In the exclusive serial "Twenty Years of Sports Adventures", Zhu Xiaodong, founder of Euron Sports, depicts the turbulent twenty years from Japan's J League, the creation of the A3 League, and the assistance in hosting the Women's World Cup.
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49.
"At Ajax, our TIPS (Know-How) for selecting and training players can be abbreviated to the four letters OF TIPS."
Michael van Praag, then president of the Dutch club Ajax, started his lecture with a pun when he was invited to Japan in late 2000 to teach the J-League club president class.
Standing beneath the pulpit as a translator was Toshi, the nephew of Junji Ogura, who had just returned to Japan from studying sports management in the United States.
At that time, even in Japan, where the sports industry was ahead of China and there were often companies that invested heavily in sponsoring the World Cup Olympic Games, sports management was still a profession that basically could not find a job after graduation.
Probably because he was idle anyway, Toshi was recommended by the "virtuous and not shy away from relatives" to do a few days of translation in the club president training class. However, the first sentence of the person came up and threw a pun, making him a little confused, and it was difficult to explain this meme to the audience below.
The Chair went on to say, "T.I.P.S. of Ajax represents 4 different talents. 'T' refers to Technic (technology), that is, the technical level of the player; 'I' is Insight ( insight) ( can be said to be the player's ball quotient, can also be said to be their vision; 'P' is personality ( personality) refers to a player's personality charm, team spirit and the quality of continuous effort; 'S' is Speed (speed), that is, running fast or not. ”
When I first met Chairman Van Prag, he was in his early 50s with short gray hair, well-behaved, quiet looking, and spoke majestically. When his "neighbor", the Dutchman Eduardo, introduced him to me, he only mentioned that he was an "appliance shop owner" who worked part-time as president of the Ajax Club.
It wasn't until I did my background checks that Ajax, one of the world's most amazing football clubs in Amsterdam, was largely accomplished under the leadership of the Van Prag family.
From 1964 to 1978 and from 1989 to 2003, the Van Prager father and son each reigned for fourteen years, for a total of twenty-eight years as club president.
Discovered by the elder Van Prag, the future superstar of football, the "flying Dutchman" Cruyff, then left Spain to establish the La Masia and Tiki-taka dynasty of Barcelona on the basis of Ajax's youth training philosophy, achieving a hegemony, while his son Michael led the "Ice Prince" Bergkamp to make the club another golden age of the best performance in history after his father.
Ajax, led by the Van Prag family, shines across the globe.
The essence of the Ajax youth training system, which is regarded as a gem in world football, is the "TIPS" that Van Prager told everyone in class.
"TIPS are the criteria we must consider when selecting adult players, as well as the order of importance in the selection of materials, i.e. the most important thing in technology (T), the ball quotient or vision (I) second, the personality (P) again, and the speed (S)."
The nephew seemed to have misled the order of "personality" and "speed" during the translation process, and after being corrected by the club manager from the Nagoya Whale Eight Team, he bowed awkwardly to everyone, took out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat on his forehead, and then nervously looked at the horse sauce sitting in the front row below to listen to the lesson together.
Although the translation work was not bad, he probably felt that the pressure of not being able to embarrass his uncle, who was vice president of the Japan Football Association, made him look a little bit of aura and not enough.
"I'm just talking about the order in which the adult players are judged, and what follows is the focus of the whole TIPS."
Michael smiled and waited for these episodes to end, and continued, "When we look for young players, we use the reverse order as a criterion: that is, first look at whether there is speed, because the speed is most affected by nature, and the space for improvement is limited; then see if the player has a strong personality and perseverance, enough to support his continuous growth, breaking through the ordinary to reach excellence; ball quotient, can be formed, but a player's overall view, mastering the rhythm of the game, needs to be cultivated as soon as possible; technology, you and I know, Although it is important, as long as the training time is enough, at a later age, even you and me, and him, should be able to practice well. ”
Not sure if it was to encourage his translation or to enliven the atmosphere, Van Prag said "he" and pointed to Toshi, who was buried in his notes.
After hearing everyone's laughter, the nephew looked up blankly, as if he did not want to understand who this third person referred to, and directly translated, "You and I, as well as him, should be able to practice well", which caused a burst of laughter.
When asked by the trainees about his experience in managing a football club as president, Van Prag said without hesitation, "Determine the boundaries of responsibility" and motioned for Toshi to translate the sentence first. This spaced approach allows speakers to have more time to think than simultaneous interpretation.
"Don't talk to the players about the game or point fingers at the coach's staff. As a club president, all you have to do is set goals, choose the right head coach and club general manager. ”
I was deeply impressed by his words. After that, whenever I see Chinese investors, whether at home or abroad, after obtaining the management rights of the football club, they become the head coach to instruct the players to play, or even incarnate as players to play games, Van Prager's words will appear.
Perhaps as in every industry, the truly great leaders are not the ones who put their time and energy into considering the specifics of each business, but the ability to motivate and master the people who work flawlessly in every field. In football, Michael Van Prag should be one of those leaders.
He retired from the club in 2003 and has been president of the Dutch Football Federation since 2008 and became vice-president of UEFA since 2015.
The dinner was hosted by Saburo Kawabuchi to Van Prag. It was also the first meeting between the two football leaders who would later become presidents of their respective national football associations.
"Dear Chairman Kawabuchi, as you probably know, I am one of the initiators of the G-14."
Led by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and later joined by Media Tycos such as Murdoch, the "G-14 European Football Clubs Grouping" football club alliance was officially established in Brussels in September 2000.
The idea of a "European Premier League" across the European Union is impacting the traditional European football scene. As with SoftBank's recent proposal by Son to "dedicate" FIFA $10 billion and rebuild the Club World Cup, it was a big deal in football at the time.
Once their plan is successful, the G-14, which integrates the resources of Europe's top football clubs, will undoubtedly capture the attention of almost all football fans and gain unparalleled operating resources, such as huge TV rights and advertising sponsorship revenue.
Many other European clubs, on the other hand, can only compete for what little means of production are left, and are destined to fall into the food chain of the G-14 league for a long time, squeezed and devoured at any time. In order to show the protection of the interests of the majority of Member States, UEFA naturally made a strong opposition.
It was a class struggle waged by a small number of European aristocratic football clubs for dominance, and Ajax was among them.
Seeing that Saburo Kawabuchi just nodded faintly, Michael continued, "In Europe, the Netherlands is a country with a small population and a small domestic market. If Ajax wants to remain top-notch competitive, it needs more revenue, which means that the Dutch single market will not be able to continue to support our growth, and the formation of multinational regional leagues is our only way out. ”
G-14 was later disbanded in 2008 due to a multi-pronged crackdown by international football politicians, but they also forced UEFA to make a lot of concessions.
One of the most commendable is that since 2008, the UEFA national team has had to pay a huge fee to the club when it summons players to participate in international competitions, opening a new chapter in the history of professional football.
However, the undead of G-14 have not actually disappeared. At the same time as it was dissolved, a new club federation was formed in Europe: The European Club Association (ECA).
The biggest difference from its predecessor, the G-14, is that the ECA has 232 club members, this time representing all the general public, and UEFA has had to give it official recognition.
From that time on, a new class struggle in the European clubs also began.
Back in late 2000, in the Far East, a G-14-like football league that spanned China, Japan, and South Korea was also beginning to be brought up by some people and institutions.
Text: Zhu Xiaodong