David Kappel: Raymond, you havebeen one of Holland’s most outspokenfootball coaches but

what many don’tknow is that your first class as an in-structor had the likes of Ruud
Gullit,Frank Rijkaard and Ronald Koeman init. How did it feel to have these legendsof football
listening to your philoso-phy?Raymond Verheijen:
It was 1997 andI was 26 at that time, and finally doingwhat I had dreamed of – working at thehighest level in top
football. Because Ihad to stop playing at a young age, thealternative was to become a coach oran instructor.
DK: From then your star started toshine when Rijkaard was appointed asDutch national team
coach. You havebeen at the last three World Cups andthe last four EURO’s. How did thatcome
about?RV:
Rijkaard must have seen some-thing during the course when I wasinstructing because, he asked me
tobecome his assistant. Once you havethat momentum, once you have thatsuccess, coaches and teams
ask you tohelp them.
DK: Will we see you in a coachingset-up of this year’s World Cup in Bra-zil?RV:
Yes, I am currently speaking totwo countries and I will definitely begoing to work in Brazil. But I
also havea lot of other responsibilities, the mostimportant one being the World ExpertMeeting in Clarens in the
Free State inJune.
DK: You are continuously claimingthat the English FA should rethinktheir fixture schedule –
particularlyover the busy Christmas period whereEnglish clubs play four games in 11days. What’s
the problem with this fix-ture congestion?RV:
We have done a research studyon 27 000 games, which is an extremelylarge sample, and what we have
foundis that when teams have two days restthen their results are more negativethan if they had three
days’ rest ormore.
DK: That also explains why teamsstruggle in their domestic league afterplaying Champions
League or EuropaLeague on Wednesday or Thursday?RV:
Yep. When you play Cham-pions League on Wednesdayand you play domestic league
onSaturday or Europa League onThursday and domestic leagueon Sunday, you have only twodays’
rest. When the otherteam also only had two days’rest, then the home team has amuch higher chance
of win-ning than normal. Thisis unfair. Both teamsare tired, but the hometeam feel less tired be-cause
they have moresupport while theaway team also had totravel. When you haveonly two days’
restand the opponent hasthree or more daysrest, then you havetotally no chance, es-pecially when
playingaway. This cannot beconsidered Fair-Play,because in that situationit’s not a case of
equalchances. Our research hasshown that all the teamswho have had three days’rest or more will
nolonger suffer the negativeeffects.
DK: The Italian andFrench FA have givenAC Milan and PSG an ex-tra-day in between
theirlast league match andthis week’s Cham-pions League last-16round. Is this a stepin the
right direction?RV:
They have read the research andsome of the FA’s have called for me toexplain the research results in
moredetail, and based on what I have ex-plained to them, they have changedtheir fixtures. As a
result the nationalFA’s in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Rus-sia, Turkey, amongst other countries,are
helping their top teams to performbetter in Europe, and the whole coun-try will benefit from that.
DK: English clubs are also well-known for going on pre-season tours,travelling for many
hours and miles towiden their fan basis. Is this the opti-mal preparation for the players?RV:
No, it is only optimal for mak-ing money and they are sacrificing thewell-being of their players to
makemoney. For example, in July I was inAustralia and Manchester United wasalso in Sydney. I
watched them train-ing all week. They had just flown for 30hours – there were nine hours’ time-dif-
ference. Normally it takes the body oneweek to recover from that, but one dayafter arrival they immediately
startedto train for that week. You are over-loading bodies and you are exhaustingyour players so,
although Manches-ter United made a lot of money, theyalso contributed to their own downfallwhich
resulted in their very poor firsthalf of the season.
DK: One of these tours was United’strip to Sydney, which you have linkedwith Robin van Persie’s
injury prob-lems this season. What happened withthe Dutch striker?RV:
 He arrived even later in Sydneyand straight after he arrived he had todo fitness work and isolated
runningevery day.He had flown for 30 hoursand then he has to do running exer-cises. Firstly
running exercises havenothing to do with football and sec-ondly once again you are exhaustingyour
most important player, a playerwho made you champions the year be-fore.
