Erik ten Hag turned the mood around Manchester United completely after losing the first two games of the season against Brighton and Brentford. However, the Red Devils have come a long way since, winning their first trophy in six years by lifting the Carabao Cup last week. The Dutchman has them in contention for an unprecedented quadruple as well, with their hunt still on for the FA Cup, Europa League, and lose talks of the club entering the title race are also being heard.
The turnaround at United by Erik ten Hag is truly remarkable, and his secret recipe to success has now been revealed by his former player Sjoerd Overgoor. The retired player was part of second-tier Dutch club Go Ahead Eagles that had to adjust to Ten Hag’s coaching style when the Dutchman tookover their reigns in the summer of 2021. Overgoor has now given an insight on how the Ten Hag’s mind works behind the scenes.
‘Really strict’ – Erik ten Hag’s former player explains how it is to work under the manager
Erik ten Hag’s discipline and strict rules have been hailed at Old Trafford, which according to many were missing under the previous regimes. The likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, who found it difficult to adapt to the Dutchman’s memo left the club in November last year, and Marcus Rashford, who was benched during United’s win over Wolves in January after arriving late for a team meeting ahead of the kick-off. Overgoor, speaking about Ten Hag’s methods said:
“A lot of players (at Go Ahead Eagles) thought, ‘This coach is crazy’. At the end of pre-season, we did a lot of 11 against zero. He showed us patterns and where to take our positions. Starting from the goalkeeper, he plays to the left central defender, then we build up from there. It’s a little bit boring because you have no opponents to play. We did it a lot and after a couple of times, it was, ‘Again? 11 against zero?’
“From day one, he was the same as he’s been at United, just really strict. On the first day of training, we had bibs to play eight against eight games — yellow, green and orange. After training, we then put them all together and he said, ‘No, I want the yellow ones here, the orange ones here’. If you were late for training, you couldn’t train. He was strict to make us more professional.”
Together with mandated afternoon naps, the new schedule required double training sessions for the players before they were allowed to leave for the day at 3 o’clock. Overgoor, however, thought Erik ten Hag was picking only him to give the hairdryer treatment. He continued:
“At the end of pre-season, even other players said, ‘He’s shouting at you a lot’. So, I went to see him and he opened my eyes. He said, ‘If I am shouting at you, you get angry, you win more duels, you are more aggressive in a positive way. ‘You are a player who is satisfied with 80, 90 per cent — but you can really improve so much. That is why I am screaming at you’.”
Following that discussion, the two men came to a new understanding, and as the season progressed, Erik ten Hag revealed a more sympathetic side. And on the field, the manager’s ‘boring’ tactics were succeeding. Overgoord added:
“We recognised patterns in games from the 11 against zero training sessions and that gave us a lot of confidence. And more players started to think, ‘This coach is something special because what we see in training, we see in the games as well’. We started to believe more and to listen to exactly what he was going to say.”
“As Ten Hag has done at United, he set high standards and wanted to improve every day. On Friday evening, we might win 3-0 and think, ‘OK, Saturday we’ll do a bit of running and relaxing, just recovery training’. But at 9am he would come to me and say, ‘Sjoerd, I want to show you some clips’. And the clips would be like I had lost 6-0! I saw an interview with Casemiro. He said that he had played with a lot of big coaches but added, ‘Ten Hag has the same attitude as me, every day he wants to improve’.”
After a 17-year hiatus, the Eagles returned to the Eredivisie in 2013 by way of the play-offs while employing a similar formation and style to Ten Hag’s Red Devils. Ten Hag, however, departed to lead Bayern Munich’s B squad. The player turned manager revealed his reaction to Ten Hag’s departure, as he said:
“I have to thank him for my career. I improved a lot in everything. My level went up and that’s why I played a couple of years in the Eredivisie. A lot of us were really disappointed when he left the club. We all knew, ‘This is a coach that makes me so much better. If he stays, who knows where I can go?’
“Some tips he gave me as a coach, I give to the players here as well. When I coach the older youth teams, I will use more of what he did. I shout but in my way. I explain why I’m doing it. He wanted to push us to another level and I want to do that with my players.”