Latest news with #GiovanniVanBronckhorst
New York Times
02-07-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Why Liverpool hired Giovanni Van Bronckhorst: ‘He wants to learn from everyone'
This is an edited and updated version of an article originally published in May 2022. Hovering above a patchy grass pitch, he is a figure of windswept serenity. The backdrop is undeniably 1980s: the mullet sways like an unkempt mane, the white Adidas shorts are hiked up to his belly button, and everyone in the picture is sporting old-school boots. There has always been magic in the feet of Giovanni van Bronckhorst, but it is the quality of his footballing brain which has persuaded Liverpool to appoint him to Arne Slot's coaching team as the club aim to build on last season's Premier League title win. Advertisement It is a surprising appointment in many ways, not least as Van Bronckhorst, 50, had seemed set on pursuing his own managerial career, having had spells in charge of Feyenoord, Rangers and Besiktas. He may well return to going solo in due course, but for the time being, Liverpool can rest assured that they have attracted a coach who has devoted his life to studying the sport. Ever since his mother brought him to their local youth side, Linker Maas Oever Rotterdam (LMO, meaning Left Bank of the River Maas, which runs through Rotterdam), just a few hundred metres from their house, it was clear that football was the game for him. The club was based in the more humble part of the city, but the joy on his face as an eight-year-old was replicated in many moments throughout his career. Those drainpipe legs grew and grew, and some years later pinged a 40-yard shot into the top corner in a World Cup semi-final, while the blue and white kit was swapped for the famous Oranje of the Netherlands 106 times, the fifth most of any player. LMO's pride in their former youngster's success is clear. Van Bronckhorst has remained a permanent presence at the club's ground since his playing career rocketed into the big time, spanning spells at Feyenoord, Rangers, Arsenal and Barcelona, where he won the Champions League. When The Athletic visited in 2023, two huge pictures hung on the wall above the sink in the canteen: one of him as an LMO player and another celebrating his goal to beat Uruguay to help send the national team into the 2010 World Cup final. The contrast serves as an inspiration to the kids whose lockers are just to the left. Van Bronckhorst is used as an example to the next generation coming through, even though he was only there for a season before Feyenoord signed him up. Van Bronckhorst's life after retiring as a player has created an interesting chapter that still needs completing. The 51-year-old won the league at Feyenoord as manager in 2017, then plotted a fanciful adventure to the Europa League final in 2022 with Rangers. A five-month spell at Besiktas in 2024 was less happy, Van Bronckhorst becoming collateral damage in a chaotic period when 10 different people were in charge over a three-year period. Advertisement He has since turned down other head coach opportunities after thinking carefully about the next step. Yet when Liverpool came calling in the wake of John Heitinga's departure for Ajax, it felt like the perfect fit. Sporting director Richard Hughes wanted a strong addition to the backroom team and felt Van Bronckhorst, with his experience as a No 1, would be a good choice. Discussions with Slot followed and the pair immediately hit it off through a shared vision on playing style and ambition. Although their Feyenoord links and previous encounters within football have occasionally brought the pair together, there's no previous relationship to turn to, and Van Bronckhorst is joining for his coaching acumen above anything else. Returning to the Premier League was always on his wish list and already there's a determination to add to his trophy haul by continuing to make Liverpool a success in the years ahead. Van Bronckhorst's third-generation Moluccan heritage forms a major part of his identity and offers a window into what has given him his understated steeliness. The Moluccans are an archipelago in the east of Indonesia, home to more than two million people. Just under 70,000 Moluccans live in the Netherlands. The initial relationship between the nations stretches back to the Netherlands' attempt to monopolise the spice market, which led to the nickname 'Spice Islands', but after the industry collapsed, Moluccans came to represent a different type of value, and that was in their fighting ability. Van Bronckhorst rose through the ranks to make his debut for Feyenoord in 1994 after a season on loan at RKC Waalwijk. He credits his youth coach, Maup Martens, as one of his most influential mentors, for introducing him to the basic style of play that would shape his career. It was not a golden era to be playing for Feyenoord, though, and after four seasons, he made his move to Rangers in 1998. He was working under Dutch coach Dick Advocaat, but his assistant, Bert van Lingen, had known him since he was 14, as he took care of the Dutch national youth squads. Advertisement 'He is one of my examples to players,' Van Lingen told The Athletic in 2022. 'He is talented, co-operative, a nice guy and wants to learn. We always said, 'With Gio, you don't get trouble', and he quickly became one of the main figures. He was experienced and had a strong family to make it a healthy situation. Clarence Seedorf was the same. No bad agents, they let their fathers help.' Advocaat was a renowned disciplinarian, but Van Bronckhorst would have learned important principles that now serve him as a coach. 