FC Cincinnati and Jaap Stam: Great players do not make great managers

According to The Athletic, FC Cincinnati are chasing Jaap Stam as their new head coach. But while the defender was a great player, that does not make him a great manager.

FC Cincinnati need a new head coach. It is two months since Ron Jans resigned after he uttered a racial slur in the dressing room that upset players. But FCC have been keen to take their time and ensure they find the right successor, which is, of course, not just their prerogative but a smart process following their 2019 disaster. They cannot afford to make the wrong hire.

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But with the COVID-19 outbreak disrupting the world over, the coaching search has been slowed and delayed as a result, as FC Cincinnati General Manager Gerard Nijkamp explained last week:

"“The coaching search is part of the challenge. If we don’t know when we restart this league, it will impact when we appoint a head coach. Of course, if we appointed a head coach today he’d get time to share his idea with staff and interact with the players but we have to keep in our minds to take responsibility for all members of the club. In this case, the timing for getting a new head coach is key. I’m still talking with a few candidates. We’re delaying a little bit but not cancelling.”"

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Despite the difficulties that COVID-19 caused, however, two months is plenty of time to conduct a sufficient and detailed coaching search. And per The Athletic, FC Cincinnati are narrowing down on their final candidates. The two names Paul Tenorio reports are leading the way are Dominic Kinnear, one of the most successful MLS coaches in history but having potentially lost touch with the evolution of the modern game, and Dutch footballing legend, Jaap Stam.

Plenty is known about Kinnear in MLS. He won two MLS Cups as the head coach of the Houston Dynamo, was an assistant with San Jose for two MLS Cup triumphs, and has won more matches than any coach in the league bar Bruce Arena and Sigi Schmid. But Stam is much more of an unknown commodity, and perhaps not a positive way.

The former Manchester United defender was one of the great centre-backs of his generation. He was a part of the treble-winning 1999 team, one of the greatest club teams in history. He was named the UEFA Best Defender of the Year in 1999 and 2000. He won three-straight Premier League titles and was named the Dutch Footballer of the Year in 1997.

And yet, despite his enormously successful playing career, it has not translated to his coaching. In fact, Stam has held three head coaching jobs, and he has largely failed in each.

His first permanent role came as Reading manager in June 2016. He formed a superb team in his first year, inspiring a Reading team that received limited investment in comparison to their Championship rivals into the playoffs. Reading finished the year in third position after slumping to 19th and 17th-placed finishes over the previous two seasons. He would miss out on promotion in the playoff final on penalties. That was his greatest season as a manager.

Within a year, Stam and Reading parted ways after the team fell to 20th in the table and had just one win in their last 18 matches. Six months later, he was hired by PEC Zwolle — and FC Cincinnati GM Nijkamp — to be their head coach. He stayed there until the end of the season, winning just 41.2% of his 17 matches in charge.

He then moved to Feyenoord in the summer. Stam would flounder. He resigned after five months and 18 matches following a 4-0 defeat to Ajax, stating, “I’ve thought about this for a long time. My final conclusion is that it’s better for the club, the players and myself if I step aside.”

In the end, Stam has failed as a head coach. That does not mean he will be a bad hire, of course. Managers have good and bad tenures. But just because he was a great player and is friends with Nijkamp is not sufficient reason to appoint him. FC Cincinnati must provide more reason than that.