League leaders Twente travel to NAC Breda on Sunday in their final game with 83 points, one ahead of Ajax Amsterdam whose goal difference of 83 is far superior. Ajax, champions 29 times, visit NEC Nijmegen.
For McClaren, who turns 49 on Monday, the Dutch title would be the highlight of his club career as a manager after winning the 2004 English League Cup with Middlesbrough and reaching the UEFA Cup final with the same club two years later.
"That period bothered my family more than me, but we managed. For me, in the long term it made me a better manager," McClaren told the Dutch daily newspaper TC Tubantia.
"You learn from things that go wrong and 'good times' don't make you much wiser."
"I learned to be patient, while I am not a patient man," he said.
"When you play a good defence in the Dutch league, you win. For me that is sufficient but I know that the football culture over here is different."
"But I didn't want to behave like a bull in a china store."
Ajax's Martin Jol is the only coach who can thwart McClaren's early birthday present. He too has a history in England as player and coach.
Jol played in the early 1980s for West Bromwich Albion and Coventry City and managed Tottenham Hotspur from 2004 until he was sacked in October 2007, one month before the FA terminated McClaren's England contract.
"That fast changeover became our basic principle," Jol told the weekly magazine Voetbal International.
"We polished it and made it our second nature. Normally a fast changeover is the main weapon of a team that prefers the counter attack.
"But when you score 147 goals in 49 official matches, you can't say that about us. We just want to impose our way of playing football on the opponent."
