David Kappel: Raymond, you have been one of Holland’s most outspoken football coaches but what many don’t know is that your first class as an in- structor had the likes of Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard and Ronald Koeman in it. How did it feel to have these legends of football listening to your philoso- phy? Raymond Verheijen: It was 1997 and I was 26 at that time, and finally doing what I had dreamed of – working at the highest level in top football. Because I had to stop playing at a young age, the alternative was to become a coach or an instructor. DK: From then your star started to shine when Rijkaard was appointed as Dutch national team coach. You have been at the last three World Cups and the last four EURO’s. How did that come about? RV: Rijkaard must have seen some- thing during the course when I was instructing because, he asked me to become his assistant. Once you have that momentum, once you have that success, coaches and teams ask you to help them. DK: Will we see you in a coaching set-up of this year’s World Cup in Bra- zil? RV: Yes, I am currently speaking to two countries and I will definitely be going to work in Brazil. But I also have a lot of other responsibilities, the most important one being the World Expert Meeting in Clarens in the Free State in June. DK: You are continuously claiming that the English FA should rethink their fixture schedule – particularly over the busy Christmas period where English clubs play four games in 11 days. What’s the problem with this fix- ture congestion? RV: We have done a research study on 27 000 games, which is an extremely large sample, and what we have found is that when teams have two days rest then their results are more negative than if they had three days’ rest or more. DK: That also explains why teams struggle in their domestic league after playing Champions League or Europa League on Wednesday or Thursday? RV: Yep. When you play Cham- pions League on Wednesday and you play domestic league on Saturday or Europa League on Thursday and domestic league on Sunday, you have only two days’ rest. When the other team also only had two days’ rest, then the home team has a much higher chance of win- ning than normal. This is unfair. Both teams are tired, but the home team feel less tired be- cause they have more support while the away team also had to travel. When you have only two days’ rest and the opponent has three or more days rest, then you have totally no chance, es- pecially when playing away. This cannot be considered Fair-Play, because in that situation it’s not a case of equal chances. Our research has shown that all the teams who have had three days’ rest or more will no longer suffer the negative effects. DK: The Italian and French FA have given AC Milan and PSG an ex- tra-day in between their last league match and this week’s Cham- pions League last-16 round. Is this a step in the right direction? RV: They have read the research and some of the FA’s have called for me to explain the research results in more detail, and based on what I have ex- plained to them, they have changed their fixtures. As a result the national FA’s in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Rus- sia, Turkey, amongst other countries, are helping their top teams to perform better in Europe, and the whole coun- try will benefit from that. DK: English clubs are also well- known for going on pre-season tours, travelling for many hours and miles to widen their fan basis. Is this the opti- mal preparation for the players? RV: No, it is only optimal for mak- ing money and they are sacrificing the well-being of their players to make money. For example, in July I was in Australia and Manchester United was also in Sydney. I watched them train- ing all week. They had just flown for 30 hours – there were nine hours’ time-dif- ference. Normally it takes the body one week to recover from that, but one day after arrival they immediately started to train for that week. You are over- loading bodies and you are exhausting your players so, although Manches- ter United made a lot of money, they also contributed to their own downfall which resulted in their very poor first half of the season. DK: One of these tours was United’s trip to Sydney, which you have linked with Robin van Persie’s injury prob- lems this season. What happened with the Dutch striker? RV: He arrived even later in Sydney and straight after he arrived he had to do fitness work and isolated running every day. He had flown for 30 hours and then he has to do running exer- cises. Firstly running exercises have nothing to do with football and sec- ondly once again you are exhausting your most important player, a player who made you champions the year be- fore. DK: After closing your Man United ‘case study’, you recently stated that Theo Walcott’s ACL was done poorly because Arsenal’s medical team played ‘Russian Roulette’ with the winger’s career. What was their mistake and could it have been avoided? RV: It was the coaching staff that made the mistake. Theo Walcott was out for several months and then he started playing again. When you have a player out for two months, you first have to improve their match-fit- ness step-by-step: 25, 45, 65, 90 minutes. This is phase one and this is what they did really well at Arsenal. The second phase is a gradual build-up for the second game of the week. In the first phase you train match-fitness; in the second phase