This Is The Role Of Jordi Cruyff As Indonesian National Team Technical Advisor

Jordi Cruyff, while still Maccabi Tel Aviv's manager in a 2017 Soccerex Global Convention discussion panel at Manchester, England (4/9/2017). (ANTARA/AFP/Paul Ellis/aa)

JAKARTA - Chairman of the All-Indonesian Football Association (PSSI) Erick Thohir appointed former Barcelona Sports Director Jordi Cruyff as a technical advisor or Technical Advisor for the Indonesian National Team starting last February. This appointment is also a series of changes made by PSSI following the appointment of Patrick Kluivert as head coach of the Garuda squad.

The appointment of Jordi Cruyff as Indonesia's Technical Advisor has yet to close the confusion regarding the vacant seats of the Technical Director, which were previously filled by names such as Frank Sayututh (2024), Nova Arianto (2023-2024) and Indra Sjafri (2020-2023 and 2024).

The presence of Jordi, who is the son of perfect "Total Football" and soccer legend Johan Cruyff, is certainly expected to be able to carry the vision of Garuda football in the short to long term.

PSSI still has not clearly disclosed the tasks of the man from the Netherlands in helping to deal with Indonesian football.

In modern football, there are terms regarding the director of football, director of engineering, director of sports or technical advisors who have a general role that is almost similar, namely being a bridge between club management or federation and head coach to consider all policies.

This development occurred because in the past the role that was too much was carried out by a coach who functioned not only to regulate tactics on the field, but also to cover operator functions including finance to commercial.

This period cannot be separated from the role played by the two legendary coaches Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United) and Arsene Wenger (Arsenal) to give rise to the term acronymization of their function as Director of Football.

"The title of director of football (DoF) seems to be an existing anachronism from ancient times when managers tended to be operators that included everything ... such as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, whose power in almost all aspects of their football club finance and commercial operations almost total," wrote the Premier League page.

With such too many functions, a number of federations and clubs separate head coach duties from sports directors, technical directors, technical advisors or directors of football.

No one has definitely determined the function of the technical director or technical advisor in the club or federation. Although now many clubs and federations have used these positions to build strategic bases within the team.

However, in general, technical advisors have a role to play in shaping and maintaining the club's long-term football philosophy from the academy to senior levels.

For example, in the Real Madrid team with Technical Director Pedrag Mijatovic who played a role in analyzing and giving opinions to President Florentino Perez regarding the potentials of star players who could be brought in the project and philosophy of the club, which is famous for signing star players, "Los Galacticos".

Much earlier in 2019, Roman Abrahamovich-era Chelsea had introduced the term Technical Advisor carried by club legend Petr Cech.

The function of Cech plays a more technical and tactical role to the team by reviewing the team's performance from junior to senior who will later facilitate the role of team management to determine future policies.

At the level of the national team, the role of Jordi Cruyff will not be much different, namely helping to improve team strategy and management.

PSSI General Chair Erick Thohir said that Jordi would also serve as a coach's performance analyst, as well as the task of optimizing players from amateur to professional levels.

In addition, it must also help develop a philosophical strategy to develop sustainable and sustainable programs ranging from local to national levels.

The focus of his duties is to develop training methodologies and develop players from grassroots to long-term technical development from junior to senior age.

As the biological child of "the father of total football" of course Jordi Cruyff has the same philosophy of football as his father, Johan.

The philosophy of football's total football is a style of play that emphasizes that every player's position can exchange constantly, relying on flexibility and players must do their job of defending and attacking.

The style of this game was actually introduced by Rinus Michels in 1974 when they handled Ajax Amsterdam and the Dutch national team.

However, Johan Cruyff, who was Barcelona coach in the 1990s, perfected the style of play created by Rinus, which made this philosophy very identified with him.

It is not impossible that later Jordi Cruyff will implement this philosophy into the strategy of the Indonesian national team, especially since the majority of Indonesian national players are now naturalized players who have studied at the Dutch academy.

Another factor that supports adalab in terms of physicality. Total football's game does not require its players to rely on body posture, but rather on fluid movements and take advantage of each other's space, both in the attacking and defensive phases.

This condition is certainly very possible for Total Football to be implemented in Indonesia, which in fact starts from the national team at the U-15 to senior levels, very rarely has tall players such as the Australian national team or the national team from Europe.

Jordi Cruyff has a wealth of experience in operating on the "turnover". Before signing the decision with Indonesia, Jordi was a former Barcelona Sports Director in the era of President Joan Laporta from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023.

In that era,Barcelona, which entered a period of monetary crisis, was able to gradually recover through crucial policies, especially by orbiting academy players and being more observant in taking advantage of the situation in the transfer market by bringing in top players for free.

During this time Barcelona brought in names such as Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich), Jules Kunde (Sevilla), Raphinha (Leeds United), Pablo Torre (Racing Santander) to Franck Kessie (AC Milan) in the transfer market.

In addition, in this time, players such as Lamine Yamal, Marc Guiu, Marc Casado, and Pau Primdiorbit were included in the main squad.

Before taking on this role, Jordi also briefly became Director of Barcelona Sports in the 2021-2022 season.

The short-term and long-term strategy that was carried out while Jordi was still at Barcelona was actually able to bring the Catalan club to continue competing at the top of the Spanish League.

The peak occurred in the 2022-2023 season, when the Blaugrana secured the Spanish League title for the 27th time in the club's history.

Jordi also served as Sport Director of Tel Aviv (2017-2018) and AEK Larnaca (2010-2012).

With the background and a myriad of proven behind-the-scenes experiences, the presence of Jordi Cruyff is certainly expected to be able to bring Garuda to fly higher to the world level with the main target of qualifying for the 2026 World Cup.