Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag has impressed in the Old Trafford dugout this season and video footage of the Dutchman, then aged 13, has proven he was always destined for top-level management.
Despite his tender years, Ten Hag was not shy in giving coaching advice to football icon Johan Cruyff. Ten Hag, who was then a youth-team player at FC Twente, was part of a panel of teenagers afforded the opportunity to speak to the Ajax and Barcelona legend on Dutch TV show Cruyff & co .
Ten Hag was appointed United boss last year to continue a coaching career which had already spanned a decade, and was most famed for his success at Ajax. Now aged 52, Ten Hag won three Eredivisie titles with the Amsterdam giants and guiding them to the Champions League final four in 2019.
In the mid-80s, Ten Hag and his fellow academy prospects at Twente were afforded the chance to learn some valuable lessons from the great mind of Cruyff – but Ten Hag was so self-confident in his own understanding of coaching, he was not shy in stepping up.
The legendary star, who at the time was nearing the end of his playing career as he moved into management, said to the young Ten Hag: “But it happens a lot, right, that a trainer yells. Or does that not happen with you guys?”
Ten Hag explained to Cruyff: “I think that, especially with youngsters, you have to be careful not to shout too much because that can break a player…ah that football means nothing to me. That I am quitting.
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“With higher level teams such as Ajax’s first team or Twente’s first team, it does not matter, a coach may say something because those lads are training more often during the week and if they keep on making the same mistake over and over again, then I think something may well have to be said about that.”
That analysis led Cruyff to pose the question: “So, you are saying that there is a difference between youth football and professional football?” To which Ten Hag promptly replied: “Yes.”
The iconic Cruyff is well-established as one of the greatest footballers, and football thinkers, of all time – providing the blue print for the ‘Total Football’ style that shapes Dutch football and particularly Ajax and Barcelona to this day. He passed away, aged 68, in 2016.
