“Our first contact went very well,” Nathan Ngoy recounted, according to Het Laatste Nieuws. The central defender and Mark van Bommel spoke on the phone before this international break: “It was mostly getting to know each other personally. He introduced himself and explained how he wants to play.” Before that, Van Bommel had attended his match against PSG.
Ngoy came away with a good impression. “He’s a very humane coach,” he said. He believes Van Bommel understands players because he played at the top level himself, and that it shows in the way he explains things. About the man himself, he was honest: too young to have known him as a player. “He was a midfielder, wasn’t he?”
Our gaffer read the interview on Monday, between the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) table and his cup of coffee. He recognised a method.
Tactically, that’s exactly what I do. The phone call beforehand, the introduction, the game plan. Except when I call a central defender on Thursday, it’s to find out if he can play on Sunday, and he tells me he’s got a christening. Van Bommel explains how he wants to play. So do I: 4-4-2, the only honest system. And about the position, I get the lad. My players don’t know where I played either. They think I was the club delegate. The level in the third provincial division has gone way up, people don’t realise.
Van Bommel watched Ngoy play against PSG. Freddy watches his defenders on Sunday at three o’clock, on pitch 2, when it isn’t chucking it down too hard. One match aside, it’s the same scouting work.
Ngoy concludes that a coach with a playing career makes “still a difference”. He didn’t specify which one for third-division coaches.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
