Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard (45) reacted for the first time to his dismissal earlier this week at a press conference yesterday and he did it with class, taking his part of the blame, not accusing anyone and concluding: "It has been an honour."
In an open letter in the official club magazine Barça Camp Nou the Dutchman today says goodbye to the fans, thanking them and the club for the support and wishing his successor all the best.
The future of Rijkaard is at this moment not clear and he didn't want to enter the question yesterday. Briefly linked with the Mexican national team (read more here), the English press is now putting his name forward as possible successor of Manchester City manager Sven-Göran Eriksson (read more here) or Chelsea manager Avram Grant (read more here).
Chelsea owner and Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is said to be an admirer of Rijkaard and would dream of teaming him up with his former assistant Henk ten Cate. Chelsea chief scout Frank Arnesen is a close friend of Rijkaard.
Catalan sports paper Sport, who reports that Portuguese top club Benfica is also interested, claims that Rijkaard is seriously considering not to accept any of the offers he will receive but to take a sabbatical year. The Dutch manager would keep his residence in Barcelona and would spend his time watching a lot of football games and travelling, far from the daily media pressure.
pep's opinion:
it will be interesting to see where his career is going from here. wherever rijkaard will end up: if you can survive five years in Barcelona, you can survive anything anywhere. he made decisive mistakes over the last fifteen months, but i think it won't last long before we start to miss him.
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8 comments:
I think Frank's best move would be to just take a year off to chill out, relax and get his mind right. As far as the Chelsea rumors are concerned I just don't think Frank's "style" would work for a couple of reasons...A.)Chelsea currrently don't have the requesite parts or "type" of players that would be required to play Frank's "attacking" 4-3-3 formation and...B.) Frank's overall style of futbol (which mimics the like's of Arsenal moreso than any other EPL team) has proven to be successful but it won't win you any EPL titles anytime soon. So unless Frank was to alter his "style" to fit the team around him I don't see how it would work...(and for those of you who say, "Well, didn't Arsenal go undefeated and win the EPL title on a few short years ago?"...I say, "True, but that was deploying Henry as a lone striker up front!"...Of course on the other hand, the amount of money that Abramovich might throw at him might be too tempting to pass up. Personaly I think Frank would fair far better at Inter because, (for the most part) the players are in place for him to run his kind of system and more importantly he is intimately familiar with the league having played there before in his career. Although I still believe that taking a break from the game would be in his best interest.
Something else: could you be interested in having your contribution posted as regular posts on this blog?
This goes for others too, by the way. If you have an opinion on a transfer and you wants to put that on paper, let me know.
I fear I would no longer be able to remain "anonymous" (LOL)!..And I would feel like I'm embarrasing myself because I don't know half as much about futbol, or the current state of affairs with the Barcelona team as you do Pep. I'm just a diehard Barca fan, have been all my life and always will be...although I was thinking along the same lines as you,wondering how to get in contact with you in hopes of maybe creating some type of "interactive polls" or "questions of the day" for your loyal readers? Or even just a simple "thread" for all of us aspiring "fantasy managers" to post our transfer/swap scenarios? I think you would get a lot more feedback when comparing/debating various transfer/swap ideas and the like from your readers as well. Just my opinion.
Mail me at fcbtransfer...yahoo.com and give me some mail adress where I can contact you.
What about the "anonymous" thing: is that you, Arsène?
I'm afraid not. At last report Arsene and Sir Alex were seen together enjoying some tapas outside The Fat Duck in London.
I meant fcbtransfers...yahoo.com
For Frank the best thing is to take over Holland or AFC AJAX , Holland is the best place for him , play the same style of soccer and so do AFC AJAX , otherwise he'll fail at Inter , Chelsea or Juve , this are teams who plays to Defensive football . He should never chose to direct Italians , Germans or Some from England Premier League , Spain , Holland is the best place for his Style of playing 4-3-3
Hollan djust has appointed van marwijk and Ajax has Van Basten as their new manager, so I don't see any of that coming.
But maybe some national team could be good for him (after a sabbatical). Wasn't Pareira going to quit South Africa because of family reasons?
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