As Stanley asserted, there is no such thing as getting something for nothing, and in the two short months since he took over, a record of six wins has already been achieved, during which the tactical quality of team play has also been demonstrated. However, Beijing Guoan has only climbed from ninth to seventh in the Chinese Super League standings.
October 9, the first game of the season, Beijing and Lu, 3-3 draw both sides did not taste the results, but each have their own regrets. Especially the visiting Beijing Guoan, in the case of the lead of two goals, the defense of the details of the mistakes led to the final moment of the loss of points. After the game, Stanley admitted in the press conference, "We wanted to keep attacking, but it didn't actually happen."
"In the first 75 minutes, we played well and that was the soccer we wanted. But in the last 15 minutes, Shandong kept counter-attacking and we suffered a lot of difficulties. The whole team is definitely disappointed with the result, but considering that it was actually an away competition, a point for a point is acceptable."
Whether it is for Beijing Guoan or Stanley himself, they are holding their breath for this battle of Beijing and Lu. This breath is like an athlete in the start after the body reaches the first limit, breakthrough in order to run farther.
Although the draw may have slowed down Beijing Guoan's progress, the entire game still showed the players' trust and belief in their manager and the team. Under Stanley's leadership, Guoan will have to move from the bottom to the top, but it is undeniable that Stanley has injected new energy and change into a team that was once "sleepy", or at least re-energized the team's spirit.
[Revisiting old haunts]
Stanley Menzo's reputation in international soccer comes mainly from his playing days as a goalkeeper. During the 1980s, he played over two hundred league games for Ajax and also made six appearances for the Dutch national team.
Twelve years at Ajax, Stanley Menzo, who played for Cruyff, won three Dutch League titles, four Dutch Cups, one League Cup and one European Cup Winners' Cup.
Stanley (back row, second from left)
When Edward Mendy was due to play for Chelsea in the Champions League final just over a year ago, Sky Sports made a point of finding Stanley Menzo for an exclusive interview - Stanley Menzo: Pioneer Goalkeeper. A legacy of dark-skinned goalkeepers across the generations was set in stone.
"In the soccer environment I grew up in, the goalkeeper had to be a wide-range player, not just stand in goal. I was probably the first or one of the first goalkeepers to regularly rush out of the box to take part in the defense, just as today's soccer world requires goalkeepers to be able to play with both their right and left feet."
After being completely replaced by the young Van der Sar, Stanley's playing career faded until he retired in 2002. After his retirement, Stanley had two options, to enter the management of Ajax FC or to become a trainee coach. In the end, he decided to stay in the green, and after finishing his internship went to the Dutch Amateur League to officially start his coaching career.
Stanley has had an unremarkable coaching career, with more than a decade spent at small and medium-sized clubs - Vitesse, Lierse and Ajax Cape Town, already among the better-known presences.
In early 2019, Stanley joined Beijing Guoan for the first time as the head coach of the reserve team. Although his resume lacks coaching experience in the top league, during his nearly two years with Guoan's reserve team, Stanley's tactical system and philosophy that he poured into the team was unanimously recognized by Guoan's youth training team, players and the club. His pre-match mobilization in the locker room and enthusiastic command on the sidelines have left a deep impression.
The recall of Stanley is not a temporary solution to Beijing Guoan's plight. When Stanley resigned from Guoan on the grounds that he wanted to spend more time with his family in the midst of the epidemic, the club's management tried its best to retain him and said that if there was still a chance to work together in the future, he would be welcome to come back and continue to help the team. Later, both sides have maintained smooth communication, which also laid the groundwork for the current revival of the old dream.
Since Stanley's return, Beijing Guoan FC immediately launched a "big first team" model - that is, the first team and the U21 ladder team unified management, the two teams will be more similar to the training time and method, there will be more linkage, so that young players in the first team to get better training and growth under the leadership of the first team. The two teams will be more similar in training time and methods, and there will be more linkage, so that young players can get better training and growth under the leadership of the first team.
Every day before training, Stanley would gather the whole team for a simple little meeting. Using this half hour each day, Stanley tries his best to convey his training philosophy and methods to everyone, followed by an hour and a half of intense training.
In daily training sessions, Stanley most often emphasizes the English word - "dominate (control)", and when conveying tactical concepts to the players, his statement is also very clear: "we have to try to play a We have to do our best to play controlled soccer". "Pass the ball, receive the ball, pass the ball again, receive the ball again, and ultimately look for the moment to kill the game. After losing the ball, we have to quickly counter-strike and work together as a team to make our opponents run after us."
