Blind Danny is a Dutch coach, and formerly a footballer. Now he is 55 years old, and he coaches the Dutch team. In those days, when he was still a player, Blind Danny played in the position of libero, but also could play on the right flank of both defense and midfield.
The beginning of a career and the game in Sparta
Blind Danny was born on August 1, 1961 in Holland, where he began to play football at the Sparta Academy of Rotterdam from an early age. It was with this club that Danny signed a professional contract in 1979, when he was 18 years old. At first, he was used in the club exclusively as a successor to more experienced players, so in three seasons he played only 37 matches. However, since 1982, Blind Danny has become a player in the foundation of the club, and gradually turned into a key player for the team. In total, the Sparta Libero spent seven years - he entered the field 165 times, scoring 18 goals. The Dutchman entered the top ten champions in the number of matches for the club, but in 1986 he went on a promotion, moving to the strongest club in the country “Ajax”.
The game for Ajax
Danny Blind is a footballer who had a very great talent, so he could not stay in his middle club all his career. That is why in 1986, a 25-year-old player went to the capital for trophies. Then he immediately became the basis and quickly acquired a key role. It was with Ajax that Blind linked his career - here he became the Dutch champion five times, won the Holland Cup four times, won the UEFA Cup in 1992, and in 1995 reached the pinnacle of success - he won the Champions League. The reason for this was the fact that Blind had an impressive supply of health and stamina. Most of the players finish their careers in the region of 33 years, and Danny moved to Ajax at 25 and spent 13 seasons for the capital's club. He ended his career in 1999 at the age of 38. Naturally, with such a long career, the most basic until today for the record holder of Ajax is precisely Danny Blind. Statistics of the player in the Dutch club are amazing - 482 matches and 36 goals.
Team appearances
In the Dutch team, Blind did not work out as well as at the club level. He made his debut only in 1986, when he moved to Ajax - before that he had not been stubbornly noticed, since he played for the not-so-outstanding club. In the end, Blind spent only 42 matches in a Dutch national team shirt, scoring one goal. The only big tournament the Dutchman went to was the 1996 European Championship, where he played three of four matches at the base.
Coaching career
As soon as Blind completed the player’s career, he immediately started working as a coach. He started as a coach of the Ajax youth team - in this position Blind worked for six years, after which he was appointed head coach of the Amsterdam club. However, his success was far from the most impressive, so in the summer of 2006 he was fired. A year later, he moved to his native Rotterdam Sparta, where he became a sports director, and a year later he was invited to this position in Ajax. He worked there for another year, after which he became an assistant coach - for two years he worked under the supervision of Martin Yoll and Frank de Boer, and in 2001 he again became a sports director. In the summer of 2012, everything changed, since Blind was included in the coaching staff of the Dutch national team. There, for three years he was an assistant coach - Louis van Gal and Guus Hiddink. And in the summer of 2015 he was himself appointed coach of the national team - he still works in this position. At the moment, as a coach, Blind won almost no trophies. His biggest achievement was the victory in the Holland Cup in 2006 with Ajax. However, Danny is not so many years - he still has many years of coaching ahead. It is unlikely that he will now be someone else's assistant, although the debut in the national team was not the most rosy one - the Dutch were unable to reach the final part of the 2016 European Championship.