Adrie Bogers, he takes the ambitious Helmond Sport every day with pleasure on the field. The past few years have been eventful for the Tilburger (58). Last season he was part of the successful FC Twente that won a European ticket, the year before he worked in Iraq. “There was a tank on every street corner.”
Iraq doesn’t exactly sound like a dream country to work as a football coach. When Željko Petrovic became national coach, he asked Adrie to assist him. “We used to work together in Japan at Urawa Red Diamonds. We agreed to embark on another foreign adventure in the future. When his question came, I worked at Roda JC, but I saw Iraq as an interesting option.”
“It was like the Wild West.”
Petrovic was fired after just a few international matches. Bogers stayed six months longer and speaks of a hectic period. “It was like the Wild West. Everywhere I saw tanks, I soon stopped being surprised. I was in a hotel and a few miles away the American embassy was bombarded with missiles. With the national team, we had to play almost all international matches abroad for safety reasons.”
The Brabander himself never felt unsafe. “When I walked into the capital Baghdad with an interpreter, people left me alone. There is nothing wrong with the Iraqis at all, only there are idiots in power who wanted to go to war. If you don’t go along with that, you run the risk of becoming a victim yourself. When you talk to people in person, you realize what’s going on. They are even used to it when something terrible has happened again.”
“It was chaos in Iraq.”
In the field of football, the adventure was difficult. “There is a professional competition, but in terms of accommodations you have to think of small amateur clubs with a bad pitch. Where everything is perfectly organized everywhere in Japan, it is chaos in Iraq. Not only on the road, but also when making appointments. For example, we agreed to join the national team in green, but the players came in all kinds of different colours. And being on time is far from self-evident.”
After Iraq came FC Twente, where he had a successful season as assistant coach to Ron Jans. “When Ron left, I decided to look further. Helmond Sport offered me the opportunity to sign for three years, there is work to be done. Moreover, we were able to move back to Tilburg. Here we greet people when we walk the dog and get that back. That was really not the case in Hengelo.”
“I look at the whole football technical process within the club.”
In the past, Bogers was an assistant for most of his coaching career, but at Sparta Rotterdam, NEC and as an interim at RKC Waalwijk and NAC Breda he worked as head coach. “I don’t care about the position, as long as I can lose my egg there and enjoy working there. At Helmond Sport there is a clear division of roles within the staff. Of course we want to take steps as a team and finish as high as possible in the rankings. However, I also look at the entire football technical process within the club, because there is still a lot to be gained.”