De geest van Cruijff (die hem ter wereld bracht) is weg uit Nederland

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Op zaterdag 24 december 2016 14:38 schreef Hexagon het volgende:

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Dus als Verstappen het doet is het onbeschoft en als Cruijf het doet is hij een creatieve geest. Zo kan ik ook alles in mijn politieke straatje draaien.

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Dus als je plat pratend arbeideresk uit de hoofdstad komt zoals Johan, dan ben je werelds en als je uit Limburg of Friesland komt niet.

Dus eigenlijk ben je gewoon een arrogante mokummer voor wie alles buiten de hoofdstad te min is?

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If we discount sports stars (such as soccer player Eusébio or marathonist Carlos Lopes) and the political leaders mentioned above, only two Portuguese have received a Nobel Prize or made it into the TIME list of most influential people or the Foreign Policy list of global thinkers. They are novelist José Saramago and neurologist Egas Moniz.

If we use the same logic to compare Portugal with other European nations of a similar size, Guterres’ country doesn’t fare well. Ahead of Portugal is Sweden (36 people), Austria (20), Belgium (18), Hungary (11), Czech Republic (9) and Greece (7). Portuguese businessmen, scientists or artists of a certain generation have not excelled on the international stage.

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Op woensdag 21 december 2016 23:36 schreef Ryan3 het volgende:

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1) Leuk om dit omhoog te schoppen, heb weer even met interesse mijn eigen post gelezen. . Waar ik nog wel achter sta ergens.
2) Grappige dat we nu vlak voor onze verkiezingen, na het eerste kabinet dat de rit volbracht sinds Paars1, een narratief krijgen (in ons land althans) waarbij je dat Hollands exceptionalisme weer ziet. NL als beste landje ter wereld. Maar nergens, op geen enkel lijstje nummer 1 hè.
3) Ik sta nog wel achter wat ik paar maanden geleden schreef toch. Ik vind het allemaal gepronk. Mensen uit andere werelddelen zien NL wel als gek landje, maar ja, ik zie IJsland ook als gek landje, zo moet je het zien, denk ik.
4) In IJsland heb je geen zwervers, en hier steeds meer. Want in IJsland vries je dood, en hier alleen in de winter en dus hebben ze shelters en als er dan nog zwervers zijn dan zetten we ze voor schut zoals je onlangs zag op twitter en geven we ze een bon van 149 ¤.

In het kader van de komende verkiezingen, onze geschiedenis, ons heden en waar we naar toe gaan, goeie schop, Klop.

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Op woensdag 4 januari 2017 07:43 schreef Hexagon het volgende:

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En anders zo'n typisch mokumse houding naar de rest van het land

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Op zondag 19 februari 2017 21:11 schreef Tijger_nootje het volgende:

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Maar gek genoeg doet het Nederland het op alle fronten erg goed, economisch gaat het beterdan gemiddeld, we hebben minder staatsschuld dan wie dan ook, we hebben uitstekende gezondheidszorg, we scoren hoog in alle internationale onderzoeken over kinderen en over blijdschap maar blijkbaar moeten we meer dom Cruyff gelul hebben.

Wat heeft Cruyffs revolutie bij Ajax dan wel bewerkstelligd behalve dat er veel mensen beschadigd zijn?
Jij vind Cruyff blijkbaar fantastisch maar ik denk dat je even vergeet dat er veel meer mensen in Nederland zijn die een heel ander idee hebben van hem.

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Op maandag 20 februari 2017 12:08 schreef Tijger_nootje het volgende:

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Leuk, cijfers uit 2005. Nuttig ook.

Maar je gaat totaal niet in op mijn punt, dank daarvoor.

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Op maandag 20 februari 2017 12:24 schreef Tijger_nootje het volgende:

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Het punt is niet waar we op zo'n lijstje staan maar dat we een van de landen bovenaan zijn. Anyway, veel succes met je windmolens en de geest van Cruyff, ik ben er niet rouwig om dat die geest weg is.

