Among the bright yellow inflatable training dummies at Carrington’s pitches, Manchester United’s goalkeepers lie flat on their stomachs, ready to pounce, before quickly turning over and racing to coloured cones. Andre Onana roars with delight when he finishes first.
Goalkeeping coach Jelle ten Rouwelaar then leads another drill, during which the players catch tennis balls, palm footballs downwards, then work their feet, passing the ball and rotating 180 degrees with a swift swivel before catching an oncoming volley.
On the adjacent field, the outfield players make their way out. Assistant manager Rene Hake, wearing shorts and standing shoulder to shoulder with Erik ten Hag, shares a laugh with his friend. Ruud van Nistelrooy, Ten Hag’s other assistant, chats to defenders Harry Maguire and Jonny Evans, while first-team coach Andreas Georgson talks to fellow Scandinavians Christian Eriksen and Victor Lindelof.
This coaching quartet — Hake, Van Nistelrooy, Georgson and Ten Rouwelaar — comprises Ten Hag’s refreshed coaching staff. The three Dutchmen and one Swede were appointed by Ten Hag this summer — as he made clear in his pre-match Porto press conference — with contracts, like the manager, until 2026.
Former assistants Mitchell van der Gaag and Benni McCarthy left the club, having joined Ten Hag in 2022. Steve McClaren, former assistant to Sir Alex Ferguson who returned to the club in 2022, took over as Jamaica head coach, while goalkeeping coach Richard Hartis’ contract expired. Former United player Darren Fletcher, who has been involved with the first team since 2021, remains at the club but in a different role. More on that below.
While frontman Ten Hag is under intense scrutiny, his revamped coaching staff is beavering away in the background trying to improve the team and help them climb out of the Premier League’s bottom half. So who are they and what are their roles?
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Ruud van Nistelrooy, assistant manager
Van Nistelrooy strides across the grass, carrying miniature goals on his shoulders to set up the training session. It is a different kind of goal-hanging from his playing days. The United legend scored 150 goals in 219 appearances between 2001 and 2006 under Sir Alex Ferguson, before returning to the club under Ten Hag this summer, a decision he told the club’s website he could not refuse.
Upon his arrival, Ten Hag described him as “young” and “ambitious” while also nodding to his “Manchester United DNA”. But the United boss told the club’s website it is his assistant’s character that has brought him this far.
Despite being one of the club’s most famous strikers, he has arrived with no airs or graces. He is down-to-earth and personable. He made the effort to know everyone’s names within a couple of days at the club, sits with all staff members rather than just coaches and greets women’s manager Marc Skinner when they see one another.
Van Nistlerooy talks to Christian Eriksen and Marcus Rashford before their Carabao Cup match against Barnsley (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
During the game, however, that bespectacled friendly face soon switches. He either analyses images on his laptop or becomes animated, springing up from his seat onto the touchline, expressing his emotions. The 48-year-old has been cautioned twice (against Porto and Brentford) for vociferously remonstrating with the fourth official.
He is a fan favourite and after the 3-3 draw away to Porto, he made a point to go to the far side of the pitch and clap the travelling supporters. Similarly, he soaked up the applause after the 0-0 draw at Villa Park.
“We’re not here for ourselves, we’re here to improve the club,” Van Nistelrooy said on his arrival.
His former Heerenveen manager Foppe de Haan never expected him to become a coach and when the former No 9 visited to ask for some advice about entering into management, De Haan told him, according to Dutch outlet Noes Voetbal, it’s “a profession of experience”.
Having coached PSV Eindhoven’s youth teams and temporarily assisted the Dutch national team, Van Nistelrooy made the step to become head coach of PSV. He guided the team to second in the 2022-23 campaign and won the Dutch Cup and the Johan Cruyff Shield before leaving one game before the season ended. The Athletic reported this month that Van Nistelrooy has also been touted as a possible interim manager if Ten Hag departs this season.
At United, Hake, Van Nistelrooy, Georgson and Fletcher usually take the first 30 to 40 minutes of a session and are involved throughout to varying degrees. The day before a game, however, Ten Hag leads the final part, focusing purely on match-day tactics.
Van Nistelrooy has designed his own drills specifically for possession and core passing skills. During pre-season in the United States, he led a drill for building from the back under pressure and using width.
Given his striking pedigree, one would expect him to help with United’s forwards’ finishing but he offers more than that, as Ten Hag said in the summer when asked about Marcus Rashford, and as Rasmus Hojlund repeated at the weekend.
