Mark Burke discusses his unique career path that took him from Holland to Romania via Japan.
Mark Burke had enjoyed a promising career in England with Aston Villa, Middlesbrough and Wolves. But the adventure only really began after leaving Port Vale to join Fortuna Sittard in Holland as a 26-year-old in 1995. It kicked off a journey that took him to Japan, Romania and Sweden. Adam Bate caught up with him to discuss his extraordinary experiences.
You had quite a world tour. How did it all begin for you?
I always wanted to play abroad. When I was about 12 my sports teacher told me it would suit me. I was interested in foreign football even in the days when you couldn't see it on television. I think the idea of being paid for living abroad just fascinated me! It finally happened after I left Port Vale in 1995. I got this phone call from Terry Lees, who was a friend of Pim Verbeek, the Fortuna Sittard coach. Terry had seen my name on the list of free agents and told Pim that I was well worth a look. I was keen and so I was told to expect a call at 9am the next day. Sure enough I got a call at 9am on the dot - that's the Dutch - and a day later I was out there.
And it went well straight away didn't it?
My first game was against De Graafschap and I scored the winner in the last ten minutes to make it 1-0. My second game was against Ajax and I remember standing in the tunnel looking at their team. There was De Boer, Reiziger, Kluivert, Davids, Overmars and the rest. I couldn't believe it. This was what I'd always wanted to do and I'd been playing for Port Vale a few months earlier!
Did you settle quickly off the field?
I think going to Middlesbrough as a teenager had helped me. If I had stayed at Villa, my hometown club, until I was 26 years old then it would have been difficult to ever go abroad. Luckily for me - what with scoring on my debut and everything - it worked, but usually when you go to a new country it's hard to do it straight away. There's a new language, a new culture and a new style of football. It's just the little things.
On the field, for instance, what's good in one country is not good in another. I'll give you an example. That second game against Ajax. Preparing for the match in training, one of the players made a run and I went with him. The coach said: "Stop! Don't run with him." I was shocked. He realised that if I followed that run then Danny Blind or Frank De Boer would just step into the space.
In England it's a totally different thinking. If you don't follow that run people will wonder what you're playing at. The Dutch are thinkers. They think more about the game than we do. We have this idea of the Dutch being very liberal but that's not really true - it's an extremely regimented and organised culture and the football is the same. It's organised to the smallest detail.
I had a lot of ideas about football before I went there but it was in Holland that I learnt how to organise them. In that first year I found out so much. Pim Verbeek really took me under his wing. We used to drive all over Holland just watching games to introduce me to the different styles and how teams played. It was a real football education.
Do you think it suited you as a player?
To be honest, it probably suited my game more out there. In England, things were more rigid. If I was playing on the wing they'd just be telling me to stay out there. My instinct told me that if I did that then the full-back would always know where I was so I used to drift in. It was the same when I played up front and used to drop off. Now they call it playing 'between the lines' and everyone says how great it is. That's why all this stuff about English players not being technically good annoys me. Paul Scholes is technically as good as anyone in the world. The players can do it but the way we play is not conducive to that.
You clearly found it a lot more tactical in Holland?
Everywhere I have been, whether it's Holland, Romania or Japan, the team trains in the week in the same way that they want to play on the Saturday. Jose Mourinho always prepares for the next game and he got that from Louis Van Gaal. It's a Dutch thing. When I was in England, the training was more about just ticking over. The Dutch used to say that with the English it was just
bezig blijven - keeping busy. We trained one way and then come the match everyone panicked and went nuts!
That's one of the things I found out in Holland. Pim took me to see Go Ahead Eagles play that great Ajax side one week and he called the game before we went. He told me that Go Ahead would come at Ajax hard early on and maybe score. But Ajax would keep passing and continue playing the same way and eventually they'd win. I couldn't believe it when that's exactly what happened! You see Barcelona doing it now. They don't panic and change the way they play because they've worked out that's the best way for them to win games.
You had a good team at Fortuna Sittard and also worked for some high-profile coaches in Pim Verbeek and Bert van Marwijk...
We had a really good team at Fortuna Sittard. Mark Van Bommel was a young lad at the time and he played as a holding midfielder with me just in front. There was Fernando Ricksen, Patrick Paauwe, Wilfried Bouma and Kevin Hofland too. It was one of the better teams they've ever had and we finished seventh in my third season.
Pim was a great coach and then Bert Van Marwijk came in and he kept that going. Van Marwijk obviously later took Holland to the World Cup Final in 2010 and I think some of the criticism he received was unfair. He was just sick of them losing and wanted to instil a winning mentality. The problem was that somewhere along the way they forgot just how good they were. If they'd have stuck to playing football they could have beaten Spain - even as it was (Arjen) Robben had a chance to win it and should have scored.
It was great watching Van Marwijk in the World Cup because I think I predicted most of his substitutions. Unfortunately, he and I didn't get on so well. I think he had some preconceived ideas about me. I used to play every game but then he'd criticise everything I did! I had a hernia in an Intertoto Cup game early on in my final year there - the 1998/99 season - and soon after that I ripped my hamstring so it was a bit of a write off for me. It was then that I got the call from my old coach Pim Verbeek - he wanted me to join him out in Japan.