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Op maandag 2 januari 2017 23:26 schreef Hexagon het volgende:

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Ik zeg toch ook dat het iets kleins is?

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Op maandag 20 februari 2017 12:32 schreef Tijger_nootje het volgende:

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Wat heeft Cruyff bereikt voor Nederland? Toen het er op aankwam om voor Nederland te staan gaf hij niet thuis in 78. Dat is de geest van Cruyff. Zakelijk een faalhaas, bij Ajax een konkelende intrigant die mensen beschadigde en uiteindelijk won en niets bereikte daarmee.

SPOILER

Om spoilers te kunnen lezen moet je zijn ingelogd. Je moet je daarvoor eerst gratis Registreren. Ook kun je spoilers niet lezen als je een ban hebt.

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Op maandag 6 maart 2017 22:16 schreef LXIV het volgende:

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Dan is het eerder het alles steeds kostenefficienter/doelmatiger proberen te maken de boosdoener. Want efficiency is een kwestie van ratio, niet van kunst. Er komt dus een optimum uit, maar geen resultaat dat het optimum nog overstijgt.

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Wenger has failed to evolve and his blinkered mindset might ruin Arsenal

It is remarkable that Kodak was, at one time, a byword for innovation. In 1900, it patented the Box Brownie, a cardboard machine with a meniscus lens that took pictures on 117 roll film. In 1935, it introduced Kodachrome, the first colour reversal film. In 1963, it rolled out the iconic, easy to load Instamatic camera, which I remember my grandfather using when I was a child.

Polaroid, too, had a reputation for dynamism. It created the instant camera, introduced sepia film, and brought instant colour photography to the masses. Between 1948 and 1976, revenues jumped from less than $7 million to $950 million, and it seemed as if it would continue to surf the wave of the mass desire to have durable memories in the form of pictures.

We all know what happened next. Polaroid tanked, and Kodak, after years of stagnation, filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The immediate problem was the rise of digital photography, but the deeper cause was to be found in the internal dynamics of these two companies. They were blinded by their own success. They kept harking back to the innovations of the past, and stopped looking for the victories of the future.

I will return to Kodak and Polaroid, but first an examination of Arsenal under Arsène Wenger. For this is a club who, for a long time, had a reputation for innovation. When the Frenchman arrived on these shores, he leveraged his broad understanding of science to alter many of the basic assumptions of English football. He transformed training methods, using short, razor-sharp sessions, carefully timed and logged, and turned up the temperature on the team bus to keep muscles supple.

He changed the diet, introducing more vegetables and vitamin supplements, discouraging alcohol, fat and sugar; he recalibrated recruitment by widening and strengthening the scouting network (in 2005, he was the first manager to field a matchday squad comprised entirely of foreign players); he introduced stretching to a team who had previously shunned the activity; he hired an osteopath; and he altered the training pitch to match the dimensions of that of the stadium.

But after years of punctuated success, Arsenal have stagnated, an assessment bolstered by the performance on Saturday, when Wenger made a change that signally backfired. He left Alexis Sánchez, his best player, on the bench, and his team failed to have a single touch in the Liverpool box in the first half, eventually going down 3-1. Afterwards, it emerged that there had been a falling out between Wenger and Sánchez, a story dominating the back pages. But most Arsenal fans will agree that the real problem goes much deeper.

Now, many Arsenal fans will testify that this kind of stubbornness is not a one-off; it is symbolic. If you look at the arc of the past few seasons, Wenger has found it increasingly difficult to question his own assumptions (on Saturday, he said he had no regrets about dropping his star player), particularly when things have gone against him. When it comes to transfer policy, training methods, nutrition, rehabilitation, tactics, and other aspects of performance, he has, with only a few exceptions, stuck to the concepts that secured his early success and for which he has become famous. In other words, historic innovations.