“Everybody’s asking me this question,” said Hojlund on Saturday after his winner against Brentford. “Yes, obviously, he’s helping us every day, but he’s also helping the defence and the midfield. He has given me a lot of good advice.”
Van Nistelrooy is an arm-around-the-shoulder kind of coach, working one-to-one with players, as all United’s coaches do at various times, while also focusing on the bigger picture. Understandably, his past helps connect with the players.
“He has always enjoyed playing football immensely and he wants to convey that to his players,” De Haan said. “Developing and performing are important, but having fun is perhaps the most important thing.”
PSV supporters got a glimpse of that when he showed off his snake hips in the dressing room following their cup win.
Woke up like this 😏🕺 pic.twitter.com/CCR0Lqzwwz
— PSV (@PSV) May 1, 2023
Rene Hake, assistant manager
There is a clip in No Guts No Glory, a 2021 documentary about Utrecht, which shows Hake, their manager, ripping into one of his players who had been sent off. “You f***ed up the game!” he shouts.
But that is not a complete representation of the man known by Utrecht’s current manager Ron Jans, who met Hake over 20 years ago and made him his assistant at Dutch side PEC Zwolle in 2013.
“Sometimes he can be very angry but he’s not angry all the time, not at all,” Jans, who worked with Hake for three years, told The Athletic when asked about the video. “This is not Rene Hake.”
Instead, Jans described Hake — a family man from Drenthe, a rural region in the north-east of the Netherlands, where Jans now lives — as “hard-working” and “loyal” with an English sense of humour similar to comedian Ricky Gervais. He is also “very strict”, “demanding” and “asks a lot from the players”.
If players do not follow the manager’s plan, “you’ve got a problem with Rene”, according to Jans. “It’s a team sport,” he continued. “If one player is not helping with the press or doesn’t want to have the ball, if you’re building up under pressure, you fail. He’s very demanding on that and on the training pitch.
“He does not say a lot but is always direct. He was very realistic, not outspoken, but stuck to his opinion.”
Rene Hake has made his name in coaching rather than playing (Ash Donelon/Manchester United/Getty Images)
Hake, unlike his counterpart Van Nistelrooy, did not have an esteemed playing career but instead trained at the CIOS in the Netherlands, an institution that provides physical education vocational training, a theoretical route trodden by many coaches.
Most recently manager of Dutch outfit Go Ahead Eagles, Hake and Ten Hag’s relationship goes back to the start of their managerial careers, when the United manager, two years Hake’s senior, asked him to join Twente’s youth setup.
The pair share a similar football philosophy and former defender Willem Janssen, who played under Ten Hag and Hake at Twente and Utrecht respectively, has said that both managers focus on the team’s compactness and distance between players.
During his three-year stint working with Jans, Hake paid specific attention to the team’s structure, players’ individual development and their physical condition. While at PEC, if a player did not work hard enough, Hake would stay and do extra drills with them after training.
Jans described Hake as an “expert” on those sessions, citing his work with centre-backs on their passing and footwork, and improving the endurance or speed of players returning from injury.
“At United, he’s doing a lot of the training sessions on the pitch, not only individual and physical like he did with me, but also the tactical training sessions,” said Jans. Hake often leads on-pitch drills. At the open training session before the Porto game, he directed a pressing exercise while Ten Hag led the tactical plan, directing players’ positions.
Hake, who, like Van Nistelrooy, conducts one-on-one chats with players, is also responsible for the team’s weekly schedule, the team’s day-to-day running, training and meeting times, as well as working with the medics and other departments. He always takes the schedule to Ten Hag for sign-off but he is the planner.
Ten Hag and Hake, according to Jans, “trust each other completely” and although “not twins, have a lot of similarities”. “They can be very serious but, once you get to know them, they are very funny and social but only in an environment where they know everybody and feel safe.”
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Andreas Georgson, first-team coach
They say variety is the spice of life and Georgson has certainly had a varied background: head coach, assistant coach, sporting director, technical director, head of youth scouting as well as academy roles.
But in England, the Swede is best known as a specialist set-piece coach. At Brentford, where he spent a year, he had a hybrid role as head of set pieces and individual development before Mikel Arteta asked him to join his staff at Arsenal where his remit was attacking and defensive set pieces and throw-ins. He then became sporting director at Malmo before returning to Southampton as a set-piece coach under manager Russell Martin in August 2023.
United’s technical director Jason Wilcox, Georgson’s former boss at Southampton, approached him about working under Ten Hag. Georgian told Swedish streaming service Viaplay that the club were interested in his set-piece specialism but also his experience in other fields.
