Football coach Raymond Verheijen, also known as Dutch Ray, has worked for more big clubs than you could imagine. Currently doing another side of the job, he’s in Portugal giving lessons about tactical periodisation, and gave a lengthy interview to A Bola.
Verheijen has criticised Jurgen Klopp in the past for the strong intensity in the way Liverpool play, and one of the first quotes in the interview was about the Anfield boss.
“It’s only the finding facts and understanding the principles of periodisation,” Verheijen told A Bola.
“Klopp’s teams have very high rhythms of play, which wears athletes immensely. Liverpool players have more game action than all other teams.
“In October, November, December, all okay, the players dealt well with the high rhythms, also because they did not have European games and had enough recovery.
“But close to Christmas they had to play three or four games in a period of eight or nine days. And the time between games is too short for effective recoveries on the part of Liverpool’s players.
“Thus, due to the high rhythms that Klopp imposes, we could predict that the athletes would not recover to 100%. They accumulated fatigue and became exhausted. And in January they remained exhausted. Liverpool played 19 games in the whole of January 2016 + January 2017. How many do you think they won? Four.”
Although the subject wasn’t exactly the same, A Bola then had to mention José Mourinho, and recalled the Manchester United manager saying that a piano player wouldn’t get better by running around a piano. So they asked Verheijen if it’s a good metaphor for football.
“Jose Mourinho is completely right. The question, however, will not be whether I want to train with the ball or not. The question is: what do I want to improve? So, by definition of football, I want to improve players in contact with the ball.
“I think people get into this discussion in the wrong way. It’s not about having or not having a ball in training. We want to improve the players, their actions and the style of the team and, thus, we must have ball.”
Dutch Ray was asked to compare several leagues, and A Bola chose his quote saying ‘In England, the football quality is relatively poor’ to make their headline. That’s because he criticised Premier League teams and the way they work their defence.
“In England everyone likes high rhythms during a game. But the quality is relatively poor. There are many ball losses and many long balls. Another case: when they want to win the English league, they want to have very tall central defences because they have to play against very tall and strong attackers, like the ones from Stoke City, West Bromwich or Hull City, for example. However, when these very defensive teams play against the rest of Europe they have a problem.
“In the rest of Europe the central defenders know how to play football. When Arsenal are going to play Bayern, they do not need to play with such a tall defence. But they do. And what happens? Bayern do what they want with defences that, footballingly, are very poor.”
