Kees Rijvers

Kees Rijvers
Rijvers (1957)
Personnel
Surname	Cornelius Bernardus Rijvers
birthday	May 27, 1926
place of birth	Breda , the  Netherlands
size	165 cm
position	midfield
Juniors
Years	station
0000-1944	Groen-Wit Breda
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1944-1951	NAC Breda	98 (36)
1951-1953	AS Saint-Etienne	76 (20)
1953-1955	Stade Français	47 (16)
1955-1957	AS Saint-Etienne	66 (16)
1957-1960	Feyenoord Rotterdam	92 (36)
1960–1962	AS Saint-Etienne	57 (15)
1962-1963	NAC Breda	14 0(1)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1946-1960	Netherlands	33 (10)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1966-1972	FC Twente Enschede
1972-1979	PSV Eindhoven
1980-1981	FC Beringen
1981-1984	Netherlands
1994	PSV Eindhoven
1 Only league games are given.

Cornelius Bernardus "Kees" Rijvers (born May 27, 1926 in Breda ) is a former Dutch football player and coach . From 1981 to 1984 he was a bond coach for the national team of the "Oranjes" .

The player

In the club

The only 1.65 m tall playmaker , mostly used as a half-striker , began playing football in his hometown, first with Groen-Wit Breda and then with the NAC ; there he became a national player at the age of 20. He was almost 25 when he accepted an offer from French first division company AS Saint-Étienne to make money in football. When he arrived in Saint-Étienne at the beginning of 1951, he had a heavy box with him; it was filled with almost 100 kg of screw tunnels, which had not been used in France until then. In the first two and a half years with the Verts (that's the common name for the ASSE players), the Dutchman directed 76 championship matches and scored 20 goals. In the league, however, it was only enough to place in the middle of the table. In 1953 he moved to the capital club Stade Français , with whom he had to relegate less than 12 months later and play in Division 2 .

Therefore, Kees Rijvers was happy to be able to return to Saint-Étienne in 1955. There grew coach Jean Snella with Rachid Mekhloufi and Eugène Njo-Léa two new, powerful play and prolific striker in the first team, and the experienced 29-year-old playmaker found his ideal play stations in them. In 1956, the team had to make do with fourth place -  champions OGC Nice were two points ahead of the Verts  - but a year later the title holder was AS Saint-Étienne. It was also Rijvers' first championship that played a decisive role in this. Therefore, he was awarded the Étoile d'Or by France Football as the most consistent player in the league for the 1956/57 season .

Surprisingly, he was drawn to his homeland immediately afterwards, and until 1960 he played for Feyenoord Rotterdam , whose successful time with several titles in the Eredivisie (from 1961) he just missed. Despite his 34 years of age, he returned to Saint-Étienne for the third time, played there for two more years in the first division and even won the cup in 1962 , even if he had to sit on the bench in the final. Then he hung on for another season at his home club in Breda and then ended his playing time.

In the national team

Kees Rijvers played 33 games for the Dutch national team between October 1946 (6-2 in Luxembourg ) and March 1960 ( 4-3 in Suriname ) , scoring 10 goals. In 1948 he was a member of the Dutch Olympic team. From 1951 to 1955 this career was interrupted because the Dutch association KNVB did not appoint any professionals to the Elftal at that time . Rijvers, Faas Wilkes and Abe Lenstra formed the "golden interior storm" of the 1950s, which was famous in Holland. Rijvers also played together with goal scorer Bram Appel , who was also a professional in France in the early 1950s. In May 1947 he was in action for the Netherlands against France (4-0 in Paris). In early March 1953 he took part in the charity game (the Watersnoodwedstrijd ) in the Parisian Prinzenpark between a team of Dutch foreign professionals and Stade Reims in favor of the victims of the flood of the century .

