Martin Jol

Maarten Cornelis "Martin" Jol (born 16 January 1956) is a Dutch football manager and former midfielder.

He played over 400 games during his career which included spells in the Netherlands, Germany and England, as well as earning three caps with the Netherlands national team.

He subsequently became a manager and has worked for Roda JC, RKC Waalwijk and Ajax in his homeland, as well as German Bundesliga club Hamburger SV and English Premier League clubs Tottenham Hotspur and Fulham and Egypt's Al Ahly.

Jol was born in The Hague.

He started his playing career with an amateur team before joining the local professional side ADO Den Haag.

The season saw Tottenham concede just 38 league goals, the fewest the club has conceded since 1971.

He turned professional with Den Haag in 1973.

He won the 1975 Dutch Cup with the team defeating Twente.

He played in the Bundesliga for the 1978–79 season with Bayern Munich before returning to the Dutch Eredivisie to play for Twente in 1979.

While with Twente, he won his first cap for the Netherlands national football team in October 1980.

He also made three appearances for the senior team, and competed at the 1980 Mundialito held in Uruguay.

Jol moved to England in 1981, joining West Bromwich Albion.

He appeared in the semi-finals of both domestic cup competitions in 1981–82.

He signed for Coventry City in 1984 but wanted to leave the club after manager Bobby Gould was asked to leave.

Jol returned to Den Haag in 1985, and won the 1985 Dutch Footballer of the Year award in the Eerste Divisie league.

At international level, Jol won ten schoolboy caps, 20 'B' caps, 12 Under-21 caps and 12 Under-23 caps.

Nevertheless, Jol had led Tottenham to their highest league finish since 1990, which meant they had qualified for the UEFA Cup via the league for the first time since the ban on English clubs playing in Europe was lifted in 1990.

Jol's coaching career began in 1991 when he took over at the amateur side ADO Den Haag and took them to the highest local amateur division.

Jol then moved to the leading local amateur side Scheveningen for one season, where he won the national non-league championship.

After winning five league games in a row, Tottenham's best run of form since the 1992–1993 season, he won the FA Manager of the Month award in December 2004 and was strongly linked in the press with the then vacant managerial job at Ajax of Amsterdam.

Jol, however, ruled out moving clubs early.

Jol led Tottenham to the verge of European qualification but the season ended with a ninth-place finish in the Premier League after a final day draw at home to Blackburn Rovers.

This meant Spurs missed out on the UEFA Cup spot by two points.

Jol then spent two years as manager at the professional Eredivisie side Roda JC from the town of Kerkrade, during which time he won the Dutch Cup in 1997, Roda's first trophy for 30 years.

Between 1998 and 2004, Jol managed the Dutch professional team RKC Waalwijk.

He started there in November with only three points at the bottom of the table.

He saved them from relegation in their first year and was in contention for European football in the years after.

He was honoured with the Dutch Football Writers Coach of the Year 2001 and with the Dutch Players and Coaches Coach of the Year 2002 awards.

RKC Waalwijk denied reports in June 2004 that Jol was about to become assistant manager of Tottenham Hotspur.

Several days later, however, Jol was given the job under Tottenham's new coach, Jacques Santini, having been recruited by Tottenham's sporting director Frank Arnesen.

Santini resigned from the manager's job after just 13 games, and on 8 November 2004, Jol was confirmed as his replacement.

In his first season in charge, Jol improved their league fortunes and scrapped the defensive nature of play that Santini had instilled.

In August 2005, he signed a new three-year contract with Tottenham.

Tottenham warmed up for the 2005–06 season by winning the pre-season tournament the Peace Cup, which featured such clubs as PSV, Lyon, Boca Juniors; Tottenham defeated Lyon in the final.

Although Tottenham went out of both cup competitions at the first hurdle, they never once dropped out of the top six places in the league, and for much of the season, Tottenham sat in fourth place, a UEFA Champions League spot.

On the final day of the season, however, Tottenham's squad was struck down by illness and Spurs were defeated by West Ham United, meaning they missed out on Champions League qualification and finished in fifth place.

The 2006–07 season saw Jol end Tottenham's lengthy hoodoo against Chelsea with a win, the first against them in the league since 1990.

In the Football League Cup, they were knocked-out in the semi-finals by rivals Arsenal.

A 4–0 FA Cup win away to Fulham, however, kick-started a run of form which saw Tottenham take 27 points from their final 12 league games, losing just once.

This run saw Spurs surge into fifth place, securing UEFA Cup qualification on the final day of the season, making Jol the first Spurs manager since Keith Burkinshaw to qualify for European football in successive seasons.