Adelaide United chairman Piet van der Pol says an heir apparent coach and a restructure is in consideration due to COVID-19
Reds chairman Piet van der Pol has revealed the club has discussed an interim heir apparent to Gertjan Verbeek, who returned to the Netherlands last week due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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Adelaide United chairman Piet van der Pol has revealed the Reds have talked about an interim heir apparent to Gertjan Verbeek, predicting a mass club restructure if the A-League hiatus runs into many more months
Adelaide was forced to stand down 80 per cent of its workforce including Verbeek on April 1.
Verbeek flew home with his family last Wednesday, a day after Adelaide’s only contracted visa player for next season Michael Maria returned after assistant coach Gerald Sibon left last weekend.
The trio returned to the Netherlands which hasn’t shocked van der Pol after the A-League competition was postponed last month due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even if the league does start after April 22, Verbeek and Maria – according to current government regulations would struggle to return from abroad and if so – would need to undertake a minimum of 14 days isolation in SA.
Off contract Sibon is unlikely to return.
“I thought about this (a Verbeek replacement) a couple of days ago,’’ van der Pol said.
“But I don’t think the league will start until travel restrictions are lifted, so I would expect that to happen first and then the league to start.
“To my surprise you don’t need a pro-licence if you’re an Australian (coach), so we have qualified coaches.
“Carl (Veart) is one of them who has a pro-licence to be the coach and we have thought about it.”
Veart was an assistant to Verbeek.
He retired from playing for the Reds in 2007, after scoring the club’s first goal in 2003 and first A-League goal two years later.
Van der Pol said the club would survive the crisis whether it panned out for a month or for a year.
He said Adelaide had applied for the $1500 a fortnight JobKeeper payments which is available for stood down staff for six months but it won’t be available for United’s visa holders according to government regulations.
“Fortunately the organisation now has to look after survival and be able to be an employer of the future,’’ van der Pol said.
“Maybe next year we are still an employer and we can’t give 75 people a job but we can still give 60 people a job, that is the reality I have to look after.
“So it is up the government, fortunately to see how they support people who don’t have a job.
“Can we survive, yes, but we have to be sure we manage everything now as tightly as possible.
“The only thing is to make sure that the club still exists and there is still a competition.
“And we can only pick up what is safe to do so and the government can tell us when.”
Van der Pol also counts himself lucky when it comes to crisis management.
“I have been doing this for the past years in China (with Qingdao Red Lions),’’ he said.
“Starting a football club, starting a league and setting up an organisation.
“I have had many years where I didn’t know two weeks before the start of the league, the start of the league, how many teams and from when to when, and, contracts for players.
“Last year (at Qingdao) we didn’t know if we were going to be promoted or not, two weeks before the start of the competition.
“This year it would be the first year where everything was under control and look where we are now, but I am at least experienced in running a club in the complete unknown.
“I have also been fortunate enough to be involved with a club that got relegated and I didn’t look at it that way when it happened, but it happened in Holland.
“We had to change our organisation, we had to cut costs, we had to change everything.
“This is remarkable, a few weeks ago we had a meeting with our (Reds) management team and I said “as a club in Europe when you finish 17th or 18th you go down” and you have to cut 40 per cent.”
“In Australia we don’t have that issue but we would we look at it.
“Now we started thinking (about this) two weeks before everyone else but it’s not the end of the world.
“That is a solution, everything is possible, it would look different to what it does now.”
Van der Pol also reiterated the investors still had its focus on acquiring a club in Europe after they started Qingdao Red Lions in 2016 and bought its sister club Adelaide United in 2018.
“We have some (plans) and these are one of things we wanted to achieve by having clubs on different continents,’’ van der Pol said.
“We are working on a couple of international partnerships and other things commercially that are coming through, so that is going well.”
Originally published as Adelaide United chairman Piet van der Pol says an heir apparent coach and a restructure is in consideration due to COVID-19