It’s a hard change in the trajectory he had actually set out for himself. In an interview with sports channel ESPN at the end of December last year, Ruud van Nistelrooij said that he certainly had the ambition to become PSV head coach one day. “But not this season and not yet next season,” he added.
Van Nistelrooij quietly followed his own path. A path that started a few years ago as a striker trainer for the youth teams of the Eindhoven club. Season after season, he was then given a different age category as head coach at De Herdgang, the PSV training complex. Last year, a trip as an assistant to the Dutch national team of national coach Frank de Boer followed. This season he is the trainer of Jong PSV.
As of this week, the coaching career of the former striker of SC Heerenveen, PSV, Manchester United and Real Madrid, among others, is gaining momentum. PSV officially announced on Wednesday that Van Nistelrooij will succeed Roger Schmidt next season, the German trainer who previously announced his departure from Eindhoven. The 45-year-old Van Nistelrooij has signed a contract until the summer of 2025 and will have an experienced trainer next to him as an assistant with Fred Rutten. With Guus Hiddink in the role of nestor and advisor to the technical staff, the blueprint for the coming years is complete at PSV.
Generations
The path to trainer at the highest level that Ruud van Nistelrooij took differs from that of players with whom Van Nistelrooij played in Orange. In 2016 he received the diploma with Mark van Bommel and Jaap Stam to coach in professional football. Stam has since worked as a head coach at Reading, PEC Zwolle, Feyenoord and FC Cincinnati in the United States. For Van Bommel, a rich future lay ahead at PSV. But less than a year and a half after his appointment in Eindhoven in 2018, his first job as head coach, he was fired. And at his next club, VfL Wolfsburg in Germany, Van Bommel was only employed for a handful of months.
“But just taking it easy is no guarantee that it will be okay,” Van Nistelrooij told ESPN. And, aware of the volatility of the football world: “A little trainer is also fired a number of times.”
Self-aware
As a young player, Van Nistelrooij was already self-conscious, says former coach Foppe de Haan. The Fries saw in Van Nistelrooij, who moved from FC Den Bosch to sc Heerenveen in 1997, a real striker. At that time, Van Nistelrooij preferred to play on ‘ten’, as an attacking midfielder. “Ruud was a school playground football player,” says De Haan. “He preferred to pick up the ball himself from the goalkeeper and then dribble on his way to the opponent’s goal.”
De Haan tried to convince his pupil that he could better focus on the striker position. The Frisian trainer even saw an opportunity for Van Nistelrooij to become one of the best in Europe in that place, which also happened. “He was very goal-oriented. In a finishing exercise, everything went between the posts.” Van Nistelrooij agreed after a number of discussions with De Haan. “He said, ‘Trainer, I want it.’ But then I had to help him.”
De Haan helped Van Nistelrooij set goals on a personal level, gave him A4 sheets on which he could write out what he wanted to achieve and, above all, how. “That’s where the schoolyard football player evaporated,” Van Nistelrooij once said about it at the table on a TV program The world goes on†
De Haan had a similar conversation with Van Nistelrooij a few years ago, when he visited his former coach to talk about his trainer ambitions. “Back then, he knew very well how he wanted to organize it,” says De Haan.
Manchester United
Van Nistelrooij only played one season under De Haan at Heerenveen. He left for PSV, where he became an international player and, despite injuries, scored more than sixty goals in the Eredivisie in three seasons. Enough to arouse the interest of top club Manchester United.
In England too, the focus was soon on, Van Nistelrooij hardly needed time to adapt. Result: 150 goals in five years. In his biography, Sir Alex Ferguson, the Scottish manager who has looked after Manchester United for more than a quarter of a century, called Van Nistelrooij the most targeted attacker he has ever worked with.
The complete focus on the goal, the individual performance (often) works satisfactorily for a striker. According to fellow player Paul Scholes, Van Nistelrooij was so busy with the top scorer title in the Premier League at United that he ignored his teammates on the bus after an away game and first wanted to know whether competitor Thierry Henry from Arsenal had scored.
After Manchester United had won the league title on the last day of the 2002-2003 season, Van Nistelrooij ran to the dressing room after the final whistle to see if he had actually become top scorer – only then did the party begin.
“A striker must be a bit selfish,” says Foppe de Haan. Stubborn too, something that sometimes bothered Van Nistelrooij during his active career. He was a player with an opinion, often disagreeing with decisions made by one of his trainers or fellow players. For that reason, and injuries, according to experts, Van Nistelrooij played too few international matches -– seventy, in which he scored 35 times. He participated ‘only’ three times in a European Championship or World Cup final round
If he sees images of himself as a football player, on or off the field, it seems like a past life, said Van Nistelrooij in the interview with ESPN. As a trainer, he is no longer obsessive about his own performance. But the will to get everything out of it remains. Something that he will certainly also demand of his players at PSV.