Sjoerd Overgoor was not particularly happy when Go Ahead Eagles appointed Erik ten Hag as manager in 2012.
Overgoor had just enjoyed a six-month loan with Go Ahead Eagles and he was signed on a permanent deal at the end of that season, but the summer appointment of Ten Hag made him question whether he would have a long-term future at the club.
That's because Ten Hag had been involved in the decision to release Overgoor from FC Twente's academy years earlier, where he progressed in his teenage years. Overgoor had also 'not enjoyed' working with Ten Hag, who was a 'strict boss' at Twente.
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Overgoor reported for pre-season and he was prepared for the worst. Ten Hag dished out the shirt numbers in training and the midfielder's suspicion seemed to be confirmed, with the newly appointed manager giving Overgoor a No.12 shirt.
"The other two midfielders got No.6 and No.8, which meant the No.10 shirt was still free, but I was given No.12," Overgoor told the Manchester Evening News, speaking in outstanding English. "My first thought was like OK, there I go, I’m finished here."
Overgoor was determined to fight for his place at Go Ahead Eagles and he worked hard in pre-season that summer, but he started to think that Ten Hag's mind had already been made, as the manager was constantly shouting at him when he played.
After discussions with his teammates, who agreed that Ten Hag did not like him, Overgoor decided to take matters into his own hands. "It was as if I was doing everything wrong and the others also noticed it after four or five weeks," Overgood said.
"I went to his office and I thought I had to tell him, that I have a feeling that he doesn’t like me. He said 'no, I think you’re the type of player that is satisfied with 95%, but if I make you angry, you will become more aggressive and you might give 110%'.
"He told me that If I perform like that every day, I can improve a lot and I will become a first-team player and make a lot of steps. From that moment, he kept on yelling at me, but I knew he had confidence in me. He actually wanted to make me better."
After a modest career playing as a centre-back, which spanned a total of 13 years in the Netherlands, Ten Hag retired and hung up his boots in 2002 before moving into coaching with FC Twente, where he had spent the bulk of his time as a player.
Ten Hag coached the club's Under-17s, the Under-19s and he was eventually appointed as assistant manager at Twente in 2006. The Dutchman served in that position for three years before spending the same amount of time as an assistant at PSV Eindhoven.
An ambitious Ten Hag was eyeing a move into management - he just needed the right opportunity. Go Ahead Eagles provided him with that chance in 2012 and it immediately became clear to the players at the club that Ten Hag was not a normal manager.
Overgoor already knew that from his experience in Twente's academy. "He was really strict, he wanted to have everything under control. In the first training session, there were three colours of bibs and we put them all together and he said no," Overgoor recalled.
"He wanted the yellow bibs together, the orange ones together and the blue ones together. His discipline was high with everything. Another example is, we did some light running in the woods in the second training session and he gave us groups to separate into.
"He told us the first group had to be finished in one minute and 50 seconds, while the other group were expected to finish in two minutes. I was part of the second group, but we completed the run in one minute and 50 seconds, which was early.
"Ten Hag said 'no, if I say two minutes, it’s two minutes - not one minute and 50 seconds. In the beginning, we were really thinking what the f*** is this? He’s crazy, but I already knew him."
Before appointing Ten Hag, Go Ahead Eagles had finished in midtable in the 2011/12 season in the Eerste Divisie, which is the Netherlands' second tier, and he sought to improve standards during his first pre-season in the summer of 2012.
Ten Hag analysed every detail at Go Ahead Eagles following his appointment and his attention to detail was obsessive, as Ovegoor explained. "He was a perfectionist, but in everything," he recalled. "When he arrived at the club at 8am, he went straight to our groundsman to take care of the pitch because he wanted the blades of grass to be shorter, as he always wanted the ball.
"If we have the ball, they can’t score. He wanted the grass to be really short so the ball could move easily. He wanted to make us more professional. After training, we did some ping pong and relaxed and he also added a room with beds so we could rest."