you train your players to recover quicker in between games: 90, 25, 90, 45, 90, 65, 90, 90 minutes. What Arsenal does in the second phase is 90, 90, 90, 90, 90 minutes. First they build up match-fitness to 90 min- utes, but once a week only so the body is used to recovering from 90 minutes in six days and all of a sudden – from nothing – they want you to re- cover in three days. That means your body ac- cumulates fatigue and your nerve-system becomes slower. That means the signals from your brain to your muscles arrive later but you need that signal for the muscles around your knee to contract. The brain sends a signal to your knee then the mus- cles contract to stabilize the knee. If that signal arrives too late then your knee is already loaded while the muscles around your knee have not contracted yet so temporarily your knee is unprotected. That means your upper leg will move in relation to your lower leg and you will tear your ACL. DK: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have been averaging more than 60 games per season for the past couple of years. How can their bodies keep up with so many games? RV: First of all the tempo in Spain is lower than the tempo in England. Sec- ondly they play in teams that have the ball all the time, which means that you have to run less, and thirdly the qual- ity of experts in Spain is higher than in England. DK: You were in South Africa re- cently to educate professional and amateur coaches about your periodiz- ation model. What do make of South African football and coaches? RV: What I hear about the situation in SA football in general is that it is not good. There is a little bit chaos. Admin- istrators are corrupt and are not there for the game, only for themselves. The second thing I hear is that the players are not always disciplined in terms of training and life style. I teach my coaches in the classes that the only way to change the situ- ation is by changing yourself. If you change yourself as a coach and then 100 coaches change, then 1000, then automatically you will change the situ- ation. It takes time and patience, but eventually it will happen. DK: Surely there must be quality in South Africa or how did Bafana Bafana manage to beat World Cham- pions, Spain? RV: All I can say is that the Spanish players play a lot of games and then, all of a sudden, they have to travel to midweek friendlies in South America and Africa. What idiot is taking the Spanish national team in the middle of the season and travelling all the way to Namibia and South Africa while they are in the middle of La Liga and the Champions League? I hope everybody understands this was not a real contest against a real Spanish national team – this was a contest against a fatigued Spanish na- tional team. You beat a tired, and maybe even unmotivated, Spanish team and people think the team is doing well. Then when playing in some silly tournament (Chan), you cannot even qualify for the second round. What happened re- cently with that tournament is the per- fect proof that the game against Spain proved nothing. If South Africa beat Spain at the World Cup where both teams are well prepared and motivated, then it would be a different story. But I think every- body knows that’s not going to happen in the near future. DK: Finally, what’s your advice for the next generation of coaches, and where can one get more information about your courses? RV: Raise your bar. Don’t pretend that you are a victim of South African football. Don’t act as if you are a victim of corruption or a victim of poor player discipline – deal with it! Don’t start to change the world, start by changing yourself. You as a coach should always be on time. You are a role model. You should have a good lifestyle. And if more coaches start doing it, over five or ten years, the whole system will even- tually change. It is just a matter of time. DK: Thanks Raymond, we are look- ing forward to seeing you at the World Expert Meeting in Bloemfontein in June. ❐ R aymond Verheijen is one of the world’s leading football conditioning experts. The Dutchman is the founder of the World Football Academy and had the likes of Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard in his first class as a 26-year-old. He worked as assistant coach at the last three World Cup’s as well as in the last four European Championships, and was in- volved in the coaching set-ups at Fey- enoord (where he coached Kamohelo Mokotjo and Kermit Erasmus), FC Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester City. He has been educating South Af- rican coaches since 2011 and Soccer Laduma’s David Kappel caught up with him during his last visit. FÚTBOL FUSSBALL VOETBAL FOTBOLL FUTEBOL FOOTBALL CALCIO FUSSBALL 24 Soccer Laduma, March 19, 2014 www.soccerladuma.co.za 1) Unconsciously incompetent: You are incompetent, but you are not aware of it. You think you are fine so you don’t want to go to a coach- ing course, because you don’t have a need to learn and change. 2) Consciously incompetent: You become aware of your shortcom- ings after looking in the mirror and blaming yourself rather than the outside world. That is a painful stage because you become aware of the fact that you are as you thought you were. As nobody wants to stay incompetent, you will develop a need to learn and change. That is also what I try to do with Twitter. With my account I try to get the football world from un- consciously incompetent to con- sciously incompetent. That is why I keep on using these incompetent examples to show the whole world how much incompetence there is. Once everybody in football under- stands that there is so much incompe- tence, then everybody is consciously incompetent. Then we can go to the third stage. 