Jacob Friis’ CV looks promising.
Jacob Friis resigned as head coach when the position in Augsburg opened up. ZumaWire / MVPHOTOS
The long wait ended a day before the matter was supposed to become public. The German magazine Kicker received confirmation that Augsburg’s co-pilot Jacob from Frisia will be the Huuhkajie’s head coach.
Danish Tipsbladet said on Sunday evening that Friis’ contract with Pallloliitto extends until the European Championships in 2028. According to the website, Friis is moving to Finland.
The Swedish Football Association finally put its hand in its pocket when it agreed to release Friis from Augsburg in exchange for a transfer fee. On top of that, of course, the salary of the new pilot is added.
The 48-year-old Dane says nothing at all to many. Nevertheless, Friis’s CV is good and promising. First of all, Friis has not been fired from any club team head coach in his career.
Friis has worked as a head coach in two different Danish league clubs. 2018, he was first promoted to temporary head coach of Aalborg, when Morten Wieghorst got fired. However, the screens were enough, and Friis continued to work until autumn 2020.
Then she had to stay away from work because of her child’s illness.
In 2021–22, Friis worked as the head coach of Denmark’s under-19 women’s national team. That was followed by another time in the Danish premier league, this time as Viborg’s head coach.
At the helm of Viborg, Friis was excellent in the 2022–23 season. The team finished third in the regular season, and at the end of the season, the fourth place in the league took the team to the European games, the Conference League qualifiers.
In November 2023, Friis decided to jump to the next level. The change sounded special when Friis gave up his Viborg job and moved to the assistant coach of the German Bundesliga club Augsburg.
– Many people asked why I wanted to switch from head coach to assistant coach. However, working in a Bundesliga club is a great opportunity and challenge for me, Friis reasoned For Kicker.
Long story
Friis has worked as Augsburg’s assistant coach since autumn 2023. PDO
A trained teacher, Friis speaks Danish, English, German and Spanish.
The coach profile fits the Finnish national team. As Viborg-pesti showed, Friis has already proven that he can get hard results with a team that is not loaded with high expectations of success.
In addition, he already has experience in coaching the national team, which is significantly different from the everyday life of the club team.
In Viborg, he had at his disposal a large 9-role striker from the Netherlands Jay-Roy Grotwho was the fourth best scorer in the Danish Superliga in the regular season. A similar attacker can also be found in Huuhkaji, Joel Pohjanpalo.
In Viborg, Friis relied on the 4–3–3 system. In Aalborg in the 2018–2019 season, on the other hand, the basic system was 4–4–2. In that season, Aalborg, piloted by Friis, narrowly missed out on the upper final series of the Danish league.
Such key players
Under the leadership of Friis, Viborg surprised everyone in the 2022–23 season. PDO
However, it is natural to seek thoughts and ideas from the latest successful project. In Viborg, Friis had strong passers at his disposal as wing attackers, who fed the top player in the box with their concentration.
Instead of calm line-by-line progress and ball control, Viborg’s focus was on changing situations and creating dangerous counterattacks.
Left winger Elias Achouri was one of the team’s most important players. The winger tried to cut inside from the side and advance with his right foot towards the bottom line. You can also find counter-style cutting wingers in the Huuhkajis.
According to statistics from the fbref website, in 2022–23 Viborg finished with the third best efficiency in the entire league. It created the fifth most shots on goal, 4.87 per 90 minutes.
In addition to the platforms, Friis utilized a trio of good-footed players in the midfield Clint Leemans in creating scoring opportunities in the opponent’s box. Some of them came from special situations, but also from top pockets and from the ten area.
A role like Leemans’ could be taken by Turky, for example Kairinen too and Leo Walta.
Source: Opta Analyst