Foppe de Haan and Robert Maaskant think that Wesley Sneijder has made the right decision to stop the trainer training. In the General Newspaper let the two (former) coaches know that they understand the choice well on the one hand, but there are also critical voices. “If Sneijder wants to stay in football, he might be better off becoming an agent or technical manager,” said De Haan. “Then he doesn’t need a piece of paper.”
Sneijder made Wednesday evening during the preview of the Champions League match between Borussia Dortmund and Ajax (1-3) RLT 7 known not to continue with the trainer course. As the main reason, the 37-year-old born Utrechter told presenter Humberto Tan that he was ‘not on a par with the KNVB’. “I see myself much more as a manager than a real field trainer,” said Sneijder. “My wish was actually that I could get a bit of customization. But that did not fit the image of the KNVB.”
De Haan thinks that Sneijder has made a wise decision by stopping. “I don’t know Wesley very well,” admits the former coach of sc Heerenveen. “But he doesn’t seem like a guy who will sit behind a computer to carry out theoretical assignments. And if you don’t have that feeling, it’s better that you end the training. Then you end up stranded as a trainer. .”
De Haan, who became European champion in his own country with the Dutch Juniors in 2007, also says from his own experience that you do not just learn the trade. “I remember when I was in my early forties at Heerenveen I thought I understood it all as a trainer.” The then chairman Riemer van der Velde thought differently. “I can still hear him say it: ‘You only had it when you were sixty mastered a little bit, Foppe’. And so it is. There is a lot involved,” said the retired trainer. De Haan also knows that ‘time never stands still in top sport’. “You have to keep developing, you have to keep reading, keep learning.” De Haan thinks that ‘a lot of guys find that difficult’ and that Sneijder ‘is probably one of them’.
Maaskant says in a comment that ‘Wesley is a very nice guy’, but the clubless trainer also believes that ‘great football players in particular need a good training course’. “Being a world-class player as a player is really different from explaining the basic principles of kinematics to a selection as a trainer,” says Maaskant. “’Yes, but I see myself more as a manager’, I hear Wesley shout. Then I think: shouldn’t such a manager master the profession of communication? Shouldn’t such a manager have knowledge of the current generations X, Y and Z, who really think differently from the boys of his time?”
Maaskant, who worked at VVV Venlo until November 2019 and was active as a trainer in Poland, Belarus and the United States, among other places, says he understands that ‘Wesley does not feel like starting at an amateur club’. “But for someone with his status, an internship at Real Madrid must also be arranged? What is certain: being a trainer is a profession that you have to learn,” concludes Maaskant.