Is Frank Rijkaard the right option for AC Milan?

Date: 21st January 2013 at 12:37am
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In the same time period that saw Bayern Munich announce Pep Guardiola as their future coach, Frank Rijkaard found himself jobless as he was sacked from the position as Saudi Arabia coach.

Many football fans wouldn’t think twice before claiming Guardiola was the better coach, some wouldn’t even conceive the idea of the pair being in anyway comparable. These people would need to dig deeper and find how Frank Rijkaard is a fine alternative to AC Milan’s favourite for the job.

Firstly, there is an intimacy between Rijkaard and Milan. As a player he was part of Milan’s most successful team under Arrigo Sacchi and played a vital role for the Rossoneri alongside fellow countrymen Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten.

Rijkaard won the Serie A championship twice and the European Cup twice during his five seasons with the club, notably scoring the winning goal of the 1990 European Cup Final against Benfica. With a club that values it’s history and club icons so highly, the prospect of a former player returning to manage is enough to turn the heads of most Milanisti.

Rijkaard was linked with the position as head coach last year and seasons before there were whispers of a possible reunion, engineered by Vice-President Adriano Galliani. There are many aspects of Rijkaard’s coaching that appeal to not only the fans but owner Silvio Berlusconi as well. An area worth thinking about is who would be Rijkaard’s understudy?

When Rijkaard was at Barcelona, he employed two key individuals as his managerial assistants: Johan Neeskens and Eusebio Sacriststán. The former is Frank’s loyal compatriot who played at Ajax, as he did, and remained his assistant at Galatasaray. The latter is perhaps one of the masterminds behind the infamous Barcelona youth academy. Both men had played for Barcelona for an extended period of time and these factors were vital for what Rijkaard was tasked to do at Barcelona.

Rijkaard was brought in to create the next era in Barcelona’s history. Not too dissimilar to what Milan are having to do now, Rijkaard began moving on the old guard and rebuilding the team. New players arrived at the club who would raise the club standards that had fallen short of Real Madrid in past seasons.

The likes of Rafael Marquez, Deco and Samuel Eto’o arrived and would become star players in the not-too distant future. Alongside these acquisitions came the promotion of players from Barcelona’s academy, with Carlos Puyol, Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Victor Valdes as their main success stories. With the ability to manage the large group of stars with Neeskens, and collaborate with Eusebio in creating quality youngsters, Rijkaard had created the building blocks for Barcelona’s future success.

Milan fans are free to speculate on Rijkaard’s coaching team based around the club, as he made sure to target ex-Barcelona players when in Catalonia. Surely he’d use the same policy at Milan? With Inzaghi working in AC Milan’s youth sector, Rijkaard could have found his spotter of young prospects.

Other than him, there are many former legends for Rijkaard to call upon to assist him on the Milan bench, with one of the other two Dutchmen, or perhaps the likes of Paolo Maldini or Franco Baresi will get the call. The reason this is all relevant is because Milan are trying to bring about the same transition and would welcome the idea of having the man who made it all happen for Barcelona.

On the subject of Rijkaard’s tactics, he employs a very attacking style similar to other Dutch coaches, aspects of which may seem familiar to fans of Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona side. Rijkaard encouraged extreme forms of creativity that meant the forwards would demonstrate constant interplay with the midfielders, as well as having the defenders play a high line to support the busy midfielders.

They focused on keeping possession in the opponents half of the pitch, applying pressure to retrieve the ball or force mistakes and then breaking on the counter-attack. Rijkaard also scrapped the ‘star system’ and reinforced the value of each player on the field. All of these aspects resonate with what Guardiola incorporated during his successful tenure with the club.

Obviously Rijkaard was helped by the fact he had extremely talented players and the mercurial Ronaldinho, as was perhaps Guardiola when he replaced Rijkaard; with Lionel Messi only just beginning to eclipse the great Brazilian. The style of football Rijkaard uses is certainly attractive and appeals to Silvio’s desire to have “champagne football”. And while Massimiliano Allegri seems to be the man to weather Milan’s transition, perhaps Rijkaard would be the man to let it blossom.

Follow Louis Gibberd-Thomas on Twitter: mercutio156

 

2 responses to “Is Frank Rijkaard the right option for AC Milan?”

  1. anil says:

    to me frank was a better coach then pep as pep inherited players that frank started .pep was lucky to get the players that he got.even the present coach of barca is doing much better then pep so can we say that he is better then pep.so to me no one should compare between frank and pep and say one is better then the other

  2. To : Frank you are still a good coach, especially when you handled Barcelona for several years. Barca plays a beautifull football because of you, not by Pep Guardiola. So, attention to Mr Roman Abromovich that I will recommend you to take Mr Rijkaard as your new Manager for the Chelsea football team. Believe me that he will success in the premier league !