If I believed the bookies, we’re on our way to the Third Division. Me, I’m hoping we can make the play-offs.”The encyclopedic knowledge of Stoke’s director of football, John Rudge, has proved invaluable “He knows the game here in a way that I don’t Also, I don’t have the patience to sit in an office. John spoke for seven hours to the agent of Carl Hoefkens [a Belgian defender] I was saying, ‘Stop it, let him go’, but he went on. It made things difficult.”The chance to manage in England came after the father of Chelsea’s Eidur Gudjohnsen, a former opponent in Belgium, recommended him to Stoke’s largely Icelandic board “I had to be interested This is a real football country I’m crazy about the football of Spain, Portugal, Argentina.

If you were on his team and had the ball, it was not permitted to give it to anyone but him. When it was at his feet, he’d point and say, ‘You go there’.”In search of a regular game, Boskamp went to Molenbeek in Belgium and became footballer of the year. He later coached Anderlecht in three Champions’ League campaigns and worked in Georgia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “I went to the Gulf for a fresh start after my wife died four years ago The money was good and you don’t pay tax But the sheikhs would say, ‘This guy must play’. “We played Estudiantes, and the guy who got the winner, Joop van Daele, wore glasses when he played.

After he scored, one of the Argentinians took them off him and went like this!” Again he mimes, this time a trampling action.Boskamp feels privileged to have been part of “an incredible generation”. Cruyff was the greatest, a supernatural blend of technical virtuosity and tactical vision “I couldn’t get near enough to foul him. One of his myriad signings, Sambegou Bangoura, cost a club-record £750,000 from Standard Li?. The Guinean striker’s scoring record augurs well once the recruits have settled and the consistency the Dutch duo seek is established.Some might say you could scarcely get more consistent than Stoke in their last two fixtures: both were 1-0 away wins, over Hull and Preston, with Paul Gallagher scoring at exactly the same late stage each time. Yet the previous home game brought a 3-0 trouncing by Watford, and there was a Carling Cup exit at Mansfield that Boskamp branded “unacceptable”. In between, however, came a 3-1 victory over Norwich which had supporters and scribes drooling about “total football”.Does that label, so evocative of Cruyff, Neeskens and Rensenbrink, embody Boskamp’s aspirations for Stoke? “That would be good, but we have to be realistic.

Anyway, we Dutch didn’t really give our football that name like they did in other countries It was just the way we played; a reflection of our culture We had to play with style.”He learnt it in the streets. As a 12-year-old striker he was picked up by Feyenoord, going to play in midfield (as an enforcer in the Roy Keane mould) when the then European Cup holders contested the World Club Championship in 1970. He has Stoke passing their way up the park, while the club of Stanley Matthews are employing authentic wingers again. They have warmed to his Potteries-style bluntness (a Polish striker who spurned Stoke was dismissed on local radio as “a shit guy”). And the influential fanzine, The Oatcake, claims “the magic of the match-day experience has been reignited after last season’s effective but mind-numbingly boring football [under Tony Pulis]“.Boskamp, echoing Ruud Gullit, favours “sexy football”.

We were all thinking, ‘Are you crazy?’ But the ball flew in and we moved on to Buenos Aires, which was better for us. Then we reached the final.”Boskamp watched from the bench as the host nation took the trophy on a day when the Dutch bus was rocked by frenzied Argentinians en route to the game. Since he became the only non-British manager in the Championship, the ride has only occasionally been bumpy, although he did wonder, at an early match, whether the wheels were coming off.When the Stoke fans sang “Johan, give us a wave”, he turned glumly to his assistant Jan de Koning, an Amsterdam and Ajax man as opposed to his own background of Rotterdam and Feyenoord “They’re telling us to wave goodbye,” he said “They want to us to leave already.”Far from it. We always had to sit in our hotel, guarded by soldiers with rifles, some not even 14 years old. If we went for a walk in the grounds, there were two boys with guns at our shoulders.”There was a feeling of, ‘Aagh, what are we doing here?’ We weren’t happy. Suddenly we’re 3-1 down to Scotland and if they score again, we’re out and they’re through They were walking all over us.