Andreas Georgson previously worked for Arsenal (Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC/Getty Images)
The 42-year-old spoke to United’s new owners and sporting leadership before joining and had “two long, good conversations” with Ten Hag, discussing the role, ideas and goals.
“When I spoke with Erik, we realised there was room in the staff for me to contribute beyond just set pieces,” he told Viaplay in August. “That’s when I felt it could be sustainable. I thought, ‘How often do opportunities like this come along? To do something I love, and at a big club as well?’.”
The club officially introduced Georgson as a first-team coach who would work alongside Fletcher. Georgson is also out on the grass, involved in drills, tactical preparation for games and analysis meetings but his main focus is working with a video analyst on set pieces.
“I have a knowledge base that most don’t, and set pieces are football’s ‘ugly duckling,’” he told Viaplay. “No one gets excited about it, and no one starts playing football to defend corners. But everyone knows that it makes up 30 per cent of the goals. It has such a big impact, and that’s a great feeling.”
On game day, you will see the former Lillestrom head coach with a laptop, briefing oncoming substitutions on their set-piece responsibilities or emerging at the edge of the technical area as he marshals the team at defending or attacking dead-ball scenarios. After the Porto game, he congratulated Maguire when the centre-back headed home the stoppage-time equaliser.
Since Ten Hag joined the club, attacking set pieces have required improvement. In his first season, their rate of 2.4 goals per 100 set pieces — a metric that accounts for varying set-piece opportunities across the 20 teams to create a level playing field — was the joint-worst in the division, while a slight improvement to 3.3 goals per 100 set pieces the following campaign still left them in 16th place in the dead-ball rankings.
Georgson is the only Swede among the four new coaches, the rest are all Dutch, but he told Viaplay that he appreciates their directness and willingness to discuss and disagree, and he was struck by United’s global appeal when they played Liverpool in North Carolina.
“It was absolute chaos, people everywhere, the intensity, the interest,” he told ViaPlay. “That’s when it hits you that you’re as far from Manchester as you can be, yet the stadium is filled with 80,000 people, and there’s this hysteria around the team.”
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Jelle ten Rouwelaar, goalkeeping coach
After two years at Burnley under manager Vincent Kompany, Ten Rouwelaar was on his way back to his homeland, the Dutchman having agreed in May to join Ajax. But then United came knocking and a swift U-turn kept him in England.
Jelle ten Rouwelaar nearly ended up at Ajax this season (Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images)
Having amassed more than 300 appearances for NAC Breda, upon his retirement in 2016 he immediately became the Dutch side’s goalkeeping coach. There, he met a 14-year-old Bart Verbruggen, now Brighton’s No 1.
“Without him, I wouldn’t be here now,” Verbruggen, who worked with Ten Rouwelaar for five years and still speaks to him every week, told The Athletic. “So much you see now in my game (is what) he taught me. When I was 15, I didn’t know a lot about the tactical side.
“I have a lot to thank him for. He worked a lot with principles. The goalkeeper training was a lot of basic stuff. Not that basic stuff is bad, but a lot of dives, catches. He did a lot with cognitive exercises in the training sessions as well. He tried to challenge your body and your brain. Those principles you can still see in every game I play.”
Verbruggen said Ten Rouwelaar improved him “without a doubt” and believes all the goalkeepers who have worked with him — at one point all three of the Netherlands’ national team keepers had been developed by Ten Rouwelaar, including Ipswich Town’s Arijanet Muric — would speak highly of United’s new recruit. His style, friendly and relaxed, suits Onana, who gets on well with him too.
Ten Hag recognised the 43-year-old’s experience in English football but also that he coaches goalkeepers to play out from the back.
“I’m convinced he will really help our game as a team, but especially the ‘keeper’s position in the team and how they’re aligned,” Ten Hag said to the club’s website when Ten Rouwelaar joined the club.
Darren Fletcher, first-team coach
“You can’t stand still,” the former United midfielder shouts in the middle of a rondo drill. “Get close, angles, get your legs going.”
Fletcher is the only coaching staff member who has remained with Ten Hag over the summer.
Darren Fletcher with Ten Hag last year (Darren Staples/AFP/Getty Images)
He has, however, moved from being United’s first technical director to a first-team coach. He is on the grass, a connector between staff and players, and the liaison between the first team and academy.
The 40-year-old advises, for example, which academy player to select if Ten Hag needs an extra man in training and is seen by the club as having strong relationships with the players who still recognise his 16-season Premier League playing career.
Other contributors: Andy Naylor, Carl Anka, Laurie Whitwell
(Top photo: Ruud Van Nistlerooy, Rene Hake and Erik ten Hag; by Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)
