It’s not just New Executive Day at Tottenham Hotspur, it’s also New Assistant Coach Day as well. Today Spurs announced the appointment of former Everton central defender and Ajax head coach John Heitinga as Assistant Coach. He joins the club to fill the spot vacated by Matt Wells, who is now manager at Colorado Rapids.
If you watched Premier League footy in the 2010s you probably recognize Heitinga’s name. The Dutchman is primarily known as a central defender at Everton where he made 115 league appearances, scoring two goals. Since hanging up his boots in 2016 he turned to coaching and was most recently head coach at Ajax, his second appointment there after a caretaker stint in 2023. Unfortunately for Heitinga (and maybe for us?) he was sacked five months into his tenure this season. He was also an assistant coach for Liverpool under Arne Slot in 2024.
Now, all football managers get sacked and it’s not at all surprising for a former head coach to join another club as an assistant. The analogy here would be a NFL head coach getting fired and joining another team as defensive coordinator. The reporting is that Heitinga was interviewed by Thomas Frank personally and that his appointment was driven by the Dane. To be sure, Spurs needed another coach; according to Alasdair Gold, Heitinga’s responsibilities at Spurs will be to manage the defense, which, duh.
He had a good reputation going into the Ajax appointment. A piece on a Liverpool blog describes him as a “direct and honest coach” with whom players relate to well, and that he “puts a lot of time into making players better individually.” That same piece talked about how he tried to fix Ajax’s defense by improving defensive security with “more players behind the ball”.
That said, if you take a look at any Ajax message boards it won’t take much dead cat swinging to find some uh…. quite uncharitable takes about Heitinga’s coaching ability. I don’t know how much stock to put into that, but I do know going into the second half of the Premier League campaign short handed in the coaching department probably isn’t wise. So… OK?
Welcome to Tottenham, Johnny. Please make us better.