Don Leo can revive dead club

Wednesday 28 January 2009

Feyenoord are still trying to find money and first want to sign Mario Been, but waiting for Leo Beenhakker has started.

Again.

Somewhere in a deskdrawer of senior manager Fred Blankemeijer there should be a stack of pictures of Leo Beenhakker.

They are not faded as they were printed in May 2007, especially for collectors of autographs.

On the color photos Beenhakker wears a Feyenoord cap and he looks into the camera with a stout face.

Don Leo never had time to actually sign them, because his last term in De Kuip lasted exactly 7 days - as a living lifejacket.

"Just call me Adje Interim (Clive Caretaker)", he said in an attempt to guide Feyenoord through the playoffs, at the end of the disastrous season with Erwin Koeman.

He didn't succeed but it were 7 great days.

Beenhakker shook his head a lot, ran his hands through his hair, threw around his one-liners and after a 1-1 draw against Groningen he had to conclude that it hadn't been enough.

"Of course I feel bad about the result but apart from that I had a great time."

In a way looking back doesn't suit Beenhakker.

"One shouldn't live in the past," he says.

The Rotterdammer prefers to look ahead.

That's how he talks between a huff and a puff.

It would be too easy to throw his own one-liners at him, about last chapters and final tricks.

"I shall never return to Feyenoord he said in April 2000."

Only 9 years later everyone seems to think it's totally normal that he does return to De Kuip.

Like no other he is capable of reviving a terminal club, thanks to his unique ability to communicate.

Beenhakker has often been portrayed as an actor, an actor in his own play.

But what is much more important is that everyone seems to believe him time after time, especially when there are no straws left to cling to.

In an interview with Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant last year he spoke about the art of survival.

Man, or at lest Beenhakker himself; has the ability to suppress bad experiences - without forgetting them.

"Let me compare it to a man's time in the army. Of the 24 months I served 80% was not enjoyable, but when yo talk about it with your mates afterwards it seems nothing but fun."

His credibility is not tenable everywhere, but it can be recycled endlessly, it seems.

The current Board of Feyenoord talks about profiles and processes and says not to rush into any decisions, but even the coffee lady can see that there is only one short term option for Feyenoord: Beenhakker.

Besides: he is the man who can sort out the organizational mess as Director of Football, like he did at Ajax between 2000 and 2003.

That club then was also in a complicated crisis, but in-between showing his infallible people management skills he also landed a handful of diamonds with Maxwell, Ibrahimovic, Trabelsi and Mido.

Seldom has the Ajax scouting achieved a greater success.

His dances with the club from Amsterdam have been forgiven in Rotterdam, at least by those not gone mad.

Beenhakker gets away with everything like a Houdini of words.

In February 2000 an enraged Jon Dahl Tomasson gave him the finger after he had scored against Lazio Roma in the Champions League.

Then it was a symbol of the troubled relationship of the coach and his players, less than a year after the league title in 1999.

When Beenhakker walks back into De Kuip in a few weeks time Tomasson is most likely the first player to get a hug, or at least an arm around his shoulder.

He will regularly step into the office of the old, friendly giant Fred Blankemeijer, or hang out with Carlo de Leeuw in the material shed.

As soon as Beenhakker addresses the press fast and eloquently no one shall say that Feyenoord lack a figurehead.

And perhaps he even wants to take care of the new year speech instead of chairman Eric Gudde.

His contract with the Polish FA is the biggest obstacle.

In Warsaw he constantly walks the thinnest line between love and hate; long adored by the press and the audience but also regularly at war wit officials and Directors.

He was elected Man f the Year in Poland in 2007 so an imminent departure is a sensitive matter.

But it's all up to Beenhakker himself, a man who has always determined his own course.

When Feyenoord called upon him in 1997 he paid off his own contract as Director of Football at Vitesse Arnhem.

Because Feyenoord, said the workman's son from Charlois, was his definitive dream.

"An ending like a boys' book," Beenhakker said.

And everyone believed him.