Dick Advocaat

Dirk Nicolaas "Dick" Advocaat (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈdɪk ɑtfoːˈkaːt] ; born 27 September 1947) is a Dutch former football player and coach. He was most recently the manager of the Curaçao national football team.

Advocaat was successful as a football player and as a coach. He has coached a number of clubs in the Netherlands and abroad (including the Russian club Zenit Saint Petersburg, with which he won the 2008 UEFA Cup Final), as well as the national teams of a number of countries, including South Korea, Belgium and Russia. His nickname is "The Little General", a reference to his mentor Rinus Michels.

Club career

Advocaat was born in The Hague and was a defensive midfielder during his playing days. His career began as an 18-year-old with Hague club ADO Den Haag, and he made his professional debut with the club on 21 May 1967 in a 3–0 win against GVAV. He only featured for Den Haag once more that season, and that summer, the San Francisco Golden Gate Gales franchise imported the Den Haag team, which included Advocaat, to play for six weeks in the United Soccer Association as part of an effort to make the sport more popular in the United States. It was the following season that Advocaat won his only honour as a player, the KNVB Cup, in 1968. In the 1969–70 season, he became a regular in the side, making 29 appearances and scoring his first goal for the club. He made 33 appearances the season after that. From the 1971–72, the club merged with Holland Sport to become FC Den Haag. That season, his final one for the club, Advocaat made a further 66 appearances and scored 6 goals. In total, he made 147 appearances and scored 7 goals for the club.