'Even then, Gio influenced other players as he could read ahead what was going to happen,' says Van Lingen. 'The team became more intelligent as some games were very rough and it was about fouling and fighting. The younger players like Gio understood that to score, you need to keep the ball. He was always thinking about what the coach was doing. He's not impulsive, he's balanced — and being stable is a talent. His upbringing plays a part in that.' Van Bronckhorst's playing career exposed him to top coaches, including Arsene Wenger at Arsenal and Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona. He's said previously that the latter was the most similar to him in terms of his mood when approaching big games. He returned to Feyenoord for the final three years of his playing career before he became Ronald Koeman's assistant at De Kuip. When Koeman's successor, Fred Rutten, could not help Feyenoord make that step up to champions, Van Bronckhorst was promoted. That meant calling upon a close ally of a familiar face. Jan Wouters joined Rangers as assistant in 2001, just after Van Bronckhorst had left for Arsenal, although the pair did work together at the 2004 European Championship when Wouters was Advocaat's assistant with Holland. Van Bronckhorst asked Wouters to join him in Rotterdam, while Advocaat would come once a week to discuss things with him, but even so, Van Bronckhorst found himself under early pressure, a run of seven games without a win leading to fans whistling. 'We had bad results, but we missed chances, so we never lost sight of the reality. The next time we played that opponent, we tended to beat them,' says Wouters. 'He didn't have the best players in the league. His two centre-backs could build up, but defensively they were not the best. He played to each player's best qualities. Advertisement 'He has a broader style. It's not just the Dutch 4-3-3, he knows 3-5-2 and 5-3-2, too. In Holland, everyone says pressure and forward running, but Gio knows you don't play like crazy men. If you're not good enough to build up, why should you? You can be more direct.' That strong will was enough for Van Bronckhorst to win the KVNB Cup in 2016, but the signings of Brad Jones, Steven Berghuis and Nicolai Jorgensen that summer were the spark for a charge the following season, which yielded the club's first title in 17 years. He managed it while using several academy players, but the climax of the season tested his bravery in another way. With four games to go and the race neck and neck with Ajax, he dropped veteran Dirk Kuyt for three games before bringing him back in for the final-day decider. He scored a hat-trick to seal the league. 'It wasn't about Gio or Dirk, it was about what was best for Feyenoord,' says Wouters. 'If you try to be something or someone, it doesn't work. Gio comes across the way he is naturally. He's a little laid back, but if things aren't going their way, he will be the boss. Raising your voice is not the same as losing your temper.' Wouters says one of the most impressive things about Van Bronckhorst is how hands-on he is with training and analysis. He would watch every game back and every training session, including Friday's 11-vs-11 sessions, to show the good and bad points of how they had executed the plan before a matchday. Van Bronckhorst's next managerial role came at Guangzhou R&F, but that was only after he took six months out to explore best practices and look for ways to grow his knowledge at City Football Group, the collection of clubs that also includes Manchester City. He had an existing relationship with City director of football Txiki Begiristain, the man who signed him for Barcelona in 2004, but he is also close friends with Claudio Reyna, then sporting director at New York City and who introduced him to the idea of taking a sabbatical to get to know CFG's inner workings. Advertisement He was paired with CFG's head of coaching support, Ceri Bowley, whose role was to recruit all first-team coaches and develop them in line with the group's principles. 'He was there to learn. It was about, 'What do I know and what can I add?',' Bowley, now the chief soccer officer and sporting director of US National Women's Soccer League team North Carolina Courage, told The Athletic. 'For us, it was with a view that if something came up in CFG he could be a potential coach.' Usually, Bowley would work with coaches for a week or two, but Van Bronckhorst stayed for six months to learn the methodology, including watching Guardiola's coaching sessions and chatting to him after Champions League nights at the Etihad. 'In the game, people talk about methodology, but most are talking about philosophy. There is a misconception,' says Bowley. 'Like in academia, your methodology is the process for getting that end result, no matter what that is. If the aim is to play a certain way, it is about how you get there and how you teach it. 'One of the other biggest conversations we had was around having cognitive diversity in your staff. Some managers take the same staff everywhere, but Fergie (Sir Alex Ferguson) was the master of changing it up. You need people who think differently from you but also see it through your lens. He (Van Bronckhorst) is incredibly intelligent. 