Ten Hag was ahead of his time in the Eerste Divisie and he was considering minor details that had the potential to make a positive difference, which included the idea to install a window in his office at Go Ahead Eagles' training ground.
"He put a window in his office and we thought that was because he wanted to see what we are doing in the hall and in the dressing room, basically just to take control, but he later explained the reason for it, which was actually brilliant," Overgoor said.
"It was something that I didn’t think about. He said that if you have a closed door at the office, the players might think he’s having a conversation with important people, or they won't know whether he’s there or not, which makes it difficult to knock.
"Because of the window, you could look inside the office and see him. The step to go into his office was much easier afterwards, I never thought about it like that. That’s him, it’s all about perfection, he thinks like that in training and with everything around him."
Ten Hag knew exactly how he wanted Go Ahead Eagles to play and he spent hours coaching his players to align with his philosophy. Although he was preparing for his debut season in management, his principles had already been established.
How did Ten Hag get that across? "A lot of repetition on the training ground," Overgoor recalled. "He did a lot of training with 11 players against zero and he only wanted diagonal balls, no straight balls, and every time we did that he would shout 'STOP!'.
"We’d go back to the goalkeeper to start again and he would give us patterns. If we played to the left full-back, the left midfielder came for the ball, then the left-winger goes deep, or something like that, and the move would have to be executed well.
"After that, he would give us a new pattern. Every time we did something not good, he would shout 'STOP'. In the first month, that was really boring, but after a few months, we recognised the movements we made as a team during games and we started believing in his patterns, which you could see in matches. From that moment, we enjoyed it more, we could see the difference it made."
After coming to terms with Ten Hag's unique approach, Overgoor started the first match of the new Eerste Divisie campaign and he remarkably did not leave the starting line up in the league for the entirety of the Dutchman's reign after that.
"We played 4-3-3 and I played as the No.8, as the left defensive midfielder. We also signed Quincy Promise, who now plays for Spartak Moscow, and he played as our No.10. After the second game of the season, he didn’t change anything [team selection]," Overgoor said.
"He was direct with instructions. If we played a really good first half, he would say ‘you might think you’ve played good, but we need to improve on this, this and this.’ If we play really bad, he would say 'you’ve played really s***' and he would tell us the truth.
"If we lost 3-0, he would show me some video with good movements and he’d say you need to keep doing that because, in the end, it will work, but after a 5-0 win, he would also say 'Sjoerd, you were really lucky here because you didn’t check your opponent, you let him go, and if the cross was good, we would have been 1-0 behind'. We would have talked about a whole different match.
"He always kept you in balance. With Go Ahead Eagles, he really drilled his patterns, but I think later on with Ajax and now Manchester United, who have a lot of quality players, they can decide their own space. He will give them solutions, but fewer strict patterns."
Ten Hag created a culture of discipline at Go Ahead Eagles but there was also time for lighthearted fun. Ten Hag might be succinct and straightforward with his communication, but there is another side to him, which has endeared him to players at every club.
Whether it's dancing with his Ajax players after claiming the Eredivisie title, albeit with the style of an embarrassing uncle at a family celebration, or sharing laughs with players at Carrington, Ten Hag knows the importance of sharing that part of himself.
Overgoor laughed when asked about that side of Ten Hag. "We’d have a little meeting in the dressing room before we went to the pitch for training, about what we were going to do, and he’d [Ten Hag] always come into the dressing room," Overgoor recalled.
"We’d always put the washing basket on the massage table in the centre of the room, and he always moved it onto the floor, so he could see everyone. So, one time we thought it would be funny to get some weights from the gym and put them in the basket.
"That would mean the next time he wants to take it off, he wouldn't know what’s happened. However, that day, he came into the dressing room and never moved the basket, instead saying to one player, 'Denis can you remove the basket from the massage table?'.
"We all looked at each other so confused, thinking how was it even possible that he knew about it. He really wants to have everything under control. It was funny because the player tried to lift the basket and it was obviously too heavy."
