Leo Beenhakker, Dutch soccer great who coached Real Madrid and two World Cup teams, dies at 82

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Leo Beenhakker, the Dutch soccer 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 said in a statement announcing his death late Thursday. The cause of death was not given.

He coached Ajax in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s — winning two Dutch league titles, and a third with its fierce rival Feyenoord — and three straight La Liga titles with Madrid from 1987 to ’89.

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 semifinals 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 Friday.

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 champion West Germany.

He later steered Trinidad and Tobago through qualifying to its 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.”

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