Mitchell van der Gaag, Erik ten Hag’s assistant who almost died in the dugout

“His heart stopped… he was dead.”

Matt Jones, a former goalkeeper at Belenenses and now a coach in the United States, is recalling the terrifying moment Mitchell van der Gaag, Erik ten Hag’s assistant at Manchester United, collapsed in the home dugout in September 2013.

Jones, along with the rest of the Portuguese team, were unaware of the fact their manager had a pacemaker and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) — a device in the heart to detect and stop irregular heartbeats — following previous complications with his heart.

So, when Van der Gaag collapsed, it was natural for his players to fear the worst.

“He collapsed on the bench 30 minutes into the game against Maritimo and it got stopped for a while,” adds Jones. “It was only at half-time we realised what had happened because it was so quick and sudden. A defibrillator was in the dugout and used to bring him back to life.

“From there, we learnt that he had had heart issues in the past and we realised the gravity of it.

“It was scary for us as players. Luckily, he had a pacemaker built in and it did exactly what it was supposed to. It was something he hoped would never happen, but he was aware it could happen.”

Before his health scare, Van der Gaag had led Belenenses into the Primeira Liga — Portugal’s highest league — in his first season in charge at the club.

After his heart stopped, the Dutchman, who played as a centre-back for Motherwell in the 1990s, took a step away from football and focused on his health. This, according to Jones, was also the advice given to him by medical staff.

“He was the one that everyone on the team idolised because of what he had done for the club and the squad. He is the most important coach I have ever had,” says Jones.

“It was such a big thing that happened to him and his doctors were telling him he couldn’t come back to football. He was still heavily involved in it. It was only at the end of the season he took a permanent step away and took a break from football to decide what he wanted to do.

“It was a scary moment for us and his family but, thank God, everything resolved itself.”

A decade has passed since Jones was recruited by Van der Gaag, but the lasting impact the Dutchman had on the club and the goalkeeper’s career has survived the test of time.

“From day one, one of his biggest strengths was his communication and the way he carried himself,” the 36-year-old explains. “He was a coach you wanted to play for and he filled me with positivity, outlined what he expected from me in my position, and he was fantastic.

“He was that way with the whole group in terms of being able to manage different characters and personalities. He set the tone from day one of what we were about and we stuck to that DNA and his philosophy.”

Those who have played for or know Van der Gaag often point to his communication as one of his biggest strengths.

Mitchell van der Gaag on the training ground at Manchester United (Photo: Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)

Fluent in six languages — Dutch, English, Portuguese, German, French and Spanish — the 51-year-old is multicultural and uses it to his advantage to get players and staff onside.

“If I wanted to have a conversation with him, I could have done it in English or Portuguese,” adds Jones. “In front of the team, he would always speak Portuguese and his Portuguese was excellent. We had players on the team from different places and he would always adapt.”

One source, who asked to remain anonymous to protect their relationship with the United assistant, described him as a “backpacker”, citing his love of experiencing different cultures and immersing himself in his surroundings.

Van der Gaag was born in Zutphen, a Dutch city near the German border, and spent over a decade living in Portugal during his later years. Those who know him say this varied background is key to his understanding of how different players from varying backgrounds live, train and play.

“He was in Portugal and loved it,” the source said. “He was in Madeira and loved the island. When we went to Amsterdam, he came in with his backpack and everyone wondered who he was. Three weeks later, they loved him. He has a feel for a player’s culture.”

Despite his multi-lingual tongue and eagerness to envelope himself into new cities, it is his coaching abilities that have seen him go from working in Portugal’s second tier — followed by a succession of clubs in the Netherlands — to sitting alongside Ten Hag at Manchester United.

His post-playing career started at Maritimo B in 2008 before moving to Belenenses in 2012. Following a two-year absence, he returned to the dugout in 2015 with Ermis, a Cypriot club. His next managerial roles were at FC Eindhoven, Excelsior, NAC and Jong Ajax (Ajax’s reserve team).

It was at Ajax where he was promoted to be Ten Hag’s assistant before the 2021-22 campaign, having previously been spotted by Marc Overmars, their previous director of football, as a coach worth investing in.

Van der Gaag originally worked under Ten Hag for Ajax’s reserve team (Photo: Erwin Spek/Soccrates/Getty Images) 

“He wants to set the bar higher every day,” Pascal Maas, Van der Gaag’s assistant at Eindhoven, tells The Athletic. “The bar is set on the players and staff and it goes up every day. He wanted us to be ambitious to set the standards higher and higher.

“When we reached a high standard, it had to be better again. That is his way of working.”

A constant in Van der Gaag’s training methods is getting his players to run, but it would normally be with the ball.

This is something he has carried with himself throughout the last decade and it has been noted by each squad he has coached, especially at Manchester United.

“If you are a player, and I had a lot of coaches, sometimes you have to do a 40-metre sprint and then wait 30 seconds before you do another sprint,” Ryan Koolwijk, his former captain at Excelsior, told The Athletic. “But Mitchell would make you sprint 40 metres and then after that, you needed to shoot.

“That way we weren’t thinking about all the running we were doing, we thought about shooting. What I liked about his training was that everything was with the ball.”

There was not always a ball to strike at the end of the sprint, though.

