Interview with FC Nordsjælland Assistant Coach Frank Hjortebjerg
This is the fourth part of my series on FC Nordsjælland, the Danish Superliga club with the youngest squad in Europe and the aim of competing using solely academy graduates in the first-team.
Frank Hjortebjerg first arrived at FC Nordsjælland in 2013 after receiving an unexpected phone call offering him the chance to coach the under-15 academy team. As a 25-year-old who had just retired from playing at his hometown club Næsby BK in order to start his professional coaching career, it provided the perfect opportunity to take the first step.
His interest in coaching had started whilst at Næsby, a semi-professional club from Odense playing in the third tier of Danish football. It was there that he decided to finish his playing career early in order to complete a degree in Sports Science and work on his A-License qualification, remaining at the club in a coaching capacity under the guidance and mentorship of experienced Danish manager Henrik Lehm.
Fast forward seven years and Hjortebjerg is now working with the first-team as assistant coach to Flemming Pedersen, who he credits as his second mentor in his career so far.
His first spell at FC Nordsjælland lasted just one season, moving on to fellow Superliga side Brøndby IF in 2014 where he spent four years coaching the academy teams. He returned to FC Nordsjælland in January 2019, initially taking up a role as a first-team coach/analyst before being promoted to assistant coach at the start of the 2019/20 season.
It is typical of the club’s ethos that a university-educated 32-year-old who has never played professional football should be entrusted as second-in-command at the top level of Danish football. From talking to him it is easy to see why.
The level of tactical and technical detail that is put into his work, combined with a passion for both player and human development, makes him incredibly well-suited to the FC Nordsjælland project.
In this interview we covered a wide range of topics, ranging from the mistakes made early in his career to the key components of the club's methodology and his plans for the future. Below is the full transcript of the conversation between myself and Frank.
Let’s start by talking about your first spell with FC Nordsjælland. I imagine the set-up was quite different from how it is now, what did you learn from that first year at the club?
It was so different. I think looking back I was very naïve in a lot of things, very young and eager. I made a ton of mistakes. I came from an amateur club where we tried our best and did a lot of things on our own to a very structured, professional environment with a bunch of very good people.
The biggest lessons for me were that — despite wanting to do everything myself and being very eager to show everybody how good I was — there was still a bunch of stuff to learn and a bunch of other coaches who were much better than me. I could and should give some space to learn a lot from them.
When I had the first period in Nordsjælland, which lasted a little under a year, I learned a lot from these things. After I left, I reflected and I recognised that I was too eager, too strong-minded and it was a good lesson for me.
You then moved from FC Nordsjælland to Brøndby, how different was your role there?
Yes, I was in Brøndby for four years. I had two years as Head Coach of the under-15’s and two years as Head Coach of the under-17’s. It’s a different club in many ways.
Brøndby is a very famous club in Denmark with a lot of attention on it. The first-team is under a huge amount of pressure from outside and this affected the way we tried to work in the youth department.
How do you manage that expectation and pressure at youth level?
It’s a fine balance when you are dealing with the youth players because you don’t want to lie to them. You don’t want to tell them that this does not exist because that is what you are trying to prepare them for.
We tried to be very honest about it, that there is a certain amount of pressure where you are, and if you want to go to the first-team you should expect this pressure to increase even more. If you think it’s tough, then we need to try to work with it now or it’s too late because it is a big factor out there.
At the same time we try to — because these are young people who are going through a human development as well — we try to make a safe environment for them where they feel secure in making mistakes and expressing themselves, all these things that are important when trying to develop as a person.
We tried very hard to develop players with strong self-worth, not only the confidence part but trying to develop players with a strong personal character who know their abilities. Then they can use this in the face of pressure and outside things.
Was it at Brøndby where you settled on your principles and preferred style of play?
For me, I’m trying not to settle on anything because I think the game, and society, is evolving all the time and moving in different directions. Of course, with my experience from the first time in Nordsjælland, and my reflections on leaving, and then being part of a new project in Brøndby I was growing as a person myself.