In Stanley's opinion, the players under him are fully capable of playing this style of soccer. In fact, this is the direction he sought to develop when he previously coached at Beijing Guoan's youth academy - using possession and high pressing to demonstrate dominance, playing quick attacking and defensive conversions and passionate attacking soccer.
[Seeking Balance]
In the training ground of Chinese teams, it is very difficult to see a young player calling out to an old player on the field. The young players see the older players with respect, maybe they are stronger and in better shape, but they "don't dare".
Stanley and his team are trying to change all that, "I know it's not going to be easy, but it has to be done, and that doesn't mean that the younger players don't have respect for the older players. If the older players just tell them, you are young, then they will just shy away. The older players should talk to the younger players more and give them more confidence."
Previously coaching Guoan reserve team, Stanley had asked the players, "How do you want to play?" And the players replied that how the team plays is the coach's business. "I told them that you should learn to think, to have your own understanding of soccer, to learn to read the game instead of waiting for others to tell you how to play. It's also a process of moving forward, I don't want to change anything culturally, but communication is really important on the soccer field." Stanley said.
During the winter training in Kunming at the beginning of 2020, Stanley had talked to each Guoan reserve team player one by one, discussing how to set short-term goals, season goals and long-term goals. Afterwards, he enhanced the players' team awareness through methods like corporate training or group building. For a period of time that summer, Stanley would summarize the team's performance after every day's training, with the players taking part. Like Van Gaal at Ajax and Manchester United, everyone was able to have their say in the dressing room.
That very summer, Guoan's reserve team under Stanley's rule won the 2020 season's F.A.C.A. Cup 1/8 final against a weaker side, knocking out Central League One side Chengdu Rongcheng 1-0 to reach the last eight.
Nowadays, as the centerpiece of the "big first-team format", Stanley stays behind almost every day after first-team training to watch the U21s train. However, Stanley is particularly cautious about the use of young players.
"Playing in the reserves before, the young players can have some mistakes as they grow, but when they get to the first team, I have different requirements for them. They need to make the transition from youth players to mature first-team players, including a change in their approach and speed of play. They showed ability and talent in the youth team, but in the first-team environment they still have a lot to improve."
In the last month or so, apart from Nai Bijiang, who has been in the starting lineup several times before, the youngsters have had few chances to play under Stanley. More surprisingly, Liang Shaowen, who had been seen as a key prospect and returned from the U21 national youth team's tour of Europe, even lost his chance to make the roster.
How to find a balance between the pressure to perform and develop new talent is something that Stanley will have to focus on afterward, by and large.
[Injecting and sculpting]
Back to the game with Shandong Taishan, Stanley's response to the opponent's well-known long-pass rush in the final stage looked too programmed.
Perhaps a better option would have been to adjust for the slowness and slowness of the second "4" of the 4-1-4-1, and to insist on continuous pressure and disruption on the front end of the opponent's attack, rather than just replacing a center back to form a 5-4-1, signaling that the formation is backing up and going into a defensive position. In the team's post-match summary, assistant coach Sui Dongliang expressed similar views.
Despite the fact that there is no pressure from management to achieve results this season, Stanley still wants to lead the team to a better roster spot. It's not only about the team's morale, the growth of the players and the direction of the future, it's also about whether or not his own soccer philosophy can be truly implanted in a veteran team that is in transition.
Stanley's soccer philosophy hasn't changed much from the start of his coaching career, perhaps the only change is that he will fine-tune it to suit different coaching situations and teams.
"In the Ajax days, we followed Cruyff's soccer philosophy of controlling the game by knowing and cutting through time and space. He didn't even need a goalkeeper who wore gloves on the pitch. Instead of counting how many saves the goalkeeper made in a game, he would count how many times the goalkeeper kicked the ball with his feet." So says Stanley.
"Both goalkeepers and center backs have to take part in possession, because to control the game, you need to control the ball better. A lot of goals in modern soccer are scored through attacking and defending conversions, so my philosophy has changed a little bit, to counterattack on the spot when you lose the ball, and to control the game by running when you don't have the ball. I focus on the speed of conversion, but also the need to have players who can control the ball, only to improve the control, in order to give the running players to win time."
Soccer may not be complicated, but it's never easy to find something creative in it. If we only feel from the language expression, the onlookers may be able to understand Stanley's soccer philosophy and coaching concepts, but it is difficult to clearly understand the ways and means to make the team realize the control of the game and improve the conversion efficiency.
With a relatively broad set of guidelines, structures, and systems, it is still extremely difficult to get water to follow a texture and converge in one place - it is the weight of detail that needs to be not only injected, but sculpted.
There may be many more hurdles for Stanley to face on his way to leading Beijing Guoan to bottom out.
