Few soccer players have been the subject of as much nonsense as Frank (“Please say: Frenk”) Rijkaard. Rijkaard was a remarkable footballer, but an even more remarkable person. He did remarkable things, such as signing contracts with two clubs. He also did rebellious, intuitive, recalcitrant things, such as leaving Ajax Amsterdam. And he won just about everything there was to win, often against the odds. He became known as the soccer-playing philosopher, but Rijkaard himself always liked to say that there was little philosophical about him. He was relaxed, though. And he loved kicking a ball around more than he loved having a successful career. Rijkaard didn’t want to be a star, and he didn’t want to be a leader. That’s why it surprised many people when he suddenly decided he wanted to become a coach.
His coaches only realized this relatively late, including his national coaches. In the Dutch national team, he was tossed back and forth for years. He was a libero, a center back, a midfielder, even a right winger once, and even a striker!
Throughout his football career, Rijkaard had to deal with changing opinions and conflicts of all kinds. As a young man, he refused the captain’s armband that belonged to the best player. His then manager at SCA, Piet Zut: “All he wanted was to play football. And of course we accepted that. We took his sensitivity into account. If you treated him harshly, he would get tears in his eyes. Then he would shut down. I always said things a little more kindly to Frenkie.”
Cruijff didn’t do that; he always said it a little louder. It led to the famous rift. “If we played badly, Frank got even more of a dressing down than we did,” Arnold Mühren later recalled. And Cruijff did have some reason to take Rijkaard to task like a man. Rijkaard had made several conspicuous mistakes in “discipline,” most conspicuously by signing a contract with PSV and then another with Ajax. It was a case of unprecedented stupidity. Ruud Gullit, a PSV player, had invited his childhood friend to his home, where PSV manager Hans Kraay happened to ring the doorbell and the conversation turned to a possible transfer. That same evening, it was done: PSV had a new player, Rijkaard had a stereo tower.
The issue cost Rijkaard days of ridicule and a painful arbitration case. He couldn’t take it anymore, so at one point he said, “Go to hell with your constant bullshit.” The person addressed was Cruijff; the speaker turned around and disappeared from Ajax. What followed was a fairy tale: he trained alone for months, was eventually bought by Sporting Lisbon (in Portugal he trained for himself again for two months) and loaned to Real Zaragoza. Where he immediately tore a muscle. And then another one. A handful of games in the Spanish league were enough for Rinus Michels to select Rijkaard for the 1988 European Championship, which would see the footballer rise again in all his glory.
Rijkaard was bought by AC Milan and played happily ever after. He even spent two more years at Ajax. Under successful coach Louis van Gaal, he won the Champions League in a manner as unassailable as it was unforgettable. Typically, Rijkaard was not captain during that period either. His peak with the Dutch national team had come in 1988, but could have been surpassed two years later. The 1990 World Cup was made for Rijkaard for various reasons. Until it was about to start and there was a dispute about who should be the national coach and numerous other questions. Where should Rijkaard play? Why didn’t Gullit keep a low profile? He had been injured for a long time, hadn’t he? National coach Leo Beenhakker bet on the wrong horse: he put Gullit in the center and Rijkaard on the right.
At Milan, Rijkaard had changed, becoming a mature personality. He reached great heights in Milan’s magnificent team. “He learned to appreciate the beauty of sober play, of waiting, of touching the ball just once,” said Danish TV commentator Frank Arnesen.
Apparently, Rijkaard had not changed enough, because he let all the abuses at Oranje pass. It led to a few crazy seconds against Germany: the spitting incident with Rudi Völler. Privately, Rijkaard was at rock bottom at the time. “No wonder I got three red cards then, two at Milan and the one against Völler.”
He would never play for the Dutch national team again, but a year later he was back, after an evening meal with Rinus Michels. His “yes” to Michels painted a beautiful picture of Rijkaard as a person, who had been impressed by Michels’ initiative. “His wife was there, my wife was there. He gave himself completely. It was very human. He threw his principles overboard. I thought: I’m happy to do this. I realized then that it’s good to be able to let go of certain principles. You have to be able to go back on something in your life. Otherwise, you haven’t developed.”
Frank Rijkaard has certainly developed. The anecdote about his international debut is well known. The 18-year-old Ajax player came on at half-time in Zurich against Switzerland for that other debutant, Ruud Gullit. The Swiss announcer probably still doesn’t know. Rijkaard came on for Kees Rijvers, the man who gave the entire Rijkaard generation a chance. Rijkaard has always been lyrical about Rijvers, but also about Michels, Rijvers’ sworn enemy. And so Rijkaard never had a falling out with Thijs Libregts, another enemy of Rijvers, and he always enjoys seeing Leo Beenhakker, the man who more or less abused him at the 1990 World Cup, but who also put him in the starting lineup at Ajax. “You always appreciate that. I have a soft spot for someone like that.”
Rijkaard has a soft spot for the whole world, or so it always seemed. It’s all part of the wheelbarrow full of misunderstandings about him. A great soccer player? Yes. But also a player who could commit the most terrible fouls. Rijkaard would laughingly kick his opponent onto the cinder track if it suited him. It rarely suited him, because he usually played his games with flexibility, technique, and intuition.
At the 1992 European Championships, he was the star player in the semi-final against Denmark. And two years later, at the 1994 World Cup, he was there again. For the first time in twelve years of international football, he even experienced being passed over. That was against Morocco. National coach Dick Advocaat preferred to have a terrier (Aron Winter) against Daoudi, the star player of Morocco-Belgium. But Daoudi didn’t play against the Dutch…
Always and everywhere, there were misunderstandings and misconceptions involving Rijkaard. From Vrij Nederland in August 1994: “It is rare for a professional soccer player to know in his final year what he will do after his career. But Rijkaard has always been different from others; he does know. He is going into textiles. Underwear.” Not so. Well, for a while. Then soccer pulled him back in. And Franklin Edmondo Rijkaard became a coach. Immediately, he became national coach. He led the Dutch national team to the semifinals during the 2000 European Soccer Championship. Rijkaard said goodbye and tried his luck at Sparta, promptly relegating the club for the first time in its history.
Then came FC Barcelona. Rijkaard stayed there for five years, gave a footballer named Lionel Messi his debut, and won the Spanish league title twice. In 2006, he won the Champions League, for the first time since the Dream Team with Cruyff and Koeman in 1992. He left in 2008. Short spells at Galatasaray and as national coach of Saudi Arabia followed. He has not taken on a new job since 2013.