In regard to the style of play, we tried to develop it together so we had a clear strategy for the way of playing. My own personal opinion was not irrelevant, but it wasn’t the first priority in the way we were playing. It was more the club’s strategy and how we should do things that were important in this case. The club was the most important thing.
Since it was something that we were developing together in Brøndby you could add your own personal opinion, but as soon as you decide as a coaching group or as a management team then you follow that pathway. You have to be aligned and working loyally for the club. It changed a couple of times in Brøndby so it was a tough thing to do but it was the idea we were trying to build from.
That is what we are very good at in Nordsjælland and what a bunch of very intelligent people have been doing for years before me. That is the core strength of the club, the end goal stays the same and all through the age groups these things are seen clearly.
How did you end up back at FC Nordsjælland?
I decided to not continue at Brøndby in the summer of 2018. I had a very good relationship with the people from FC Nordsjælland from my first time there and I kept in contact with a lot of them, especially Flemming Pedersen who is now the Head Coach.
In that time, we had a lot of football talks where we talked about the game and how it was evolving, tactics and things like that. In one of these talks, he asked me if I would be interested in coming back in a role as an analyser/assistant coach for the first-team.
It took me about half a second to say yes. I feel so privileged and lucky that I got a second chance in the club because I wasn’t satisfied with the first time.
Flemming has been my second football mentor, if you could put it that way, so when he asked me this I was not in any doubt. I started in January 2019 when Flemming was technical director, working in the first-team with Kasper Hjulmand as the Head Coach.
What were the changes in your approach coming back to the club?
I was definitely a more mature guy. As a person, I was much more able to stand my ground but in a humble and reflected way. I also knew my own core set of values and how I wanted to be as a person, more settled.
I was very humbled that they asked me again and the fact that it was Flemming Pedersen and Kasper Hjulmand that asked me to join, and Jan Laursen who was having conversations with me as well, when these three guys decided to ask me to join the club again it also had its impact on my approach when I arrived the second time.
How did you find the step-up from coaching at academy level to the first-team?
I would say probably in most other clubs it would have been very different but in FC Nordsjælland we see the first-team as the oldest academy team. We mean that in a sense that, not only are the players very young so not all of them are senior players, but also in a sense that it is so linked to the whole club.
The style of play and the way of working has, of course, changed from when I was there the first time but the core values and principles that have been in the club for many years are the same.
In that way, I wasn’t changing into a club where the first-team is very isolated and it’s all about making sure the first-team wins every weekend. It’s more of a holistic approach which makes the gap from youth to senior closer linked. So the difference isn’t that big in FC Nordsjælland compared to other clubs.
What would you say is the most difficult thing about coaching such a young group of players?
The first thing that comes to my mind is actually getting them to realise how big their potential in the team is and how big their own potential is. When the teams they are competing against are much older and trying to play in certain ways that are damaging our game, what we really try to do is instill into the team and into the players this belief that they have such a big potential.
We, as a coaching staff, can see it every day in training where they play very freely and go all out — and I don’t say they don’t do it in the matches — but still we think that the potential is so big because the guys we have now are so young.
Also, they face certain challenges that are very hard to replicate in youth football and these guys need to be ready for it before their counterparts in other clubs because we play them very early.
We have such a strong belief in them and in the education taking place in the academy at Right to Dream and FC Nordsjælland that we know they are ready. We just need to get them to fit into the team and what we do and we need them to have this belief in themselves, the team, and their teammates.
What is the key to getting the players ready for first-team football at an early age?
I think that the key is a mix of the things that are going on before they arrive. We have this character programme going on in both academies where we are trying very hard to develop strong personalities, strong leadership, and strong characters. Where they are able to give something back to other people.
All of this is about getting to know themselves better and getting to know how much they can actually do working together with other people. The stronger this character and this mindset is, the easier it is for a very young person to step into a very hard, tough, and, in some ways, primitive football world. That’s one key thing.
