Vercauteren:
“I want football to be played the proper way, with the ball
on the ground and every single person in the team
playing his part,” he once said. “I want my football teams to entertain as well as win.
This is how I was brought up and it’s why I fell in love
with the game. Nobody remembers boring football
teams, so why would any coach set up his team to be
that?”
Vercauteren had plenty of time to develop his own managerial philosophy while serving a lengthy apprenticeship at the club (as assistant for seven years, first to Aime Anthuenis then to former team-mate Hugo Broos), but unlike many who go onto be the polar opposite of their playing selves in the coaching world, he stuck to his guns.He tends to go with young players, real athletes
suitable for the high-energy pressing game he
has favoured since his successful spell in charge
of Anderlecht between 2005 and 2007, during
which he won successive Belgian league titles.The coach’s habitual 4-4-2 is an entertaining,
attacking beast. Genk finished as top scorers in
the regular league season in 2010/11, just as his
champion Anderlecht sides had done in 2006
and 2007.Vercauteren likes to play with genuine wide
players, like Elyaniv Barda and the promising
young Belgian Kevin de Bruyne, with the
emphasis on quick, incisive movement of the ball
and the midfield encouraged to rush on and
support the forwards – at Genk, usually the prolific pair of Jelle Vossen and Marvin Ogunjimi.En route to the championship title, Vercauteren
instilled a formidable spirit into a (by modern
standards) very small squad, making light of the
superior resources of rivals Anderlecht and
Standard Liege. Genk’s mental strength was
again apparent in mid-July’s Super Cup win over Standard, pulled off despite playing the final hour
with ten men following the harsh sending-off of
star forward Vossen.If there is a weakness to Vercauteren’s modus
operandi, perhaps the boundless enthusiasm he
inspires is it. The intensity he habitually demands
contributed to Anderlecht’s downfall in the first
Champions League campaign he oversaw, in
2006/07. Despite competing well in a pool featuring Lille, AEK Athens and eventual winners
Milan, Vercauteren’s men finished bottom of the
pile.