Criticism from outside the club has been regarded, not as an opportunity to think differently, but as a reason to hunker down. Instead of looking beyond the barricades of the club, to other sports and industries, for fresh ideas, as the young Wenger once did, the tendency has been to point to the past by way of self-justification.

How often have we heard the refrain that a consistent top-four finish over recent years validates everything that is happening at Arsenal?

As for criticism from within the club, this is conspicuous by its absence. Wenger is very much the boss, which is no bad thing, but it can be fatal if it suppresses the voices that might jolt him into an overdue recognition that success requires continuous evolution.

There are many bright people at the club who fear that any suggestion, however constructive, might jeopardise their position, given that Wenger has begun to inhabit a somewhat blinkered mindset.

It is ironic, to switch focus, that Kodak invented the digital camera. In 1975, an engineer called Steve Sasson developed a device that could take photos with 10,000 pixels. Sadly, the bosses at the company were so focused on past triumphs, and were so stubbornly set on print, that they did not exploit a crucial head start. As one analyst put it: “If you want to point to the pivotal moment, it was in 1975 when they discovered the digital camera and put it back into a closet.”

At Polaroid, a similar story played out. As digital emerged, the leader of the company, instead of embracing this new technology, doggedly stuck to what he knew best, “surrounding himself with devoted followers who would do his bidding,” as one colleague put it. He eventually started working on a separate floor where critics were denied access. This is not untypical of once-successful leaders who hit problems.

In one famous study, the more trouble a company was in, the more chief executives would seek advice from people who parroted their perspective, rather than those who may challenge it. This is perilous because it fosters groupthink. It creates a bunker mentality.

Instead of reaching out, innovating, evolving and adapting, the very qualities that drove the success of companies such as Kodak and Polaroid, and clubs such as Arsenal, there is a tendency to use the successes of the past to legitimate the strategy of the present, thus jeopardising the future. As one Wenger critic put it: “He is a bright man, but he struggles to reinvent himself.”

Sir Alex Ferguson, one of the few managers to have engineered long-term success, was in a constant quest for reinvention. We all know about the early innovations: the staggering of players’ contracts; the focus on possession; watching training from the sidelines rather than in the mix to gain a more global perspective (he called this “the most important decision I ever made”); and the battle against the alcohol culture at United.

But even after his early successes he continued to evolve: hiring a nutritionist; introducing compression socks to aid recovery; recruiting a specialist to improve peripheral vision (after a grey strip led to poor results); revolutionising health checks; and trialling new tactics, not least after a 4-0 rout by Barcelona in 1994 following which he put an extra man in midfield, and split the strikers. He also encouraged staff and players to offer ideas, unafraid to be challenged provided that he remained the ultimate decision maker, even creating a competition about who could guess the opposition line-up.

Above all, Ferguson never trumpeted the victories of the past, fearful that it might lead to contentment or, worse, stagnation. “Complacency is a disease, especially for individuals and organisations that have enjoyed success...” he has said. “For me, the questions going through the back of my mind during any celebration were, ‘How do we top this? How do we get another triumph?’

“I always felt I had to be in the vanguard of tomorrow.”

These words might offer a useful corrective to Wenger, a manager with keen intellect and work ethic, but who has become a hostage to history. In that sense many will regard the reported tendency of Sánchez to challenge players if they underperform as precisely the mindset that Arsenal require. For too long, the club has been focused upon the glories of yesterday. It is time to focus upon the triumphs of tomorrow.

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Hoe kan Nederland opstoten in de vaart der volkeren
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Een betere benutting van het Nederlandse potentieel aan menselijk kapitaal vergt volgens de OESO-adviezen verbetering van voorschoolse en vroegtijdige educatie, sterkere bevordering van excellentie en professionaliteit van leraren op scholen, een betere integratie van immigranten, krachtiger aanpak van langdurige werkloosheid, verdere verkleining van de kloof tussen vaste en flexibele contracten en hogere urenparticipatie van vrouwen en oudere werknemers.