The Ajax Women have found a new trainer for next season. Hesterine de Reus will represent the group in Amsterdam from the 2024/2025 season. The 62-year-old trainer succeeds Suzanne Bakker, who is forced to leave at the end of the current season.
De Reus is anything but unknown in the women’s football world. She played for the Dutch women’s team from 1983 to 1993 and is the second woman in the Netherlands to obtain the Professional Football Coach diploma. In 2012 she started working as a trainer for PSV. However, that collaboration did not last long, because six months later the Australian national association came knocking and De Reus left for the other side of the world.
“Very nice challenge”
“It is a very nice challenge. I am looking forward with great pleasure to working with Daphne, the staff and the organization to take women’s football a step further,” De Reus responded to Ajax TV. She explains how manager Daphne Koster came to her in the search for a new trainer for the sport in general. We came into contact a little more.” women. “I have known Daphne for a long time. Of course, I am currently working worldwide in developing women’s football in particular, but actually…
“She is one of the women who has Coach Professional Football. You keep an eye on someone, I do that with several people,” says Koster about Hesterine’s appointment. “She did a pilot at Ajax, purely out of involvement and dedication to the development of women’s football. I also saw her standing there. She was giving that training with so much passion. Then you start talking about it and think you: ‘win-win’. Then we immediately went for it.”
De Reus is happy with her new step: “Football in my own country, and especially women’s football, is very close to my heart. Ajax is a very nice club and is willing to take steps forward.”
“Big compliment to last year’s players and staff”
National coach of the Australian national football team was one of the last jobs for De Reus as a practice manager. That adventure ended in April 2014, because the players had a lot of difficulty with the strict working method of the Dutch and no longer wanted to play for their country as long as De Reus was at the helm. In 2017-2018, the new signing of Ajax Women stood for a short period in the group of the women of China under 20 years.
At Ajax, De Reus must succeed Suzanne Bakker. Even though Bakker won the national championship with Ajax last season and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League this year, her contract was not extended. “The challenge of international football, the great opposition, has really made them rise above themselves,” De Reus reflects on this season. “Big compliment to the players and staff from last year.”
2024-04-12 16:18:45
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