Pepijn Lijnders‘ time as a manager in the Netherlands lasted only six months, returning to Liverpool this summer, but he is still held in extremely high regard at the club he left.
A director at NEC, Wilco van Schaik, has praised the 35-year-old despite the short stay at his club.
“I have seen him do things that I’ve never seen in the Netherlands,” said Van Schaik in an interview with ForzaNEC.nl
“He got to experience a kind of pressure at a club that you only learn when you’re standing on the pitch as a coach.
“I have a lot of respect for a 35-year-old man who got here at a difficult time and kept fighting until the very last match.”
Lijnders is a vocal voice on the Reds’ training ground and in pre-match routines, and Van Schaik isn’t surprised to see him return to Merseyside so quickly:
“I get why Liverpool hired him again, because he has some unique qualities. The whole of Dutch football can learn things from him in certain areas. He’s far ahead of his time.
“Lijnders is a brilliant thinker and people like him can help Dutch football forward in certain areas. I have seen training exercises from him that players absolutely loved.
“Two of the best coaches in The Netherlands I know both say that they use Lijnders’ training exercises occasionally.
“This all doesn’t mean he’s the perfect coach, like we’ve seen here, but I still hold him in high esteem. It’s a pity the project at NEC didn’t work out.”