3) Consciously competent: That is what you become with education. People gradually improve but it takes effort. It is still only a conscious process. 4) Unconsciously competent: The final stage is when you are competent in terms of second nature. You have reached Championship level. Verheijen on which phase he thinks David Moyes is stuck in Coaches like David Moyes are uncon- sciously incompetent because he keeps making the same mistakes over the last ten years, so he is in stage one. He already made the mistakes at Everton and now he goes to a new club and makes the same mistakes. The fact that he is making mis- takes means he is incompetent. But the fact that he keeps making the same mis- takes means he is unconsciously incompe- tent. If he was consciously incompetent, he wouldn’t make the same mistakes ten times. First David Moyes should understand that he is making mistakes – that he is continuously exhausting his players in pre-season, running them into the ground and creating his own injury-crisis. Once he understands that he is consciously in- competent, he should educate himself by looking at how top coaches are doing it in these days. Why is Mourinho not running his players into the ground? Why is Bren- dan Rodgers not running his players into the ground? Why is Martinez at Everton not running his players into the ground? Why is Guardiola not running his players into the ground? Because they are compe- tent! That’s why these coaches don’t have an injury-crisis. They have the occasional injury, of course, but they don’t have a structural injury crisis. So David Moyes should go to consciously incompetent by learning from top coaches and if he keeps applying these new insights, eventually he will become unconsciously competent. Coaching the coaches To discuss this interview with David Kappel, tweet him on @kappilinho our fan page & join a facebook community of Soccer Laduma lovers! Raymond Verheijen introduces the four stages of becoming a champion
DavidKappel:Raymond,youhave been one of Hollands most outspoken
football coaches but what many dont know is that your first class
as an in-structorhadthelikesofRuudGullit, Frank Rijkaard and Ronald
Koeman in it. How did it feel to have these legends
offootballlisteningtoyourphiloso-phy?Raymond Verheijen: It was 1997
and I was 26 at that time, and finally doing what I had dreamed of
working at the highest level in top football. Because I had to stop
playing at a young age, the alternativewastobecomeacoachor an
instructor. DK:Fromthenyourstarstartedto shine when Rijkaard was
appointed as Dutchnationalteamcoach.Youhave been at the last three
World Cups and thelastfourEUROs.Howdidthat come
about?RV:Rijkaardmusthaveseensome-thingduringthecoursewhenIwas
instructingbecause,heaskedmeto becomehisassistant.Onceyouhave
thatmomentum,onceyouhavethat success, coaches and teams ask you to
help them. DK:Willweseeyouinacoaching set-up of this years World
Cup in Bra-zil? RV:Yes,Iamcurrentlyspeakingto
twocountriesandIwilldefinitelybe going to work in Brazil. But I
also have a lot of other responsibilities, the most important one
being the World Expert Meeting in Clarens in the Free State in
June.DK:Youarecontinuouslyclaiming thattheEnglishFAshouldrethink
theirfixturescheduleparticularly over the busy Christmas period
where Englishclubsplayfourgamesin11 days. Whats the problem with
this fix-ture congestion?RV:Wehavedonearesearchstudy on 27 000
games, which is an extremely large sample, and what we have found
is that when teams have two days rest
thentheirresultsaremorenegative thaniftheyhadthreedaysrestor more.
DK:Thatalsoexplainswhyteams struggle in their domestic league after
playing Champions League or Europa League on Wednesday or
Thursday?RV: Yep. When you play Cham-pionsLeagueonWednesday
andyouplaydomesticleagueon SaturdayorEuropaLeagueon
Thursdayanddomesticleague onSunday,youhaveonlytwo
daysrest.Whentheother teamalsoonlyhadtwodays rest, then the home
team has a muchhigherchanceofwin-ningthannormal.This
isunfair.Bothteams are tired, but the home team feel less tired
be-cause they have more supportwhilethe away team also had to
travel. When you have onlytwodaysrest and the opponent has
threeormoredays rest,thenyouhave totally no chance, es-pecially
when playing away.Thiscannotbe consideredFair-Play, because in that
situation itsnotacaseofequal chances. Our research has
shownthatalltheteams who have had three days restormorewillno
longer suffer the negative effects.DK:TheItalianand
FrenchFAhavegiven AC Milan and PSG an ex-tra-dayinbetweentheir
lastleaguematchand thisweeksCham-pions League last-16 round. Is
this a step in the right direction?RV: They have read the research
and some of the FAs have called for me to
explaintheresearchresultsinmore
detail,andbasedonwhatIhaveex-plainedtothem,theyhavechanged their
fixtures. As a result the national
FAsinSpain,Portugal,Greece,Rus-sia,Turkey,amongstothercountries,
are helping their top teams to perform better in Europe, and the
whole coun-try will benefit from
that.DK:Englishclubsarealsowell-knownforgoingonpre-seasontours,
travelling for many hours and miles to widen their fan basis. Is
this the opti-mal preparation for the
