USL Feature
Saturday, April 16, 2011
By NICHOLAS MURRAY
When the Dayton Dutch Lions take to the field on Saturday night for the first professional game in the club’s history, it will mark the culmination of a hard six months of work by the club’s staff and most notably Technical Director Cor van Hoeven.
Formerly an assistant coach in both the Dutch and Finnish Premier Leagues, a head coach in the Dutch second division as well as an instructor in the Royal Dutch National Soccer Association, van Hoeven was brought in to help the club continue to build its philosophy of playing and teaching the game in the manner that has made the Netherlands one of the foremost soccer nations.
For van Hoeven, the chance to come and build a club in the Dutch style was too good an opportunity to pass up.
“I trained some of the guys, we had some special training sessions with the guys and I knew them and they were very positive about next season, so I was interested to come to Dayton and work with the side,” van Hoeven said by phone. “Also the idea of the Academy, that is one of the things I like, to work with the young kids and to develop young kids with the special training techniques. It was, for me, very important to work with the first team and the academy kids to build our own soccer school to do technical training with the young kids and help them develop.”
Building a team for the 2011 USL PRO season, though, was a challenge. With only a handful of players from the club’s 2010 Premier Development League side making the move to the next level with the club, it left van Hoeven and Coach Ivar van Dinteren to assemble a squad that would not only allow the club to try and play in the style the club was aiming for, but also gave the Dutch Lions the ability to build the club long-term.
“Last year was the first year and a lot of things have changed,” van Hoeven said. “We’re now playing on a higher level so it was not easy to find the right players and also the system. With the tryouts, it’s sometimes difficult to see a player and evaluate him in the right way, so that was the big challenge, to bring a group together who can play in our philosophy, especially with the techniques and the tactics.”
What it resulted in is a very young, malleable squad that van Hoeven hopes will be around for a while and grow with the club. The average age of the 20 players on opening day will be just under 23 years old, which means the club’s more experienced players, like former Cleveland City Stars player Kolby LaCrone and Bahamian international Happy Hall, will have a role to play in helping the club against some of the more established teams in the league.
“The older players, like Happy, are going to be very important,” van Hoeven said. “The young players, they have their ups and downs. Sometimes they can play very good, the next match they can be not very good, and that’s part of being a young team. For all the players that have the experience to lead the team on the field and around the field, it’s very important to have those older players.”
The first test will come from the 2010 USL-2 champion Charleston Battery, not exactly the easiest team to meet in your first professional contest. But van Hoeven is looking forward to the challenge.
“I like it,” he said. “It’s a challenge, especially for a young team. Hopefully we can play with a young team and not be anxious, not be afraid and show what they can and believe in themselves. I’m looking forward to it, I’m sure they will be a very good opponent and this is the first serious test for us to see how far this team has come in its preparations.”
The club’s plan, though, is for much more than one game, or even one season.
“We don’t have a goal that we’ve set,” van Hoeven said. “First, if we can play in the middle, if we can play the tough games, if we can develop the team. Again, we’re looking further than this season. If we can keep a group of players for next season and make that next step, that’s the most important thing for this year.”