“Sometimes he would always create punishments if we lost,” adds Koolwijk. “You would be thinking, ‘Ah, I don’t want to do this!’, but it was always really good. They normally involved heavy running!”

Aside from sprinting, Koolwijk noted the intricate detail Van der Gaag would go into, especially in two-v-three, three-v-two, three-v-four and four-v-three situations.

He wanted his players to make quick — and correct — decisions in defensive and attacking scenarios.

“Everything that he got us to do was with a plan,” Koolwikj recalls. “Tactically, he is a very good coach.”

“It was very Dutch in terms of playing style,” says Jones when asked to reflect on Van der Gaag’s methodology. “Everything was possession based and played on the ground through the midfield.

“It was about transitions and once you’d broken the press about how quickly you can go forward. He wanted us to play positive, attacking football. He let players play and he allowed for fluidity in positions.

“Teams couldn’t deal with our movement off the ball and they couldn’t deal with our speed of play once we’d broken through midfield. It wasn’t like Pep (Guardiola) reinventing football, but we could do it so consistently on any surface and in any game. He made opponents constantly change to us.”

Even though he was demanding, many of those who have worked with Van der Gaag said it was not always serious and there were times he would switch off and have a joke with the squad.

Koolwijk recalled his second pre-season at Excelsior with his then-manager, where the squad had to run five kilometres in 20 minutes or under. If they failed to meet that time, they would have to do it again.

While running, Koolwijk spotted police officers and asked them to drive them further so they would not have to face another run. They duly obliged and gave the squad a helping hand.

Van der Gaag with United’s players before the match against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge (Photo: Ash Donelon/Manchester United via Getty Images)

“Mitchell never knew we did this,” Koolwijk said while laughing. “We were in Ibiza after the season and he told us we were stupid for always listening to the coaches but then we told him he was also stupid because he didn’t know the police brought us further during the run!

“He is a great person and knows how the players are feeling. He knows when to get angry and when to take it easy. His feeling for that was always good.”

His former captain also noted how Van der Gaag did not speak to him more than a handful of times in his first few months at the Dutch club.

This left Koolwijk puzzled and debating with his team-mates whether he had done something wrong. As time passed, he confronted Van der Gaag and — in another sign of the Dutchman’s smart leadership and clever communication — his fears were immediately alleviated.

“We had a meeting about it and he said, ‘OK, I have 25 players and I know you are doing your thing and I am happy about that… I have 10 other people I need to speak every day with, so I trust you to do your thing’.”

When they appointed Ten Hag in April, United were unsure who the former Ajax manager wanted to bring with him in terms of coaching staff.

As Ten Hag continued to set out his manifesto during several discussions with the club, it became evident he wanted Van der Gaag to join him.

Stories emerged in the Netherlands that Ajax were willing to offer him the head coach role in a bid to keep him there. It is, however, understood that giving him such a promotion was not on the table.

Despite impressing Overmars and Edwin van der Sar, the plan was to keep the assistant coach as an integral part of the new manager’s dugout.

But when United approached Ten Hag and he subsequently asked Van der Gaag whether he wanted to join him at Old Trafford, those close to the former Belenenses manager said it was an easy decision for him to make.

Such is the relationship between the pair, Ten Hag knows his assistant will spend every working hour developing the squad and watching video footage.

One source joked how the only movie Van der Gaag would view is United’s training sessions or the club’s latest match. Ten Hag also has total trust and confidence in his fellow countryman as he knows he is not gunning to dislodge him and become the manager.

“He was always open to the staff and he was reliable,” Maas explained. “He was the head of a small group, but we were a team. He was very professional, but he was a human being.”

“You can trust him to work in your shop and not be worried about him taking cash,” the source quipped.

At United, Van der Gaag is described as the link person between Ten Hag and the wider coaching team, including the analysts. He makes sure the “nuts and bolts” of the operation work, covering daily sessions, training schedules and players’ fitness.

During the summer, Van der Gaag worked with Ten Hag to produce a full six-week pre-season plan, presented on their first day at Carrington.

Ten Hag is very much involved in overseeing the sessions, but they are normally carried out by his fellow Dutch assistant and Steve McClaren, who brings knowledge and great experience of United and English football. There is no hierarchy between Van der Gaag and McClaren, with both viewed as equally important by the manager.

Van der Gaag’s family — he is married with two sons and two daughters — have remained in Lisbon just as they did when he started working as a coach in the Netherlands.

“The year he was in Eindhoven he would go back to his family when he could,” Maas said. “But he was always at the training ground.”

Jones, Koolwijk and Maas all mentioned they were surprised Van der Gaag chose to be an assistant as opposed to staying as a head coach. His qualities to communicate, inspire a team and out-think opposing managers means they hold him in the highest regard.

Van der Gaag, however, is content living each day as it comes. His brush with death trains the eye on what is important and staying healthy comes first.

For now, he is satisfied being present in the moment and is all-in on developing United’s players and, along with Ten Hag and McClaren, guiding the club back to where their history suggests they should be.

There is no denying a coach of Van der Gaag’s calibre is ambitious and working for United will bring added attention, but the club’s recent results have shown their work at Carrington beginning to translate into results on the pitch, and that is all he is focused on.

(Top photos: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton)