Arsenal: Andries Jonker....Who Are ya?

Article by Andrew Given

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Unfortunately, come May, Liam Brady will be stepping down as Director of the Arsenal Youth Academy, a position he has held since July 1996, one month before Wenger signed on as manager.

Brady has spent most of his footballing career with Arsenal racking up 235 appearances and 43 goals between 1973 and 1980. After leaving the club in 1980 he moved around Italy for 7 years playing for Juventus, Sampdoria, Inter and Ascoli before finally ending his playing career back in England for West Ham in 1990.

Moving quickly into management Brady took the helm at Celtic for 2 years in the early nineties and then Brighton for 2 years after that.

In 1996 he was linked with the Arsenal management job after Bruce Rioch was dismissed but was adamant that he didn't want the job signing on instead as Head of Youth Development.

Under Brady, Arsenal's youth sides have won the FA Premier Youth League in 1997–98; the FA Premier Academy League U17 title in 1999-00; the FA Premier Academy League U19 title in 2001–02; the FA Premier Academy League U18 title in 2008–09 and 2009–10; and the FA Youth Cup in 1999-00, 2000–01 and 2008–09.

A career to be proud of but now has come the time for the man to step down.

Earlier this month Arsenal announced the signing of Brady's replacement, 56 year old Dutchman Andries Jonker, who will officially move to the club in July.

Jonker's playing career was fairly low key during the 1980's appearing for various Dutch clubs, most prominently FC Volendam who he would eventually manage in the late nineties.

After playing for Dutch team ZFC in 1988, Jonkers terminated his playing career and moved directly into youth development for the same club where he stayed for several months until taking a management position at DRC Amsterdam II until 1990.

From here on Jonkers has had a packed coaching career including youth development for the Netherlands from 1990-1997 and then again from 2000-2003. He assistant coached under Louis Van Gaal at both Barcelona (2002-2003) and Bayern Munich (2009-2011) taking over as caretaker manager at the latter when Van Gaal was dismissed in 2011.

Most recently Jonkers has been assistant coach at VfL Wolfsburg since 2012 but will move to the Arsenal to take over as Head of Youth Development in a few months.

With the wealth of experience Jonkers has accumulated over the last 20 years he seems like he could be a smart fit at Arsenal and assuming Wenger and Gazidis have done their homework he should hopefully development our youth teams into a series of little trophy winners over the next few years.

Andries Jonker, Welcome to the Arsenal.

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