Frank Arnesen - Chapter Two
An extraordinary story from the legendary Danish football (soccer) player, coach and Sporting Director, sharing his wisdom and invaluable advice.
After playing for his local club in Denmark, Frank Arnesen was scouted in 1975 when he was nineteen by AFC Ajax, one of the best football clubs in the world at that time.
He was club captain at twenty-three and helped Ajax win three Dutch league titles. He later helped PSV Eindhoven to also win three league titles – and the European Cup.
Frank was capped fifty-two times, scoring fourteen times for the Danish national team and participating in the 1984 European Championship and the 1986 World Cup.
After retiring from playing, he’s enjoyed a highly successful career in football management; first as assistant coach and then director of football back at PSV Eindhoven.
He became sporting director for Tottenham Hotspur FC and later for Chelsea FC, then Hamburger SV. He is currently a board member at PSV Eindhoven.
”One’s ego can easily stand in the way if you want to do something good or great - it should never be about you. When I think about success, it has always been our success as a team of people and not just me.”
“One of the main reasons why you must find something that you love doing is because it is impossible to find success in life at anything unless you really work hard at it. And, when you are working hard at something you really love doing, it doesn’t feel like hard work!”
“I always recommend making time for keeping fit – it will enable you to prepare yourself better for life’s challenges, give you stamina and help to keep you mentally agile.”
”A parent’s key role in helping their children to find their way to enjoying a successful life is mainly encouragement – be positive, allow them room, help them to explore and give them lots of encouragement to be their best.”
On success . . .
My view of success and what it means to me has certainly changed as I’ve got older. When I was playing football professionally, it was all about winning as a player or what I could achieve with my club. It was also about being signed by great football clubs to play at the highest level and then being considered good enough to represent my country. Recognition from my peers was also an important measure of success for me.
But in later years, as my career in football developed from active playing into player management, my view of success has evolved. I now think about the positive difference I’ve been able to make to the clubs I have worked for and to the players and coaches I am working with, most especially where my work has been particularly challenging or has taken place under very difficult circumstances.
Success for me is also a continuous journey. It becomes more about what you want to achieve today and tomorrow – what has happened in the past is now done. What you take from the past, however, is your experience, and you apply this to what you have to do today, to help you to become even better at what you do professionally in the future.
But I’ve often said that success is not just about you. In professional football you can never have success entirely on your own - you will always rely on people around you for help, and people will depend on your help too.
My journey . . .
I have always loved football. I started very young and enjoyed playing with my father, who was extremely enthusiastic about the game. He would regularly gather boys from around where we lived, and we would go and play football for two or three hours in the park. My father taught me two key things when I was just seven years old: ‘It’s as enjoyable to make an assist for a goal as it is to actually score a goal’ and ‘To be a great footballer, you must have great balance and you must be two-footed.’ This second piece of advice made such an impression on me that every morning, when going from my home to school (around one and a half kilometres), I used to hop along on just my right leg for ages, and then just my left leg, to improve my balance. And at home, I would practise keeping the ball up in the air, kicking with just my left foot for literally hours, until I was as good with it as I was with my right . . .
As a young boy, I was soon playing regularly as an amateur player for Fremad Amager, my local football club in Denmark. I worked really hard and did my very best to improve and to become a good footballer. After a while, I was excelling as a youth player and eventually attracted the interest of the legendary Dutch football club AFC Ajax, who approached me to join them in 1975. I was just nineteen. It was, of course, an unbelievable opportunity for me, and one of the most important decisions of my life, although when the best club in the world comes and knocks on your door, you just cannot say ‘No’!
I learned a huge amount at that club. You were expected to have the mentality that you had to get better every day. You are never satisfied when you’re an Ajax player – if you win a game 5–0, then it should have been 7–0! From training two or three times a week as an amateur, I was now training hard twice a day. I put on ten kilos of muscle in just over a year. But it was very difficult for me, joining Ajax as the best player of my former club and now playing with (and against, in training) some of the best footballers in Europe.
I had always been good at dribbling the ball, but when I tried to do so during our training matches, the ball was taken off me every time, before I could pass it. My teammates would yell, ‘Just pass the ball!’ But I kept getting tackled and dispossessed every time before I had a chance to. In the end, they would scream at me, ‘Play the ball! You keep losing the ball, Frank, all the time! We want to win!’ I was becoming increasingly demoralised by the criticism, and my confidence and self-esteem were also beginning to slip, which became a serious problem for me.
We then had a big team-meeting. The club hadn’t been playing at its best for a while, and our coach, Tomislav Ivić, wanted us to discuss why. He expected everyone, including the junior members, to speak out and contribute. He asked me, ‘Frank, what do you think?’
I remember saying, ‘It doesn’t really help when my teammates are always so negative towards me every time I make a mistake - why can’t you be more positive?’
After a moment of silence, with everyone looking at me, they started laughing. Soon everyone was laughing out loud. Ruud Krol, the Ajax captain, then turned to me and said, ‘Frank, what are you talking about? Listen, we could say, “Will you please next time, kindly pass the ball left?” but instead we prefer to say [and he yelled], “FRANK, YOU IDIOT!! PASS THE BLOODY BALL LEFT!!” It’s nothing personal. But the day where you make a mistake and we don’t say anything, then you’re in trouble, my friend, because that means you’re not good enough to play for Ajax’.
It was a great lesson for me, but it was also a moment when I realised that it wasn’t because they disliked me for any reason – my teammates all wanted to help me to become a better player. I also began to appreciate how you learn far more from defeat or during difficult times than you do from winning. I also understood that it was actually OK to make mistakes, provided you really learn from them and always try to avoid them in the future.
After two years at Ajax, I was training unbelievably hard and improving every day at my game. I wanted to achieve the very best that I could. I was also single-mindedly determined to become good enough to be recognised one day as the best player in the world. But then one morning, I woke up and the harsh reality suddenly hit me . . .