The trainer

Kees Rijvers, 1982

Rijvers moved quickly from the field to the coaching bench. In 1963/64 he coached an amateur team, then worked at Willem II Tilburg as assistant coach to the former national coach Jaap van der Leck and in 1966 began his first job as head coach at FC Twente , where he took over from Friedrich Donnenfeld . In Enschede they were very satisfied with the “new one” for six years, even if it wasn't enough to win a title. In 1972 PSV Eindhoven secured the services of the coach, and in the following eight years he created a highly successful team that not only won three championships (1975, 1976 and 1978) and twice the national cup (1974 and 1976), but also in 1978 - 3-0 and 0-0 against SEC Bastia  - also the UEFA Cup . It was neither the first nor the last encounter between the former AS Saint-Étienne professional and a French team: in the 1975/76 European Cup, ASSE of all people prepared "his" ASSE in the semifinals after two close matches (0-0 and 0-1) the dreams of the Dutch-German final PSV against Bayern come to an end. In the 1979/80 UEFA Cup , Eindhoven faced the Verts again , and this time the outcome was even more bitter: after a 2-0 home run, Rijvers' team were downright punished in the second leg and 6-0 from Stade Geoffroy-Guichard sent home.

It was probably not primarily because of this defeat that in 1980, after eight good years in Eindhoven, he felt the need for a new task offered by the Belgian first division club KVV Beringen-Heusden-Zolder . At the end of the season, however, the club was relegated from the first class , while Rijvers moved up: in March 1981 the Dutch Football Association KNVB had made him national coach ( bond coach ) . It goes with his biography that his first game in his new role was against France (1-0 in World Cup qualification, but the Équipe tricolore still drove to the World Cup finals ). In the following three and a half years (last game in October 1984) he laid the cornerstone for the Dutch championship title in 1988 , when he himself had not succeeded in getting the Elftal to the European Championship finals in 1984 : of the eleven players who then - in the final in Munich - should triumph, Ronald Koeman , Frank Rijkaard , Adri van Tiggelen , Erwin Koeman , Jan Wouters , Marco van Basten , Ruud Gullit and Gerald Vanenburg made their debut under Rijvers. This development of a young and successful team has earned him the appreciation of the professional world and many football fans in the Netherlands to this day.

After this activity he took a break, returned to FC Twente as technical director from 1986 to 1989 and then retired. However, this was interrupted again at the end of 1994 when PSV Eindhoven was temporarily without a coach and brought Rijvers on as an interim coach for almost three months until a successor was found in Dick Advocaat .

Rijvers then moved back to Saint-Pierre on the French Île d'Oléron , where he lived until the 2010s before returning to his birthplace, Breda-Princenhage. In 2004 his successor at the time as bond coach , Rinus Michels , presented him with the Œuvreprijs as an award for his coaching career.

Palmarès

as a player

• French champion : 1957
• French cup winner : 1962
• 33 international matches and 10 goals
• 220 games and 58 goals in Division 1 , including 199/51 for Saint-Étienne and 21/7 for Stade Français
• Winner of the Étoile d'Or as the most consistent player of the 1956/57 season

as a trainer

• Dutch champion : 1975, 1976, 1978
• Dutch Cup Winner : 1974, 1976
• UEFA Cup Winner : 1978
• Balance as national coach of the Netherlands:

	Term of office	S.	G - U - V
	23.3.81 - 17.10.84	19th	9 - 3 - 7

literature

• Antje Veld: Prof. De biography van Kees Rijvers. Thomas Rap, Amsterdam 2016, ISBN 978-9-4004-0492-2

Web links

• Kees Rijvers in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Remarks

1. ^ Jean-Philippe Rethacker / Jacques Thibert: La fabuleuse histoire du football. Minerva, Genève 1996, 2003 ² ISBN 978-2-8307-0661-1 , p. 185
2. ↑ Small Dochter schrijft boek over Kees Rijvers , NAC museum from April 14, 2016
3. ↑ http://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/ned-coach-triv.html