It’s just HORRIBLE
RUUD GULLIT on state of old club Chelsea, the root of United’s problems and why he’d like less Taylor Swift in Mail Sport!
Occasionally, Ruud Gullit feels the beat of time on his back these days and the need to seize life’s every moment.
‘i’ll spend half an hour in the gym and think, “That was half an hour i no longer have left”,’ he relates, a huge grin playing on his face as always.
He says he remembers the first single he bought — Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, picked up from a record shop in surinam, from where his father emigrated to the netherlands — and can’t quite feel the same about Taylor swift whenever she, a significant new presence in nFl, gravitates into Mail Sport’s digital realm.
‘i have a subscription. i read the Daily Mail every day. The only thing i didn’t understand is what Taylor swift has to do with the sports pages?’ he asks. ‘can you just put it where it belongs and i can read my sport?!’
nFl has experienced a phenomenon it is calling The swift Effect since the singer started dating Kansas city chiefs tight end Travis Kelce last year and became a presence at games, including February’s super Bowl. There has been a 20 per cent increase in sponsorship for the sport since she has been a presence on its scene.
it’s a new world. But as that world turns and changes, some fundamentals remain the same — like how to build a successful chelsea team, which Gullit had done before he was sacked by the club’s owner, Ken Bates, with the team second in the Premier league in February 1998.
The club have splashed out a billion pounds under the current owners and yet the side he saw lose in saturday’s Fa cup semifinal blew a great chance to beat Manchester city.
‘Horrible,’ the 61-year-old tells Mail Sport of the way his old club have unspooled in the past two seasons. ‘ it’s almost impossible to buy so many players and make a team of them. and there’s a lack of quality for the money they spent. you need to see more.
‘The fans are p***** off and i can understand, because if there was any chance for chelsea to win against city this was it. city were knackered. What i saw did not make me happy.
‘chelsea didn’t lose to city because they missed chances. no. They just didn’t play well. i was amazed. That’s the biggest frustration for the fans. They see good coaches and teams playing
unbelievable football. They want that kind of football. They made a huge mistake in buying so many players at once.’
Mauricio Pochettino is not without blame, he says. ‘The manager always has to take responsibility. When you take the job you know that reality. i can’t blame him entirely but he’s responsible because he took the job. i don’t know how long it’s going to take to turn it around.’
should Pochettino be manager next season? ‘i think he needs to be.’ But will he be? ‘ in chelsea you never know!’
The club have had 19 managers in the 26 years since Gullit was sacked and he could be forgiven for a little bitterness, observing the dire levels of football that have not cost Pochettino his job, when Bates sacked him the year after he had guided chelsea to the Fa cup. it was their first trophy in 27 years and made Gullit the first black manager to win a major British trophy.
There are no regrets that he didn’t see the current levels of cash, insists Gullit, a laureus ambassador, before the annual awards event which highlights how the organisation uses sport to help those who are less
fortunate. ‘it’s not easy to buy good players,’ he says. ‘it’s the most difficult thing there is, although on paper you think it’s a good decision you’ve made.
‘i think i bought a good team. i bought the right players and mingled them with the English players. For me, Dennis Wise was very, very important. steve clarke was very important to me in that team. Mark Hughes — very, very important. so the (British) players had a huge impact. Graeme le saux also.
‘i had those good players that i mingled with foreign players and they learned from the experience of the Europeans and became better. Even Dennis — he was a team player. nobody thought it could happen and i told him. He was a national team player!’
This kind of logic seems so relevant to how chelsea may approach things today, though if there’s any consolation it is that the pressure cooker is even hotter at Manchester United.
Two of Gullit’s compatriots — Erik ten Hag and louis van Gaal — have failed to drag United out of the mire of the past decade.
‘i’m not disappointed by that,’ he says. ‘i knew it was going to be a hard job. Jose Mourinho
didn’t do it. come on! They had good coaches there, no? But the players they got are not the players city, liverpool or arsenal would take. They were players who were already over-season.
‘casemiro — a bit over-season. Jonny Evans, over- seasoned. The bad thing was that lisandro Martinez was injured because he HoW was one of the best players.’
can that club be sorted out? ‘i’m not in charge!’ Gullit says. ‘it’s a very difficult one because they are in the spotlight all of the time. you have scholes, Ferdinand, neville, every day talking about them. Every day! and every time they are on television, everything is quoted.
‘That is hard. you want the best for the club but if you talk about them all the time — always your eyes are on it.
‘if i see the Daily Mail every day the first five stories are always about Manchester United! Five, six! it’s what it is.’
Gullit is seeing what he calls a ‘new England’ in the players his one-time home country is now developing. Phil Foden, Bukayo saka and cole Palmer most excite him. They have taken the team to a very different level of aspiration from in 1988, when Gullit starred for the Dutch in the 3-1 win at the Euros which eliminated Bobby Robson’s team at the group stage.
‘in the old days it was all about digging in and character and everything,’ he says. ‘Players like Glenn Hoddle were too early for English football. you now have technical players all of a sudden; smaller players who have the ability to play.
‘That’s the development from England with the foreigners who came in. sergio aguero! small striker! in my days no way! you had all Dion Dublins everywhere! Big guys at the back. it’s a different kind of England.’
yet it is France and hosts Germany that he views as favourites for this summer.
‘i understand the view that England are favourites but it’s unbelievable that all the English clubs are almost out of Europe, no? a couple of them only in the Europa conference league. (Just one, aston Villa, in fact.) That’s not where you want to play, eh? For the English to be out of the champions league is an unbelievable shock.’
The summer awaits. The anticipation of the tournament is palpable, rooting Gullit in one of the aspects of life that fundamentally stays the same.
‘The velocity of the game might have changed but the beautiful technical demands are exactly the same,’ he says, despatching this correspondent to do something about those Taylor swift articles. ‘no more of those on your pages, oK?!’