players?RV:No,itisonlyoptimalformak-ing money and they are
sacrificing the well-beingoftheirplayerstomake
money.Forexample,inJulyIwasin Australia and Manchester United was
also in Sydney. I watched them train-ing all week. They had just
flown for 30 hours there were nine hours time-dif-ference. Normally
it takes the body one week to recover from that, but one day
afterarrivaltheyimmediatelystarted
totrainforthatweek.Youareover-loading bodies and you are exhausting
yourplayersso,althoughManches-terUnitedmadealotofmoney,they also
contributed to their own downfall which resulted in their very poor
first half of the season. DK: One of these tours was Uniteds trip
to Sydney, which you have linked withRobinvanPersiesinjuryprob-lems
this season. What happened with the Dutch striker?RV: He arrived
even later in Sydney and straight after he arrived he had to
dofitnessworkandisolatedrunning every day. He had flown for 30
hours andthenhehastodorunningexer-cises.Firstlyrunningexerciseshave
nothingtodowithfootballandsec-ondlyonceagainyouareexhausting
yourmostimportantplayer,aplayer who made you champions the year
be-fore. DK:AfterclosingyourManUnited
casestudy,yourecentlystatedthat Theo Walcotts ACL was done poorly
because Arsenals medical team played RussianRoulettewiththewingers
career.Whatwastheirmistakeand could it have been
avoided?RV:Itwasthecoachingstaffthat madethemistake.TheoWalcottwas
outforseveralmonthsand then he started playing again.
Whenyouhaveaplayerout for two months, you first have
toimprovetheirmatch-fit-nessstep-by-step:25,45,
65,90minutes.Thisisphase one and this is what they did
reallywellatArsenal.The secondphaseisagradual build-up for the
second game of the week. In the first phase you train
match-fitness; in the secondphaseyoutrainyour
playerstorecoverquickerin between games: 90, 25, 90, 45, 90, 65,
90, 90 minutes.WhatArsenaldoesinthe second phase is 90, 90, 90, 90,
90minutes.Firsttheybuild upmatch-fitnessto90min-utes, but once a
week only so the body is used to recovering from90minutesinsixdays
andallofasuddenfrom nothing they want you to re-cover in three
days.Thatmeansyourbodyac-cumulatesfatigueandyour nerve-system
becomes slower. Thatmeansthesignalsfrom yourbraintoyourmuscles
arrive later but you need that signal for the muscles around
yourkneetocontract.The brainsendsasignalto your knee then the
mus-cles contract to stabilize theknee.Ifthatsignal
arrivestoolatethen yourkneeisalready loaded while the muscles
aroundyourkneehave not contracted yet so temporarily your knee is
unprotected. That means your upper leg will move in relation to
your lower leg and you will tear your
ACL.DK:CristianoRonaldoandLionel Messi have been averaging more
than 60 games per season for the past couple of years. How can
their bodies keep up with so many games?RV: First of all the tempo
in Spain is lower than the tempo in England. Sec-ondly they play in
teams that have the ball all the time, which means that you have to
run less, and thirdly the qual-ityofexpertsinSpainishigherthan in
England. DK:YouwereinSouthAfricare-centlytoeducateprofessionaland
amateur coaches about your periodiz-ationmodel.WhatdomakeofSouth
African football and coaches?RV: What I hear about the situation in
SA football in general is that it is not good. There is a little
bit chaos. Admin-istrators are corrupt and are not there for the
game, only for themselves. The second thing I hear is that the
players are not always disciplined in terms of training and life
style.Iteachmycoachesintheclasses
thattheonlywaytochangethesitu-ationisbychangingyourself.Ifyou
changeyourselfasacoachandthen 100coacheschange,then1000,then
automatically you will change the
situ-ation.Ittakestimeandpatience,but eventually it will
happen.DK:Surelytheremustbequality inSouthAfricaorhowdidBafana
BafanamanagetobeatWorldCham-pions, Spain?RV: All I can say is that
the Spanish playersplayalotofgamesandthen, all of a sudden, they
have to travel to midweekfriendliesinSouthAmerica
andAfrica.Whatidiotistakingthe Spanish national team in the middle
of the season and travelling all the way to Namibia and South
Africa while they areinthemiddleofLaLigaandthe Champions
League?Ihopeeverybodyunderstandsthis wasnotarealcontestagainstareal
Spanishnationalteamthiswasa contest against a fatigued Spanish
na-tional team.Youbeatatired,andmaybeeven unmotivated, Spanish team
and people thinktheteamisdoingwell.Then when playing in some silly
tournament (Chan),youcannotevenqualifyfor the second round. What
happened re-cently with that tournament is the per-fect proof that
the game against Spain proved nothing.IfSouthAfricabeatSpainatthe
World Cup where both teams are well prepared and motivated, then it
would be a different story. But I think every-body knows thats not
going to happen in the near future.DK:Finally,whatsyouradvicefor
thenextgenerationofcoaches,and wherecanonegetmoreinformation about
your courses? RV:Raiseyourbar.Dontpretend that you are a victim of
South African football. Dont act as if you are a victim of
corruption or a victim of poor player discipline deal with it! Dont
start to changetheworld,startbychanging yourself. You as a coach
should always be on time. You are a role model. You
shouldhaveagoodlifestyle.Andif more coaches start doing it, over
five or ten years, the whole system will even-tually change. It is
just a matter of time.DK: Thanks Raymond, we are look-ing forward
to seeing you at the World ExpertMeetinginBloemfonteinin June.
