Taking on a Stamford Bridge side at a low ebb will suit the management skills of the respected and much-travelled Dutchman, writes David Hytner

IT WAS the episode that defined Guus Hiddink as a “super coach” in the eyes of his fellow Dutchmen. The 1998 World Cup was looming and Hiddink knew that his Holland team needed an aggressive midfield dynamo to hunt down possession and opponents.

There was an obvious candidate yet there was an equally obvious barrier. Hiddink had sent home Edgar Davids from his squad at the 1996 European Championship after “The Pitbull” had suggested the coach should “get his head out of players’ arses so he can see better”.

That represented the nadir of a rift between the squad’s black and white players, which undermined their efforts at the tournament. When they were knocked out by France on penalties in the quarter-finals, defender Arthur Numan said he was happy because “the atmosphere within the camp was so terrible”.

Which modern coach, then, would have swallowed his pride and any sense of resentment to visit the player and try to woo him back? Hiddink has long been a unique man-manager. Davids was cajoled into a return, he played brilliantly in a unified team in 1998 and Holland were undone only by Brazil in the semi-finals.

Hiddink had won the European Cup in his first season as a coach, in 1988 with PSV Eindhoven – they beat Benfica after a dramatic penalty shoot-out – but he has never bought into his own legend and considered himself the finished article. Instead he has stayed open and taken on lessons at every stage of his globe-trotting coaching career that, so far, has taken in six club jobs in three countries and four national team roles on three continents.

There has long been the sense that Hiddink relishes the challenge of building up unfancied clubs and countries. When he returned to PSV, he very nearly topped the achievement of his first spell when he took a team without star names to the 2005 Champions League semi-finals where they fell to Milan only on away goals.

Then there have been his exploits with South Korea, Australia and, more recently, Russia. South Korea had been to five World Cups and failed to win a single game, Australia had not qualified for a finals in 32 years and Russia had failed to make it beyond the first round of a major tournament since the disbanding of the Soviet Union in 1991. All that, of course, was pre-Guus.

Hiddink took South Korea on an astonishing run to the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup – he subsequently had a stadium named after him and was given a private villa and free flights for life – and guided Australia to the second round of the 2006 World Cup, the first time they had reached the knockout stage of the competition. He then helped Russia to the semi-finals of Euro 2008.

Although he had a brief spell at Real Madrid in 1998-99 – he was sacked shortly after making them world club champions – Hiddink has largely avoided the perceived glamour jobs. He turned down England in 2006, largely because of the English FA’s desire for him to audition at interview.

“I told them that was an insult,” said his agent, Cees van Nieuwenhuizen, but Hiddink was also concerned about the potential for intrusion into his private life.

“That was a factor in my not going with England,” he said at the time.

Hiddink’s speciality is breezing into jobs and effecting startlingly quick upturns in fortune from players often low on confidence.

“He gave us the belief that we could beat anyone” said Lee Young-pyo, the South Korea defender while Roman Pavlyuchenko, the Russia striker, added that Hiddink “gives players confidence”.

Hiddink chooses his jobs wisely and he will have concluded that Chelsea are underachieving, with players in urgent need of a lift. He appears in a win-win situation. There will be pressure on him to revive a title challenge and to beat Juventus in the Champions League last 16. But Luiz Felipe Scolari left the club in such disarray that Hiddink will be hard pressed to make things worse.

The players are likely to respond to the new broom and his fast, open style of football, underpinned by tactical boldness and flexibility. His short-term contract will further focus his mind.

“England is a good country to work in,” he once said. “When I go to a stadium in England and take the cab or tube, I get out one or two miles before the stadium and walk the rest because the atmosphere is terrific. We must not become football men somewhere on an ivory tower. We must feel what is going on in the street.”

Hiddink’s intuitive powers and open mind will be tested to the full by the task at Stamford Bridge.