The leading duo shall try with all their might to hang on to their best players while at the same time trying to land new players that will mean new quality.

Van Gaal says that never has a year gone by in which he has not made serious changes to his sides.

Of the team that he inherited from his predecessor Co Adriaanse only Stijn Schaars and Kew Jaliens are still there.

If all top players stay the necessity to make big changes will be less urgent.

Mounir El Hamdaoui, Moussa Dembélé and Demy de Zeeuw are the most wanted player of the newly crowned champions, but AZ think they have three trumps with which they can hold on to the trio.

AZ are playing in the Champions League next season, Louis van Gaal will stay on as coach for another year and most foreign clubs will be scared off by the massive transfer fees AZ ask for these players.

The combined transfer fees of El Hamdaoui, Dembélé and De Zeeuw is estimated at 45 million euro.

All three have long lasting contract which has them earn more each year they stay.

AZ are a nice club and chairman Dirk Scheringa is most charming on TV, but at the negotiating table is rock hard, so say two independent player agents.

"Scheringa is a killer, in the interests of his club. No one leaves if he doesn't agree."

According to those agents Scheringa will not let his top players go for less than 15 million.

The market value of Afonso Alves has last year set the tone for that.

What is striking is that the interest for El Hamdaoui and his 22 goals is mainly from Germany and Southern Europe and not from England.

His past at Tottenham Hotspur, where he didn't get a single minute in the first team, is a hindrance for that.

But it's exactly the English teams who can cough up the transfer fees with their towering revenue from TV contracts (40 million euro per club per season).

Dembélé, like El Hamdaoui, has developed extremely well under Louis van Gaal.

Yet the scouts of the Big Four in the Premier League feel he doesn't score enough and he is too attached to the ball to put 16 million on the table.

For De Zeeuw, eyed by German top sides and English sub-top sides, departure might be most imminent.

According to Joop Alberda, coach of the volleyball team that won gold at the 1996 Olympics, this summer will be one of the most interesting ones for AZ: "When the players now stick together and say: let's stay for one more year, AZ might be the surprise package of next year's Champions League."

As an example he mentions the decision of Ron Zwerver made when he was a top volleyball player: "Ron just said: I'll put my big salary on hold for a year, as I sense we are about to do something very special. If the players of AZ are smart they do the same thing. They are feeling well, they are part of a great organization and with Van Gaal as a coach they can only get better."

Whoever is aiming to gain more money now and leaves for a foreign club is heading towards difficult times.

"Because young talents need at least a year to get settled in at a big club. Just look at what happened to Royston Drenthe. So it's better for the AZ players if they all stay on one more year. And don't say they'll stay 'in principle', but say: I stay!"

For Dutch football it's a gift that AZ have one the league.

It's a painful moment for the Big Three, because it show that despite big budgets they have made mistakes.

Alberda: "I've seen it over the past 15 years that two them keep making a mess of it."

PSV was most stable over the last five seasons because in Eindhoven they were able to keep the core of the team intact.

For AZ it's crucial they do the same, with the core being formed by Romero, Jaliens, Schaars, De Zeeuw and El Hamdaoui.

Alberda: "Because those are the players who have to think three-dimensionally. They have to operate forward, backward and sideways. In management there is such a core as well. Marcel Brands, Louis van Gaal, Toon Gerbrands and captain Stijn Schaars. The rest don't talk. The core of AZ is top class.''

Fixtures - Results - Table - Topscorers

"The intellectualisation
of football has
always foundered
on a simple problem-
-the players. Doing
all your most
rewarding thinking
with your feet seems
to dull the philo-
sophical impulse.
Unless, of course,
you are Dutch.
According to legend,
Europeans played
a moronic, muscular
version of the world's
game, until Holland
proclaimed its vision
of total football in the
1974 World Cup,
and enlightenment
dawned."

From:
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football