DK: After closing your Man United‘case study’, you recently stated thatTheo Walcott’s ACL
was done poorlybecause Arsenal’s medical team played‘Russian Roulette’ with the
winger’scareer. What was their mistake andcould it have been avoided?RV:
It was the coaching staff thatmade the mistake. Theo Walcott wasout for several months andthen
he started playing again.When you have a player outfor two months, you first haveto improve
their match-fit-ness step-by-step: 25, 45,65, 90 minutes. This is phaseone and this is what they
didreally well at Arsenal. Thesecond phase is a gradualbuild-up for the second gameof the
week. In the first phaseyou train match-fitness; in thesecond phase you train yourplayers to recover
quicker inbetween games: 90, 25, 90, 45,90, 65, 90, 90 minutes.What Arsenal does in thesecond
phase is 90, 90, 90, 90,90 minutes. First they buildup match-fitness to 90 min-utes, but once a week
only sothe body is used to recoveringfrom 90 minutes in six daysand all of a sudden –
fromnothing – they want you to re-cover in three days.That means your body ac-cumulates
fatigue and yournerve-system becomes slower.That means the signals fromyour brain to your
musclesarrive later but you need thatsignal for the muscles aroundyour knee to contract.
Thebrain sends a signal toyour knee then the mus-cles contract to stabilizethe knee. If that
signalarrives too late thenyour knee is alreadyloaded while the musclesaround your knee havenot
contracted yet so temporarily yourknee is unprotected. That means yourupper leg will move in
relation to yourlower leg and you will tear your ACL.
DK: Cristiano Ronaldo and LionelMessi have been averaging more than60 games per season
for the past coupleof years. How can their bodies keep upwith so many games?RV:
First of all the tempo in Spain islower than the tempo in England. Sec-ondly they play in teams that
have theball all the time, which means that youhave to run less, and thirdly the qual-ity of experts in
Spain is higher thanin England.
DK: You were in South Africa re-cently to educate professional andamateur coaches
about your periodiz-ation model. What do make of SouthAfrican football and coaches?RV:
What I hear about the situationin SA football in general is that it is notgood. There is a little bit chaos.
Admin-istrators are corrupt and are not therefor the game, only for themselves. Thesecond thing I
hear is that the playersare not always disciplined in terms oftraining and life style.I teach my
coaches in the classesthat the only way to change the situ-ation is by changing yourself. If
youchange yourself as a coach and then100 coaches change, then 1000, thenautomatically you will
change the situ-ation. It takes time and patience, buteventually it will happen.
DK: Surely there must be qualityin South Africa or how did BafanaBafana manage to
beat World Cham-pions, Spain?RV:
All I can say is that the Spanishplayers play a lot of games and then,all of a sudden, they have to
travel tomidweek friendlies in South Americaand Africa. What idiot is taking theSpanish national
team in the middle ofthe season and travelling all the way toNamibia and South Africa while
theyare in the middle of La Liga and theChampions League?I hope everybody understands thiswas
not a real contest against a realSpanish national team – this was acontest against a fatigued
Spanish na-tional team.You beat a tired, and maybe evenunmotivated, Spanish team and
peoplethink the team is doing well. Thenwhen playing in some silly tournament(Chan), you
cannot even qualify forthe second round. What happened re-cently with that tournament is the per-
fect proof that the game against Spainproved nothing.If South Africa beat Spain at theWorld Cup
where both teams are wellprepared and motivated, then it wouldbe a different story. But I think
every-body knows that’s not going to happenin the near future.
DK: Finally, what’s your advice forthe next generation of coaches, andwhere can one get
more informationabout your courses?RV:
Raise your bar. Don’t pretendthat you are a victim of South Africanfootball. Don’t act as if you are a
victimof corruption or a victim of poor playerdiscipline – deal with it! Don’t start tochange the world,
start by changingyourself. You as a coach should alwaysbe on time. You are a role model.
Youshould have a good lifestyle. And ifmore coaches start doing it, over five orten years, the whole
system will even-tually change. It is just a matter of time.
DK: Thanks Raymond, we are look-ing forward to seeing you at the WorldExpert Meeting
in Bloemfontein inJune.