KNVB finds experienced successor Parsons as National Women’s Orange coach in Jonker

Andries Jonker returns as national coach of Orange Women. The 59-year-old Amsterdammer has signed a contract until the 2025 European Championship.

The KNVB now call Jonker the most obvious choice, exactly two weeks after his predecessor Mark Parsons was fired. Jonker can start immediately, with the crucial World Cup qualifier against Iceland on September 6 in Utrecht. With a win, the Orange qualify for next year’s final round in Australia and New Zealand.

“We saw at the last European Championship how women’s football has developed at an incredible speed in recent years. We have ambitious goals, but also a lot of quality and talent on which we can draw for the future. World Cup 2023,” Jonker said. “It is of course very nice to be able to give direction to this.”

Jonker was already on the pitch for FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich during his coaching career, as an assistant to current men’s national coach Louis van Gaal. In recent years he has been a trainer and technical director at Telstar, where he decided to stop a few months ago.

Since then, Jonker has been on hiatus. “And it’s not bad at all,” he said in early July on a terrace in Monnickendam. “It gives you time to reflect, to put things in order. It gives you the feeling that you are better after a break than before.”

In 2001, Jonker had also been in charge of Orange Women for a year and then with successful coach Sarina Wiegman as a midfield football player. “I have already experienced how beautiful it is to work with an ambitious and dedicated group of players.”

Jonker had already been approached before returning, as Wiegman’s successor. But he refused and the union then chose Parsons.

Today, Jan Dirk van der Zee, on behalf of the KNVB, succeeded in convincing Jonker.

“He’s been on our list for a while,” the driver admitted. “So it’s good news that he can and is willing to step in so quickly to lead the team to World Cup qualification. At the end of the day, Orange Women always have to play for the prizes and that’s how it is. let Andries see it.”

The profile of the new national coach that the KNVB drew up after Wiegman’s departure in the summer of 2021 reads: “A Sarina plus. Someone who can surpass Sarina, who understands women’s football well.”

Parsons does not succeed, with an inglorious elimination in the quarter-finals of the European Championship against France, where the match shown is particularly disappointing. Jonker’s catch can be used immediately in the World Cup qualifiers, in which Parsons led the damage with two hard-fought draws against the Czech Republic.