I used to give the players the hairdryer every time
...but Reading boss Stam is learning fast before £200m final
IT WAS less than a year ago when Euro 2016 was under way and the fall-out from England’s draw with Russia drowned out the news that Jaap Stam had been announced as manager of Reading.
It fell below the radar and looked a curious move. Stam was enjoying life as Ajax’s B-team manager and Reading had finished 17th in the Championship. It seemed an unglamorous destination for a former Manchester United treble winner.
‘There is always a risk when you go somewhere,’ he says. ‘And if you start thinking, “What happens if it’s not succeeding or not working out, what then? Will it ruin my name?” — sometimes you just have to go in and work hard and believe in yourself and eventually people can see what you do.’
What they have been able to do, with £2million of net spending, a few additions but a broadly similar squad to the season before, is to embrace a Dutch style of passing football which puts them within one game of the Premier League, tomorrow at Wembley, a game worth at least £200m over the next four years.
Stam (below) dismisses the talk of cash being a motivation. He wants his team to focus on performance; he wants to manage in the Premier League and, in case he has not already done so, he wants to impress new owners, Chinese brother and sister Dai Yongge and Dai Xiu Li.
Stam has worked for this moment in the sun at Wembley. He has never completed a full game there — he came on as a substitute in the 1999 FA Cup final and played the first half of the 1999 Community Shield.
But a prestigious playing career at clubs such as PSV Eindhoven, Manchester United, Lazio, AC Milan and Ajax might have tempted him to start somewhere bigger, with perhaps more chance of success straightaway.
Instead he has climbed the coaching ladder slowly, starting out with his first professional team as a player, FC Zwolle, where he initially went in a couple of days a week to help out. Then he worked as a defensive coach at Ajax, before taking charge of what is known as Jong Ajax, their development team. ‘Sometimes I read that a lot of big players want to wait for the right occasion to coach a big team because it makes it easier,’ he says. ‘But going from being a player never standing in front of a group and doing that straightaway is totally different. You need to know yourself. It’s totally different being a player and being a manager.
‘You need to find your own persona being a manager. How do I need to talk to the group? How do I need to approach the group? How do I tell the group certain things so they can come better as a team or as individuals? You need to learn.
‘When I started coaching and working with young players and you tell certain players to do things and they didn’t do it, I was becoming very angry. And you’re thinking to yourself, “I can’t believe they’re not seeing that. I can’t believe they’re not doing it”. So you give them a b ******** g every time.
‘But you can’t expect players, young players, to see straight away the things that you see on the pitch. As a player you had time to improve yourself as well and do it over time and years. Everybody needs time and it’s the same with the manager. You might have played at a certain level and want to manage at that level, too. You can try to do it but there are not many that can. Even in Holland some players do that but you can see they struggled and find it very hard.’
He also has a plethora of managers from whom he has learnt. Sir Alex Ferguson ditched him at United but admits it was one of his major errors. But Stam also played for Guus Hiddink, Roberto Mancini and Carlo Ancelotti among others.
‘I had four managers who were very important for me,’ he says. ‘Sir Alex was good as a manager in what he did for the club, for the team, in bringing players in, players of the right ability, in building a team. He was good as a manager as well in telling the players and the team what to do at certain times, even sometimes when it was very hard for us to get a result.
‘He was one of the managers I had that you can take something from. I’m not saying to do the same things but how he was working with the team, building a team, looking at the right players, not looking at names but looking at the players position-wise, the ability of players and what he needs to improve.’
Then there was the infamous Ferguson hairdryer from which he also learnt. ‘Sometimes you need to get the players sharp because you may think they are not bringing what they should be to the team. To wake them up, to be very much in their face and aggressive at times can work because it maybe gives them a feeling, “OK, I’m back”.’
Stam is asked if he uses it and smiles. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘But not as much as Sir Alex did!’
Hiddink and Dick Advocaat from Feyenoord are also mentioned. ‘I had loads of managers and I also had managers who people over here think is a great manager — but I think is a very bad manager.’
He declines to name names but adds: ‘Are you a good manager because you’re working with very good players and you win the league, or are you a good manager when you’re working with players who are maybe not the best players in the league but you can bring them to a certain level?
‘You can learn from them [bad managers] as well. I didn’t like that when I played for him. I’m not going to use that because you’ve seen and experienced it.’
If he can take Reading into the Premier League, he will have taken a step to being a good manager.