Rijkaard, the quiet man is 60 years old

Franklin Edmund Rijkaard (Amsterdam, 1962) always saw football as easy. For this reason, the official name is still striking, so long that it does not correspond to its tendency to save; to save races based on intelligence when he was a soccer player, to save matches when he was a coach, to save problems caused by others. Perhaps because of that natural disposition toward frugality, because of economy of effort, he was known to all as Frank, Frank Rijkaard. Today, September 30, he is 60 years old.

Media from Italy and the Netherlands celebrated the anniversary, recalling his class as a footballer at the time. In these parts it costs more, though Rijkaard he does not deserve to fall into a little oblivion, especially for Barcelona fans, no matter how great his European Cup as culé coach between the two legends of the club, Johan Cruyff Y Pep Guardiola.

Rijkaard He is also a soccer legend. He has been a quiet man for this sport. Since every rule has an exception, he broke that model of behavior one day and did it like an animal, when in the round of 16 of the 1990 World Cup he spat. rudi voller in the match between the Netherlands and Germany. It is difficult to remember this event, it is clear proof that the rest of his biography is no longer obscure.

As a player, he is a legend who belongs to the second golden generation of Dutch football, the one that in the 1980s replaced the one he led. Cruyff a few years before. Son of Surinamese footballer Herman Harry Rijkaard, Frank He grew up at Ajax before becoming a benchmark for one of the most memorable teams in history for the mark he left on football, with Sacchi Arrigo on the bench and his compatriots Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten as figures on the pitch of the two-time European champion Milan who changed the tactics of his game and left the great Madrid of Quinta del Buitre without orejona. Elegant and always well positioned, he was perhaps the first defensive midfielder to bring football into the contemporary era at the end of the 1980s. That batch, with the help of other stars like ronald koeman, won Euro 1988 for the Netherlands when it was still called the Netherlands. He had a brief previous stint at clubs that, however, also remember his image as a good midfielder, such as Sporting Lisbon and the Royal Saragossa. His resume with boots ended where it began, the Ajaxwhere he enjoyed another moment in history directing that team on the pitch that, included louis van gaal as a coach, he won the fourth European Cup for the team from Amsterdam in 1995.

If as a footballer this is a kind of extension on the pitch of the great coaches he has had in his career –Cruyff, Sacchi, Van Gaal, Hiddink– It is not difficult to imagine him in command of a bank. A big prize soon fell to him, the ‘oranje’ team, where he reached the semi-final of Euro 2000. Interestingly, then in 2001 he managed the modest Sparta of Rotterdam. The club suffered the first relegation category in its history. The excitement didn’t take its toll Cruyffwho in 2003, became a juvenile court counselor Joan Laporta who won the election for the presidency of FC Barcelona, recommended his hiring to revive a team that had spent four seasons without winning a dismal title. The losing streak lasted another year at the Camp Nou, even fearing Rijkaard’s continuation at Christmas 2003. However, a rare second round in the League, with Ronaldinho engine of illusion and the final signing of the winter of edgar davids as the glue of the team, it helped him get credit by returning up to 18 points real Madrid. Although it was only good enough for him to finish second in a League that ended up winning the Valencia, whose academic year 2003-04 was the springboard for the first great Barça of the 21st century. Upon signing of That’s it, decoration and company, and the mixture of influences from the Dutch and Italian schools, Rijkaard was the coach who ended up winning the second European Cup for Barça, in 2006, fourteen years after the first. He added two Leagues (2005 and 2006) and became the coach that provided an alternative to the elite in a certain Leo Messi with 17 years. An exhibition of Argentine genius in Gamper of 2005 before the Juventus of Fabio Chapello just convinced Rijkaard with what was in his hands, the loan request made to the game by the Italian coach also forced that ‘remake’. Maradona. In 2016, in an interview for the Egyptian television channel MBC, Messi pointed to Rijkaard as “the most important coach” of his career, thanking him for putting him on the showcase. “If he hadn’t decided to put me in the first team, I might not have made it,” he admitted.

Rijkaard’s calm air, less given to the blow of authority, ended up inviting rising stars to take more command than was desirable in a locker room. performance of Ronaldinho started going down the slope That’s it directed to Rijkaard to look the other way at something report ended up calling “self-indulgence”. The last two years of those five Rijkaard endured such a difficult bench as the Camp Nou, something that later neither Guardiola nor Luis Enrique, for example, ended up without important titles and proved the decline that, however, should not bury the good memory of a Rijkaard who , with his composure, he revived the team, the same composure that could eventually cause. After 283 official matches, with 167 wins, 64 draws and 52 losses, 544 goals for and 254 matches, as of May 8, 2008 Rijkaard gave up his seat Guardiolathat ended up building in just one year the Barça that for many played the best football seen in the history of this sport, perfecting the game of a team that, however, began to revive the Dutch.

After a brief stint on the bench for the Saudi Arabian team, Rijkaard tired of professional football. He even changed the color of his curly hair to white, which luckily for him he didn’t like Guardiola Y Luis Enrique after going through the electric chair at Camp Nou. It’s 2013 and Rijkaard he was 51 years old when he kicked the ball in a way he would never have done in his ‘registration’ days.

“I don’t want to work in football anymore,” he said. In 2014, he set up the Dengh restaurant, at 17 Enghlaan street in Utrecht, proud to look for “reinforcements and new talent” for its kitchen.