Raymond Verheijen is one of the worlds leading football
conditioning experts. The Dutchman is the founder of the World
Football Academy and had the likes of Ruud Gullit and Frank
Rijkaard in his first class as a 26-year-old. He worked as
assistant coach at the last three World Cups as well as in the last
four European Championships, and was in-volved in the coaching
set-ups at Fey-enoord (where he coached Kamohelo Mokotjo and Kermit
Erasmus), FC Barcelona, Chelsea and Manchester City. He has been
educating South Af-rican coaches since 2011 and Soccer Ladumas
David Kappel caught up with him during his last visit.
FTBOLFUSSBALL VOETBALFOTBOLLFUTEBOL FOOTBALL CALCIOFUSSBALL
FTBOLFUSSBALL VOETBALFOTBOLLFUTEBOL FOOTBALL CALCIOFUSSBALL24Soccer
Laduma, March 19, 2014
www.soccerladuma.co.za1)Unconsciouslyincompetent:You
areincompetent,butyouarenot aware of it. You think you are fine so
you dont want to go to a coach-ing course, because you dont have a
need to learn and change. 2) Consciously incompetent: You become
aware of your shortcom-ings after looking in the mirror
andblamingyourselfrather than the outside world. That is a painful
stage because you become aware of the fact that
youareasyouthoughtyou were.Asnobodywantstostay
incompetent,youwilldevelopa need to learn and change.That is also
what I try to do with Twitter. With my account I try to
getthefootballworldfromun-consciouslyincompetenttocon-sciously
incompetent. That is why Ikeeponusingtheseincompetent
examplestoshowthewholeworld howmuchincompetencethereis.
Onceeverybodyinfootballunder-stands that there is so much
incompe-tence,theneverybodyisconsciously
incompetent.Thenwecangotothe third stage. 3)Consciously competent:
That is what youbecomewitheducation.People gradually improve but it
takes effort. It is still only a conscious
process.4)Unconsciouslycompetent:Thefinal stage is when you are
competent in terms ofsecondnature.Youhavereached Championship
level.Verheijen on which phase he thinks David Moyes is stuck
inCoacheslikeDavidMoyesareuncon-sciouslyincompetentbecausehekeeps
makingthesamemistakesoverthelast ten years, so he is in stage one.
He already made the mistakes at Everton and now he
goestoanewclubandmakesthesame mistakes. The fact that he is making
mis-takesmeansheisincompetent.Butthe fact that he keeps making the
same mis-takes means he is unconsciously
incompe-tent.Ifhewasconsciouslyincompetent,
hewouldntmakethesamemistakesten
times.FirstDavidMoyesshouldunderstand
thatheismakingmistakesthatheis continuouslyexhaustinghisplayersin
pre-season, running them into the ground
andcreatinghisowninjury-crisis.Once he understands that he is
consciously in-competent, he should educate himself by looking at
how top coaches are doing it in these days. Why is Mourinho not
running his players into the ground? Why is Bren-dan Rodgers not
running his players into theground?WhyisMartinezatEverton
notrunninghisplayersintotheground? Why is Guardiola not running his
players into the ground? Because they are compe-tent! Thats why
these coaches dont have an injury-crisis. They have the occasional
injury,ofcourse,buttheydonthavea
structuralinjurycrisis.SoDavidMoyes
shouldgotoconsciouslyincompetentby learning from top coaches and if
he keeps applying these new insights, eventually he will become
unconsciously competent.Coaching the coachesTo discuss this
interview withDavid Kappel, tweet him on @kappilinho our fan page
& join a facebookcommunity of Soccer Laduma lovers!Raymond
Verheijen introduces the four stages of becoming a champion
