FC Cincinnati: General manager Gerard Nijkamp to bring total football?

Dutch sporting director Gerard Nijkamp has been hired by FC Cincinnati as their general manager. Could he now bring the Dutch staple, total football, to MLS?

FC Cincinnati have hired a new General Manager. Dutch sporting director Gerard Nijkamp shall be the man to move the MLS expansion forward after Alan Koch’s departure earlier this season.

And how will this FCC general manager see soccer developing for FC Cincinnati? As he finishes out his career as sporting director of PEC Zwolle in the Netherlands, Nijkamp is learning where FC Cincinnati is, what personnel the team has and their abilities, and developing a firm idea of where FCC needs to go and how he can help guide them there from day one.

In this and the previous century in the Netherlands, soccer never has been emerging entertainment, nor has it existed as what sports media members call summer junk sports. It is a part and parcel of the country’s culture, an identity of the society.

The Dutch national team failed to qualify for the 2016 European championship and the 2018 World Cup, and damning disaster for a team steeped in such rich footballing history. And that footballing history stems from the style that has taken to the Dutch pitches. The best news for FC Cincinnati is that Nijkamp may very well bring an evolved version of this great Dutch invention. That is total football.

Europeans coined the ‘total football’ term after watching Dutch soccer legend Johan Cruyff play it internationally in the 1970s. The way to understand soccer back then was plenty simple. It was 4-2-2. Done.

Then Cruyff came on the little tv screens. He played striker. Or was it attacking midfielder? He once tried to explain the theory: There’s only one ball. You have to have it. Someone more clinical described it as movement into space.

If it were American rules football, Cruyff would be that player who scouts describe as swarming to the ball. But that’s still not Dutch total football, not entirely.

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Cruyff then got his teammates, all to the best of their ability, to not only swarm to the ball but also to instantly spot areas other players had vacated. Strikers would then occupy those areas and receive the ball. Pass and move. Pass and move.

But that’s still not total football. The real beauty of the approach is the positional abandonment of every single player on the pitch.  Every player should get ready to work in every position. As Cruyff said, playing football is simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is. And total football is so simple that it looks complicated. Eventually, Cruyff would take it to Barcelona in the 90s. Pep Guardiola was a player at the time. He would adapt it and develop tika-taka. Total football changed the game entirely.

Nijkamp has spent seven years as PEC Zwolle technical director. The team plays in the Eredivisie and, in 2014, they won the KNVB Cup. He had success in the home of total football, and now he will try to bring it Stateside.

The next GM gets first pick in hiring the new FC Cincinnati head coach. Nijkamp comes from an organization that, when they won big, used the 4-3-3. Interim head coach Yoann Damet also likes that formation. Total football could drive MLS competition crazy if Nijkamp and Damet get it to work.