Manchester (AFP)
Eric Ten Hag has never escaped the challenge, but the biggest task in the Dutch coach’s career will be to restore prestige to Manchester United after accepting supervision of the injured club, starting next season.
Ten Hag, 52, will leave Ajax Amsterdam, after he returned to the Dutch team its pride in the Champions League, and dominated locally during the four years he spent at the head of his technical staff.
A similar transformation of the club with the most titles in the Premier League after nearly a decade of stagnation would be like a mountain hard to climb.
His career as a player was not remarkable, as the best teams he played with were Twente “in three periods”, and he crowned with him his only title in 2001 when he won the Dutch Cup as captain.
Twente was also where he launched his coaching career when working alongside Manchester United assistant coach and former England coach Steve McClaren.
In an interview with The Athletic, the Englishman said about his experience with Ten Hag, “I thought I knew football, but when I tested it, I realized that I don’t know anything.”
He continued, “I have to sit up in the stands to see how things are going in the match, but he can stand on the touch line and see it. He always knew the answer to everything, how to change the form and positions.”
In his first coaching assignment in 2012, Ten Hag led the Go Ahead Eagles to the elite league in the Netherlands.
But instead of testing himself in the top flight, he made the bold decision to oversee Bayern Munich’s reserve team in the German fourth division.
His two years in Munich coincided with Pep Guardiola’s coaching period for the Bavarian giants, with Ten Hag keen to gain as much knowledge and experience as possible from the current Manchester City coach and the culture of working with a giant European club.
“During my time at Bayern Munich, I saw how things were going at a big club,” said the bald Dutchman, recalling that time in Germany. “Every detail is important in the analysis, the media, people in general, they always find something. If all goes well, except for one mistake, people highlight it.”
That level of scrutiny is what he will need and get used to at a club that has made so many mistakes in recent years.
Despite being one of the richest football clubs in the world, with its players among the highest wages, United have not won any title for five years, specifically the European League “European League” in 2017.
With the exception of unexpected results for him and his competitors, he will not qualify for the Champions League next season.
Among the five names that have reached the head of the technical staff at Old Trafford since the departure of the legendary Scottish coach Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, the other Dutchman Louis van Gaal and Jose Mourinho.
Ten Hag will have to succeed, as they failed to face a group of the best coaches in the world in the English Premier League, led by Guardiola, Germany’s Jurgen Klopp, Thomas Tuchel and Italy’s Antonio Conte.
But he may also be the right man at the right time to bring back a long-awaited culture at United.
The return of Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo last August was supposed to help a star-studded team claim the title this season, but they are 23 points away from neighbors leaders City.
After a fruitful stint in the Netherlands with Utrecht FC, Ten Hag has maintained Ajax’s tradition of using the club’s academy as a sustainable model for success.
Francke de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt, Donny van de Beek (current United player on loan to Everton) and Moroccan Hakim Ziyech were among the team that reached the semi-finals of the Champions League in 2019 before they parted ways and were sold to major European clubs.
This season, the team won all its six matches in the group stage of the Champions League and achieved great victories against Borussia Dortmund (4-0) and Sporting Portugal (5-1), before being eliminated from the final price against Benfica.
The great teams at United have been built under Ferguson with a mixture of academy and player development at the Scotsman’s disposal.
Ten Hag must regain that lost trait as a stepping stone on a long road back to the challenge for the major titles, and restore the prestige of the Red Devils, both domestically and continentally.
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