After the European Championship he installed Louis van Gaal as the new Bondscoach, in June 2022 Nico-Jan Hoogma (53) will call it a day as sports director of the Dutch football association KNVB. he talks about the motives for his departure and sums up: “We have come up again. “
When Hoogma started as director top football at the KNVB (Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbal Bond) in March 2018, the men’s national team was 21st in the FIFA world rankings, the women’s seventh. The teams have since been ranked tenth (men) and fourth (women). The women were runners-up in the 2019 World Cup, the men were Nations League finalists in 2018/19, and the U17s won the European Championships in both 2018 and 2019. And the Elftal, only an onlooker at the Euro 2016 and World Cup 2018, qualified for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. “There has been, I think, some success,” says Nico-Jan Hoogma, who played 177 Bundesliga and six Champions League games for Hamburger SV between 1998 and 2004.
The setback at the European Championship in the summer, when after a good group phase with three victories the team surprisingly lost to the Czech Republic in the last 16, was followed by a change of coach. Louis van Gaal, who began his third term as Bonds coach, replaced Frank de Boer. Hoogma says of the former Bayern coach van Gaal: “He is a stroke of luck. Louis leads the team and the staff in an inimitable way. He is a top manager, he has everything in sight and in hand.”
Van Gaal’s time as Bonds coach will end after the World Cup in Qatar at the end of 2022. Hoogma’s successor will be responsible for the search for a successor. Hoogma is moving back to club football after his contract expires next summer, where he had worked successfully for years as sports director at Heracles Almelo before joining the KNVB: “I am someone who gives and wants trust and works as part of a team. I like it when the structures are such that there are not so many decision-makers. In an association, many people have a say. There’s a lot of politics involved. That’s not me. “
