Leo Beenhakker, Winning Soccer Coach Without Borders, Dies at 82

New York Times

16-04-2025

Leo Beenhakker, a globe-trotting soccer coach who managed his native Netherlands during the 1990 World Cup, won three Spanish League titles with Real Madrid in the 1980s and, perhaps most impressively and improbably, guided Trinidad and Tobago to the 2006 World Cup as the smallest nation at the time ever to compete in soccer's global championship, died on April 10. He was 82.
His death was announced by the Dutch soccer federation and by Ajax, the powerful Amsterdam club that Beenhakker coached to two Dutch League titles. The announcement did not cite a cause or say where he died.
His own playing career, as a winger, did not carry him beyond the amateur level. But neither did it prevent him from achieving national and international success as a coach.
In that role, Beenhakker displayed wit and charm as well as the ability to engage with and inspire his players and to immerse himself in various cultures in the soccer diaspora. One of his accomplishments was to coach Poland to its first appearance in the European championships, in 2008.
He dismissed the idea that to coach at a high level, one needed to have played at a high level. 'You can be a very good milkman,' he once said, 'without having ever been a cow.'
Beenhakker (pronounced bin-HACK-er) never possessed the authority or standing of Johan Cruyff, who captained the Netherlands to second place at the 1974 World Cup and is considered one of the greatest players of all time. Nor did he have the tactical skill of Guus Hiddink, who in 1988 coached PSV Eindhoven to both the Dutch League title and the European Cup, the forerunner of the European Champions League title.
But Beenhakker was of their generation, and as a manager he embraced the Dutch philosophy known as total football, which revolutionized soccer in the 1970s with its style of fluid movement and interchanging positions.
Simon Kuper, a leading soccer journalist whose highly regarded books include 'Soccernomics' (2009), said in an interview that because Beenhakker had not been a high-level player, he had to find another way to gain credibility as a manager.
'I don't think he was a tactical genius,' said Kuper, who grew up in the Netherlands. 'What he had was the gift of gab. He was a great speaker, a kind of actor who played an almost film noir, sort of hard-boiled kind of person, who was able to bluff his way based on his acting and speaking skills.'
Beenhakker, who sometimes wore a trench coat that conveyed a Bogart-type image, coached Ajax to Dutch League titles in 1980 and 1990 and its fierce rival, Feyenoord, to the league championship in 1999.
In 1987, '88 and '89, he won Spanish League titles with Real Madrid, the most decorated soccer club in Europe. He became known in Spain as 'Don Leo.'
In 2000, returning to Ajax as the club's technical director, Beenhakker influenced the rising Swedish star forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic. 'What he saw, I became,' Ibrahimovic said of Beenhakker. 'And that is the best.'
But Beenhakker's time coaching in the Netherlands was not without its complications. In 1980, Cruyff publicly humiliated him during a televised Ajax match, using a dismissive term, 'schoolteacher,' for coaches who had not played at the top levels of soccer and who relied on training courses.
During a match in which Ajax was losing to a league opponent, FC Twente, Cruyff, then an adviser for Ajax, left the stands, sat next to Beenhakker on the bench and emphatically instructed him to change tactics. Ajax prevailed. Years later, an embarrassed Beenhakker said of Cruyff, 'I should have punched him twice.'
In his second stint as manager of the Dutch national team, during the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Beenhakker could not coax a single victory from a team that was the 1988 European champion and featured such stars as Ruud Gullitt, Frank Rijkaard and Marco van Basten.
The players had wanted Cruyff to be their manager. Rumors emerged that Beenhakker had scuffled with van Basten. Instead of winning the World Cup as they had expected, the Dutch exited meekly in the second round.
'At the highest level, he didn't quite have the trust of players in his tactical skills,' Kuper said.
Leo Beenhakker was born on Aug. 2, 1942, in Rotterdam, during Nazi Germany's occupation of the Netherlands. According to some news accounts, he worked as an electrician to help support his family after his father died. An injury apparently ended his modest playing career when he was 19.
Information on survivors was not immediately available.
As a manager, Beenhakker had his most unlikely success when he coached the Caribbean nation Trinidad and Tobago to the 2006 World Cup in Germany. The country had never reached soccer's global championship tournament, and when Beenhakker was hired in April 2005, at 62, Trinidad and Tobago sat last in its qualifying group in the North American, Central American and Caribbean region.
Beenhakker motivated his new team, instilling discipline and confidence on the field and reaching the players on a personal level off the field. He relied on players with experience in the English Premier League, including the forward Dwight Yorke, who had been a star at Manchester United.
On Nov. 16, 2005, when Trinidad and Tobago won a final playoff in Bahrain to reach the World Cup, thousands took to the streets of Port of Spain, the capital, in celebration. The day is considered a highlight of the nation's history. Beenhakker was awarded the Chaconia Medal, the country's second-highest honor.
'He was more than a tactician — he was a leader who respected the culture, earned our trust and inspired a nation,' Yorke, Trinidad and Tobago's current national coach, posted on the soccer federation's website after Beenhakker's death.
When players from that tiny nation, which then had a population of roughly 1.3 million, arrived in Germany in 2006 for the monthlong tournament, Beenhakker was asked if their success was a miracle. 'A miracle to be here?' he replied. 'No, we just came by plane.'
The Soca Warriors, as the national team is nicknamed, were hardly intimidated. They opened by holding Sweden to a scoreless tie. In the second match, they kept England without a goal until the 83rd of the game's 90 minutes before succumbing 2-0. Another 2-0 loss, to Paraguay, sent Trinidad and Tobago home after group play.
Iceland, with a population of approximately 350,000 at the time, superseded Trinidad and Tobago in 2018 as the smallest nation to qualify for the World Cup. No matter. Beenhakker's contribution to the nation's soccer history remained undiminished at his death.
Kelvin Jack, a goalkeeper on the 2006 World Cup team, told the Trinidad and Tobago sports website wired868.com, 'I always felt as though I could run through a wall for this man.'