The Dutchman and his agent insist that he is still focused on leading Turkey to Euro 2012. One week ago the BBC claimed that a senior official at the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) had told them that Hiddink “can’t say no to Chelsea; we believe he wants to leave.” The TFF reacted to that news by saying that no deal has yet been made and that nothing official can happen before both the Dutchman and Mahmut Özgener, the TFF president, are back from vacation.
My advice: forget about all these promises and solemn statements. Trust me, within the next few days, Hiddink will announce that he will move from İstanbul to London, that he had a great time in Turkey and strongly believes the national team will qualify but that Chelsea made him an offer he could not refuse. Of course, Özgener is a clever man and he knows that in order to get the full compensation from Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, he needs to play hard to get. That is why the TFF president, in between his holiday activities this week, warned Chelsea against making an illegal approach towards Hiddink, who still has one year to go on his contract with the TFF. In case you did not know, the full value of the remaining 12 months on Hiddink’s contract is TL 10 million. Özgener will only back down when the TFF gets that amount from the Russian billionaire.
Maybe you will find me naïve, but I am extremely disappointed with Hiddink’s behavior. I like him as a person and I think he really did a good job when he was the trainer of PSV Eindhoven and the Dutch and South Korean national teams. But the thin excuses he is using now have discredited him, at least in my view. Hiddink has indicated that he prefers the tempo of a club role to a national coaching job. “I feel energetic, so a club is more preferable. And that’s what I like, working every day. I feel I need to do more.” Come on Guus, fool somebody else. You knew very well what you were doing in February 2010 when you signed a very lucrative contract with the TFF after having done the same job in Russia. Let’s face it, Hiddink is doing exactly the same as a growing number of coaches and players is doing these days: they go where the money is and they don’t care whether there is a contract or not. Loyalty does not exist anymore in today’s football and Hiddink is rude enough to remind us of that uncomfortable truth.
I guess some people will call me old fashioned but I find the job not done if coaches commit themselves to a certain task, for instance taking a country to the finals of the European Championships, and then, halfway, decide to change their minds and go somewhere else, always to earn even more money. As TFF President Özgener put it, “You cannot come to Turkey and then leave when you want.”
The same applies, by the way, to club coaches who change dressing rooms as easily as they put on a new shirt. It is one of the reasons why I like Manchester United (coached by Sir Alex Ferguson since 1986), the most successful English team in the last decade and Arsenal (coached by Arsène Wenger since 1996), the team that for years has played the most attractive football on the British Isles. Both coaches have shown what a long-term commitment can bring to a club, carefully building up a team, sticking to the same philosophy and integrating young homegrown players. I hate teams like big-spending Chelsea and Manchester City that each year try to buy themselves a title by luring coaches and players away from other clubs with big contracts. Fortunately, these tactics have, till now, not produced the desired results and I sincerely hope that Hiddink’s Chelsea will go through the same experience.
