Liverpool supporters already know John Heitinga for his time playing at Everton, but the 40-year-old is now a coach and has joined Arne Slot‘s Reds.
Seven years coaching at Ajax, rising through the youth ranks to become caretaker manager, led to Heitinga’s move to West Ham in 2023, where he became assistant manager.
With David Moyes leaving this summer, though, Heitinga moved on too and is now joining Liverpool’s coaching staff as an assistant coach.
Here, Dutch football journalist Elko Born (@Elko_B) discusses Heitinga, his coaching career and what he can bring to Slot’s staff.
What do you think attracted Slot & Liverpool to Heitinga?
I think it’s important that he’s still quite young, and that his playing years are still not that long ago.
Obviously, he knows England and the Premier League from his experience as a player as well. I think that’s very, very important, his experience in that regard. He knows the city of Liverpool as well.
I do think that it was maybe not his tactical skills as a coach that convinced Slot to get him, but I do think that Slot is probably impressed by the way he is able to talk to players to build relationships with them, to relate to them.
He’s still pretty young but I think on a human level, Heitinga is quite talented and it’s an important skill to have as a manager.
And that, combined with his experience as a player in the Premier League, I think that’s a very valuable skill set to have on board at Liverpool.
How did he rise to become Ajax’s caretaker manager?
I think at the time, as a senior player he did take up a bit of a leadership role in the Ajax squad around his final stretch at Ajax.
He started working in the Ajax youth academy pretty quickly after retiring as a player, so I think that ambition has always been quite obvious for him.
For a long time, it looked like he was going to become Ajax manager someday in the end, and obviously he was caretaker boss for a little while. But in the end, it didn’t quite work out for him the way he had hoped.
His stint as Ajax manager, as a caretaker, it wasn’t that bad. He became the caretaker boss in a horrible season for Ajax, one of their worst seasons ever.
When he came in as caretaker, he did manage to bring something back for the first team, get a few results and steady the ship for Ajax that year.
But in the end, it wasn’t enough to convince the Ajax leadership to keep him on as first team manager.
Could this then be a stepping stone like it was for Pep Lijnders?
I’m not sure yet. It could be a stepping stone for him. He always wanted to become Ajax manager but when he did become Ajax manager as a caretaker it didn’t work out as well for him as he had hoped.
It must have been such a huge professional disappointment for him. He hasn’t said much about it, but I wonder how he feels personally now?
Does he feel like, ‘OK, maybe I’m too young to be a first team manager, maybe I need more experience as an assistant somewhere before taking up that senior leadership role in a club?’
Or maybe did he discover for himself, if not for anyone else, that maybe being the first team manager and the guy in charge does not suit him as much as he would have liked?
Maybe he’s more of a coach, and maybe he needs to be an assistant somewhere, perhaps in Liverpool. And maybe that’s just a job that suits his skill set better.
What are some of his characteristics as a coach?
I do think he is very active on the sidelines – he’s quite a passionate guy. He’s only relatively recently retired from football.
He’s still very much emotionally involved with what his players are doing, which I think can obviously be a very good thing for a coach or a manager.
It’s a style that suits him, to be very involved, to be emotionally involved as well. I think that’s his strength as a coach. I think he’s very good at relating to players, at building relationships with the team and a squad of players.
I think the players at Ajax liked him on a personal level very much, so this relationship side of coaching, I think that’s where his talents really lie and maybe not in the more tactical aspect of being a football manager.
Thanks again to Elko Born for his insight on Heitinga’s coaching career. You can follow Elko on X @Elko_B
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