Alfred Schreuder with the national team: Ex-Hoffenheim trains Germany

EIt was a promising time at TSG Hoffenheim. A squad full of talent reached the Champions League for the first time in the village club’s history, and the football looked innovative. And the man who invented football was considered the greatest talent of all, having become Bundesliga coach for the first time in his career at the age of just under 30.

It’s been almost ten years since Julian Nagelsmann, now 38, was promoted from Hoffenheim’s youth department and began his career in professional football. This week, this episode has become a little more relevant to German football than it already was. Since the German Football Association (DFB) announced that from now on the Dutchman Alfred Schreuder would be a further assistant on Nagelsmann’s coaching staff, a total of four former Hoffenheim players have been active in the sporting management of the national team: Nagelsmann’s assistant Benjamin Hübner was a Hoffenheim central defender, Benjamin Glück was already the video analyst at the time, and Schreuder was the assistant coach.

Schreuder will already be there for the international matches against Switzerland on March 27th in Basel and against Ghana on March 30th in Stuttgart and will also join the coaching team at the World Cup. In addition to his job as head coach of the Saudi Arabian second division team Al-Diraiyah FC, the 53-year-old will work for the DFB in parallel and continue his shared history with Nagelsmann. “I really appreciate Alfred as a coach and a person. With his experience, he is an enormous asset to our team with a view to the upcoming World Cup,” said Nagelsmann, according to a statement from the association. Schreuder said that he had worked with Nagelsmann “in a very trusting and successful manner in Hoffenheim”: “Back then, as a young coach, he impressed me with his courage, his ambition and his specialist knowledge. Even after this time, we always remained in good contact.”

Nagelsmann also explained in the statement why an expansion of the coaching staff seemed necessary. It has to do with a trend that is shaping football across all leagues: standard situations, especially corner kicks, that are performed exactly according to a given choreography are becoming increasingly important. “We are rooting for him (Schreuder, Anm. d. Ed.) as an additional expert so that Mads Buttgereit can fully concentrate on the standard situations during training. We expect standards to become even more important at this World Cup. That’s why we want to focus more on this in training and preparation,” said Nagelsmann. The Dane Buttgereit, 40, is the only assistant coach in the national team without a Hoffenheim past.

During his time at Hoffenheim, Schreuder was considered a coach with some idiosyncratic ideas

Schreuder was not only Nagelsmann’s employee at TSG, he was also his successor. When Nagelsmann moved to RB Leipzig in 2019, Schreuder became Hoffenheim’s head coach. Although he only stayed for one season, the official reason was “differences in future planning”. Football that was sometimes unspectacular under Nagelsmann compared to previous years probably did the rest. But Schreuder still left a certain impression, as his subsequent positions also demonstrated: He first became assistant coach to Ronald Koeman at FC Barcelona and then head coach at Club Brugge, where he won the Belgian championship and moved on to Ajax Amsterdam after six months. At Ajax, where he had already been assistant under Erik ten Hag, he only stayed for six months. Since summer 2023 he has coached various clubs in the Middle East.

During his time at Hoffenheim, Schreuder was considered a coach with some idiosyncratic ideas, for example he turned right winger Robert Skov into an offensive left-back. “I think we are very similar in many things, especially when it comes to the winning mentality. But maybe I would like to be a little more of a hardliner every now and then,” Nagelsmann once said in an interview with Mannheim morning said about Schreuder before the two met as Bundesliga coaches: “As an assistant coach, for example, he once folded Niki Süle in front of the entire team and there was a crash. He’s a little different than me.”

There was nothing in the DFB press release about whether folding up national players would be part of Schreuder’s area of ​​responsibility in the future. As far as his role is concerned, another old quote could provide clues. Nagelsmann once described the Dutchman as an assistant who “was very loyal, unconditionally liked my idea and always tried to help and further develop it.”