interesting for clubs not quite at the highest level, since they don’t qualify regularly for the Europa League.
In England, managers don’t take the League Cup very seriously. It begins in the autumn, a period that is packed with league games, European commitments and international matches. Later in the season clubs only rarely field second-eleven teams for FA Cup games. That’s because the FA Cup is a major trophy in England, and it can make up for a poor season. Yet a long run in the Cup also has its dangers. If you take the competition seriously and always play your first team, you risk exhaustion, injuries and suspensions. Certainly for clubs already playing in Europe, it makes their program even harder.
On the other hand, if you make changes then you disrupt the rhythm of the team, although these days you have to rotate players. You’ll never succeed in these competitions with just the one team. You’ll come up against a brick wall at some point. A squad of twenty-two equally good players is no luxury, even though a professional should be able to play three matches in eight days.
It’s a fine line. Managers have to keep a balance.
Look at the World Cup and the European Championship. Countries regularly qualify before the group stage is finished. That gives coaches two options: either to continue with the same eleven players, or to leave half of them in the team and replace the other half—for example, players on a yellow card, those who appear exhausted or have slight injuries—with alternatives. Often the substitute keeper gets to play a game in those situations, as a reward for waiting.
It’s a risky choice. Marco van Basten coached the Dutch side at the 2008 European Championship in Austria and Switzerland and steered his country to the second round after two superb victories against the world champions, Italy (3–0), and the runners-up, France (4–1). In the third group game, against Romania, he replaced Edwin van der Sar with Maarten Stekelenburg and kept Orlando Engelaar. He made a further nine changes from the first two matches. The orange shirts won 2–0, so Romania received no unfair advantage.
But this wholesale substitution destroyed the team’s rhythm for the quarterfinal against Russia. Van Basten reverted to the eleven players who had given Italy and France such a pasting. Yet the momentum had disappeared after eight days of rest and a little training and lazing about in the hotel. The Dutch struggled on into extra time, whereupon they were destroyed, 3–1.
Intimidation
As a player and manager I never intentionally set out to intimidate anyone. Later I heard that there were stories about how I intimidated opponents in the players’ tunnel because of my height, but I never gave it a second thought. I never did anything I shouldn’t have. As club soccer has internationalized, top players often meet before the game in the tunnel. Two Brazilians or Argentinians who know each other from their national squad who find themselves on opposing sides in an FC Barcelona–Arsenal match will naturally be happy to see each other. Top soccer players learn to separate how they play from the rest of their life, so they can still throw everything into winning the game.
At the European Championship in West Germany in 1988 we heard Tony Adams encouraging his team in the English dressing room as we stood in the players’ tunnel: “Let’s kill the bastards!” he was saying. We all burst out laughing. “What’s he saying now?” It seemed rather forced and not in the least intimidating. On the contrary, we were amused and relaxed despite the pressure of knowing that the losers would be going home. We won with three Marco van Basten goals, 3–1.
Intimidation may work for a while on young players who have only just started their careers, but I think you should be professional and focus on winning. Players will always try to intimidate opponents on the pitch. I don’t like that: you should impress, not oppress.
Respect
As a player you have to accept team tactics and team discipline—that’s your primary task as a professional. And yet within those team tactics you also have your own individual ones. For the player it’s about taking the right decision at the right moment. The more right decisions you take, the more time you have to carry out those decisions. It’s all about speed of deliberation and execution.
It’s about things like: when do you get involved in play? When do you stay in the background? When do you go deep? When do you shadow the man you’re marking? When do you give him a few meters, entice the player to have a go and do exactly what you want?
There are hundreds of situations like that. If you know what you want and you make the right decisions and execute your plan at the right speed then it’ll happen the way you want.
After I retired from professional soccer, I played for AFC, an amateur soccer club in Amsterdam. Just for fun. A group of friends in the first eleven on Saturdays. I never got kicked so much: those amateurs really took me to task. They take the ball, pass it well, and again, look around and finally they pass it to your feet. Meanwhile there’s an opponent breathing down your neck who gives you an almighty kick as the ball reaches you.
To which you’d normally say: “Why don’t you play the ball?” Only the foul wasn’t intentional and he meant no harm. He is just too slow and puts others at risk quite unwittingly.
Later, this team developed into a mix of amateurs and former professionals and internationals including Stanley Menzo, Aron Winter, Marco van Basten, John van ’t Schip, Rob Witschge and Wim Kieft. A team of forty-somethings playing fit young men in their twenties, who still couldn’t keep up, although we were practically standing still while they played. It’s a matter of being able to think fast, which gave us a huge advantage and created lots of extra time for us. The youngsters didn’t stand a chance, even if they were in peak condition.
To avoid a game like that getting out of hand, you need to anticipate the situation. Don’t be haughty or arrogant, but go and meet the youngsters, go to their dressing room and say: “Hey guys, enjoy the game. Have fun.” After c
hatting a little and shaking hands you’ll find the game will be pleasant enough and you can still win because you operate at a much faster speed.
One touch, second touch. Soccer is about letting the ball run and exploiting the moments when you can make the difference. And then suddenly the ball is in the net.
That’s what makes soccer fun: playing in a way that doesn’t get you into difficulties.
Don’t put us down!
In the same way, different playing standards can be found at the top of the soccer world too. And Barcelona approach teams that are obviously less talented as we did at AFC. It’s absolutely crucial not to disparage your opponents or to ridicule them. When players look for revenge they’re a danger to life and limb. In fact you often see big teams tone it down once they can’t be overhauled.
In their heyday, Manchester United had an unsurpassed ability to read a game. Their victory in the final minutes in the 1999 Champions League final against Bayern Munich at the Nou Camp in Barcelona didn’t surprise me at all—despite their 1–0 deficit after ninety minutes! Even in such a dire situation, that team could still raise its game above that of its opponents and take the initiative. It’s a mental question, too.