Leo Beenhakker, a globe-trotting soccer coach who managed his native Netherlands during the 1990 World Cup, won three Spanish League titles with Real Madrid in the 1980s and, perhaps most impressively and improbably, guided Trinidad and Tobago to the 2006 World Cup as the smallest nation at the time ever to compete in soccer’s global championship, died on April 10. He was 82.
His death was announced by the Dutch soccer federation and by Ajax, the powerful Amsterdam club that Beenhakker coached to two Dutch League titles. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where he died.
His own playing career, as a winger, did not carry him beyond the amateur level. But neither did it prevent him from achieving national and international success as a coach.
In that role, Beenhakker displayed wit and charm as well as the ability to engage with and inspire his players and to immerse himself in various cultures in the soccer diaspora. One of his accomplishments was to coach Poland to its first appearance in the European championships, in 2008.
He dismissed the idea that to coach at a high level, one needed to have played at a high level. “You can be a very good milkman,” he once said, “without having ever been a cow.”
Beenhakker never possessed the authority or standing of Johan Cruyff, who captained the Netherlands to second place at the 1974
He dismissed the idea that to coach at a high level, one needed to have played at a high level. “You can be a very good milkman,” he once said, “without having ever been a cow.”
Beenhakker never possessed the authority or standing of Johan Cruyff, who captained the Netherlands to second place at the 1974 World Cup and is considered one of the greatest players of all time. Nor did he have the tactical skill of Guus Hiddink, who in 1988 coached PSV Eindhoven to both the Dutch League title and the European Cup, the forerunner of the European Champions League title.
But Beenhakker was of their generation, and as a manager he embraced the Dutch philosophy known as total football, which revolutionized soccer in the 1970s with its style of fluid movement and interchanging positions.