Fri | Nov 21, 2025

Beenhakker, the Dutchman who coached Real Madrid and T&T dies at 82

Published:Saturday | April 12, 2025 | 12:08 AM
Trinidad and Tobago’s coach Leo Beenhakker listens to the national anthems before their FIFA World Cup Group B match against England in Nuremberg, Germany on Thursday, June 15, 2006.
AP
Trinidad and Tobago’s coach Leo Beenhakker listens to the national anthems before their FIFA World Cup Group B match against England in Nuremberg, Germany on Thursday, June 15, 2006.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP):

Leo Beenhakker, the Dutch football coach who led two national teams at World Cups and won three league titles with Real Madrid, has died. He was 82.

“Beenhakker was a coaching icon and a truly unique figure at Ajax,” the storied Amsterdam club Ajax said in a statement announcing his death late Thursday. The cause of death was not given.

He coached Ajax in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s – winning two Dutch league titles, and a third with their fierce rivals Feyenoord – and three straight La Liga titles with Real Madrid from 1987 to 1989.

In the Netherlands, he is credited with calling the iconic European Cup trophy “the cup with the big ears” though it was a title that eluded him.

Beenhakker took his teams to four European Cup semi-finals but lost one with Ajax in 1980 and in each of his three seasons during his first spell with Madrid.

“Real Madrid would like to express their condolences and affection to his family, clubs, and loved ones,” the club said in a statement yesterday.

Beenhakker also had two spells with the Dutch national team, briefly in 1985 then taking the gifted European champions to the 1990 World Cup. With dissent in the camp, the team did not win a game and lost a famously bad-tempered round of 16 clash with eventual champions West Germany.

He later steered Trinidad and Tobago through qualifying to their first World Cup in 2006.

Beenhakker also coached the national teams of Saudi Arabia and Poland. He led Poland to a first European Championship in 2008. His teams never won a game at a finals tournament.

He coached clubs in Mexico, Switzerland and Turkey, and returned to Ajax as technical director in 2000 where he was an influence on a young Zlatan Ibrahimovic.

“What he saw, I became. And that is the best,” Ibrahimovic once said of his early-career mentor.

Former Ajax captain Jan Wouters, a member of the 1990 World Cup squad, said Beenhakker “could really motivate a group. A very human coach who understood things beyond football”.