'When you sit and watch it with him, he sees it straight away. People say, 'He's an ex-player, he should', but I've had plenty of ex-players who don't. The level of humility and selflessness is why he's as good as he is. He wants to learn every day from everyone.' Bowley would join Van Bronckhorst at Rangers, where he managed for two years and fell agonisingly short of a first European trophy since 1972 when his team lost a penalty shootout to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League final. He focused heavily on video sessions and analysis work, consistent with his time at Feyenoord, and was a stickler for details and discipline. The longer he stayed at the club, the more the analysis increased, including going over the previous match and combing through his own team's style rather than focusing mainly on the opposition. Advertisement Failing to keep up with Glasgow rivals Celtic in the league and then overseeing the worst group stage campaign in Champions League history — Rangers lost six games against Liverpool, Napoli and Ajax, ending with a goal difference of minus-20 — ultimately played a part in his exit. Rangers, however, have failed to kick on since and given the short-lived period at Besiktas, Van Bronckhorst still has a set of unanswered questions next to his name, too. Making an impact at Liverpool may provide a degree of clarity and potentially set up a new challenge for the future. Heitinga is proof that being part of the backroom staff at a Premier League giant can lead to a major European No 1 job. Right now, though, he is focused on supporting Slot and his assistant Sipke Hulshoff in a role that was only made available to a coach with the vast experience and knowhow that Van Bronckhorst has steadily built up over the years. He doesn't see it as a drop down and Liverpool are excited as their push to go again continues.
Associated Press
02-07-2025
- Sport
- Associated Press
Liverpool makes changes to Arne Slot's coaching team and hires Giovanni van Bronckhorst as assistant
LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Former Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst has joined Liverpool as assistant coach to Arne Slot. Van Bronckhorst, who played for Arsenal and Barcelona during a distinguished career, won titles as a coach in the Netherlands with Feyenoord and Scotland with Rangers. His most recent role was as coach of Turkish team Besiktas. Slot has made changes to his backroom staff after winning the Premier League title in his first season in charge at Anfield. As well as Van Bronckhorst, Liverpool also confirmed the arrival of Xavi Valero for his second spell at the club. He will take over the role of head of first team goalkeeper coaching. Goalkeeper coaches Fabian Otte and Claudio Taffarel will leave the club, Liverpool said. ___ AP soccer:
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Liverpool makes changes to Arne Slot's coaching team and hires Giovanni van Bronckhorst as assistant
FILE - Rangers' Giovanni van Bronckhorst speaks to the media ahead of the start of the Champions League group A soccer match between, Glasgow Rangers and Ajax, at Ibrox stadium in Glasgow, Scotland, Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell, File) LIVERPOOL, England (AP) — Former Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst has joined Liverpool as assistant coach to Arne Slot. Van Bronckhorst, who played for Arsenal and Barcelona during a distinguished career, won titles as a coach in the Netherlands with Feyenoord and Scotland with Rangers. Advertisement His most recent role was as coach of Turkish team Besiktas. Slot has made changes to his backroom staff after winning the Premier League title in his first season in charge at Anfield. As well as Van Bronckhorst, Liverpool also confirmed the arrival of Xavi Valero for his second spell at the club. He will take over the role of head of first team goalkeeper coaching. Goalkeeper coaches Fabian Otte and Claudio Taffarel will leave the club, Liverpool said. ___ AP soccer:
BBC News
02-07-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Reds appoint Van Bronckhorst and Valero to Slot's staff
Liverpool have confirmed Giovanni van Bronckhorst will become an assistant coach at the club as part of a number of staff Bronckhorst has managed the likes of Besiktas, Rangers and Feyenoord, where he won the Dutch title in arrival - initially reported by BBC Sport's senior football correspondent Sami Mokbel on 12 June - follows the departure of John Heitinga from Arne Slot's staff after the 2024-25 title-winning Reds have also reappointed Xavi Valero as head of first-team goalkeeping. Valero was at the club under Rafael Benitez and his return comes as Fabian Otte and Claudio Taffarel leave the goalkeeping department.
BBC News
29-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Rangers close in on Coady
Rangers hope to this week finalise a deal to sign Leicester City defender Conor Coady, 32. (Daily Record), externalTalks continue between Lille and Rangers over the potential transfer of Ibrox forward Hamza Igamane, 22. (Sun), externalNewcastle United have tied up a double raid on Rangers to sign youth players Alfie Hutchinson and Oliver Goodbrand, both 16. (Daily Record), externalFormer Rangers chairman Sir David Murray reveals he urged the club's board not to sack manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst in 2022. (Sun), externalRead the rest of Sunday's Scottish gossip.