Go Ahead Eagles lost just eight games that season, which was the second-joint fewest in the Eerste Divisie, and they finished in the play-offs to fight for promotion, which meant they were possibly six fixtures (home and away legs) away from the Eredivisie.
Ten Hag had got the very best out of his squad. "I’ve spoken about this with a lot of players, he pushed me every time to a higher level, never satisfied at training, I said after five weeks, I think he hates me, but no, he pushed me every time," Overgoor said.
"A lot of coaches who didn't push me in my career, maybe I was 20 per cent less and the whole team gets 20 per cent more and more when everyone is really pushed. You see the confidence growing after a couple of months.
"Because he wanted everything to be perfect, he changed our mindset, we wanted to be perfect as well and we believed in his style. We knew how we had to play, so the confidence of the team became really good and that’s the reason we got promoted."
Go Ahead Eagles defeated FC Dordrecht, VVV-Venlo and FC Volendam in the playoffs to clinch an unlikely and historic promotion in May 2013. Ten Hag had transformed a 'small club' in the Netherlands and they were promoted for the first time in almost 20 years.
"My whole career I think about him," Overgoor openly admitted. "That year, we didn’t have a speciality, but he made us special. We got promoted and if we didn’t get to the highest division, maybe I would have spent my whole life in the second division.
"We were promoted and he left for Bayern Munich, but we played with nine of the same players in the Eredivisie and we played the same way Ten Hag made us play. It was the two years that I improved my career and why I played some years in the highest division."
Overgoor started in every match that season and he was instrumental in Go Ahead Eagles achieving promotion, although he would never admit that. The players were all desperate for Ten Hag to stay, but they accepted he was bound to move elsewhere.
"When we celebrated our promotion, I thanked him for the year, but he told me that I did everything on my own. I was like no, I don’t think so," Overgood said. "We wanted him to stay with us in the Eredivisie, but we knew he was such a good coach.
"You will never find such a coach in the second division. When he had the opportunity to go to Bayern Munich and work with Pep Guardiola, I thought that would be the perfect next step for him. He was the best coach I've had and I was thankful."
Overgoor followed Ten Hag's progress at Bayern Munich II with great interest and he did the same at Ajax. Overgoor retired last year and he's since joined FC Twente as a youth coach, which is also where it began for the coach that inspired him, Ten Hag.
Ten Hag now has the challenge of transforming Manchester United and Ovegoor believes patience will be required to achieve success. He has watched his former manager closely throughout his career and he is now following his work at Old Trafford.
"It’s really important that they are patient," Overgoor said. "When you look at all the teams he’s coached, the first four or five months, each month we played better, but the results were not so good like we were ninth or 10th place at Go Ahead Eagles.
"After the winter, we got better and it was the same with Utrecht and the same with Ajax. He needs time. Look at Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, the first year was not so good but he needed time because he had a whole different approach to the club.
"The discipline is really important, I’ve already seen interviews with Bruno Fernandes when he talks about that. You can’t change it [results] immediately after last year, you can't go from nothing to perfect in just a couple of months - it takes time."
He also discussed the style that Ten Hag will strive to implement. "It will be high pressure, to get the ball, not like Guardiola, but similar to the pressure high up the pitch," Overgoor added. "He’ll want his players to be confident with the ball and to have a dynamic style."
Overgoor kindly agreed to speak to the MEN earlier this week, which meant the conversation took place after United were defeated 6-3 in the Manchester derby. After humiliations against Brighton and Brentford, that heavy defeat was not part of the script.
"After that [Man City], I think he would have been honest on the day after, showing videos of what they didn't do well," Overgood said. "He will be taking his responsibility during training, shouting 'STOP, STOP, this has to be better, remember the match'.
"I think he will be really harsh on everyone, but also clear about what he wants. He will talk to players individually to find out why they didn’t do what he wanted, explaining his expectations, but he'll also tell them that he has confidence in them."
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