Tactically, I read Stijn Stijnen’s interview with my folder open on my knees, at the clubhouse bar, between two mugs of coffee. He doesn’t understand why no Jupiler Pro League club gives him a chance as head coach. He has had proposals from abroad, he says so. In the Belgian top flight, nothing.
He gave his explanation to Het Nieuwsblad, a Flemish daily: “From abroad I did get proposals, but I’m almost certain that a lot of sporting directors in Belgium are afraid of me.”
Afraid. I’ve been in the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) since the previous gaffer went off fishing, and I’ve never scared anyone. My club delegate once confiscated the bench towel because I’d put it on his folder. The chairman, for his part, would have been consulted about my extension. Conditional, as always.
Stijnen adds that he won’t put his personality aside to land a job, and he has a line I copied in biro onto the team sheet: “I don’t want to be that kind of puppet. Because then it’s only a matter of days before the players realise you’ve got nothing to say.”
Days. At my place, that’s Tuesday. On Tuesday I put in the 4-4-2, the only honest system. On Sunday at three, if my left back has to leave at half-time to pick up the kids, the system changes without me. So the dressing room has known for ages who decides: the school calendar.
A manager who says what he thinks in a newspaper, that’s historic. I’m weighing my words.
I did the maths anyway. For a sporting director to be afraid of me, he’d first have to know the address of pitch 2. The sloping one, known across the whole province. Nobody has ever come to see me there with an offer, from Belgium or from abroad.
I closed the folder. Stijnen, for his part, has offers outside our borders.
It’s true, we checked: Voetbalkrant.