Then there’s the stuff that happens on the training pitch where I’m in charge of some of it. We do our very best to get them into sync with all the other teammates and get them into sync with the fast-play and the pace that we want to play with and attack other teams with, both offensively and defensively.
That’s different for every academy graduate that we get through to the team. They are the two key things I would say, to have this belief in what we do and what they can do themselves.
Does it make it easier to get the players in sync with each other if they’ve been playing together for a long time already?
It’s an immense help, an enormous help. Not only that player A knows player B but that they’ve played in our style of play. That’s a huge competitive edge.
All the credit goes to the guys working in both academies on this because that’s where the real work is taking place in regard to how quickly we can get them into the first-team and playing a Superliga match. We see season after season that they can do well immediately because of the work that the academy does in our style of play.
This is the main reason for the players being able to play at such a young age, more so than what we do as a coaching staff in the first team. We play a part in how they fit in but it’s more so the development that they have been through before.
It’s about the coaching they have experienced and the coaches they meet in the academies but it’s also about, from a strategic point of view, having a clear idea of your style of play and what this does to your development of players and human beings.
How do you ensure that the style of play remains consistent through all the age ranks and over both academies?
The basis of this is a flat hierarchy and the belief in people being able to speak their minds within a safe environment. We have monthly meetings where we sit together, coaches across all age groups, discussing the style of play.
In these meetings, the under-12 coaches’ point of view is equally as important as the Head Coach of the Superliga’s point of view. This means that if you are the Head Coach of the under-12’s you actually play a part in what way the Superliga match is played on Sundays. From what I know from other clubs this is very rare to find.
This gives us a forum and an opportunity to discuss football and keep each other updated all the time in which direction we are going and in what way we are evolving, the game is evolving. In what way do we see things moving and how does this affect the way we work? This is the key ingredient.
There are minor versions of this going on between under-13, under-14, under-15 coaching staff and training groups, under-17 to under-19 and under-19 to Superliga. It happens in microenvironments as well, that’s the basis of it.
We don’t believe that we can have this strategic way of doing things if the style of play is dictated from the Head Coach of the first-team or the management team or the owner. It needs to be something that happens in co-operation with each other for everybody to really own it and know exactly what’s going on.
It must be difficult to keep it consistent at the youngest level where players are still learning the fundamental core aspects of football. How do you translate complex tactical concepts to a thirteen or fourteen-year-old in a way they can understand?
The basis for this is a curriculum that’s built throughout the whole club, which is, of course, linked to certain age groups like I think is happening in many clubs.
But our methodology is key in this: how do we transmit the curriculum to the players and their individual development and their development as a team? We highly believe in taking the full complexity of the game and then scaling it down, decreasing the complexity without removing the game's core aspects.
We don’t believe in isolated drills, for example. We don’t believe in things not happening in links with each other. We don’t believe in the goalkeepers not being integrated into the build-up play or the way of defending or set pieces.
We try to take the full game and keep its core things and then decrease the complexity from there on. Then we can increase or decrease the complexity in regard to the individual player’s level, the group’s level, or the team's level depending on what kind of focus we have in the things we’re doing.
We can then also make it easier or more difficult depending on if we are trying to get them out of their comfort zone or trying to get them to work inside their comfort zone. That’s some of the things that we try to do and try to work with.
It’s a very holistic point of view, also in regard to the style of play, and it’s very much based on having these core principles in our way of playing and making sure that these principles are active and present in the players and coaches minds. That is on any level but then, of course, adapting the individual activity to the age and to the level of the player or the group and so on.
The core principles in our style of play are very much aligned with and detailed to the different reference points and the different phases of play. We try to educate the players on this, on a theoretical level but most importantly on a tactical level.
We believe that if we do this continuously and they get this education throughout the different age groups they will be able to play quicker and quicker, especially if their team-mates next to them have done the same thing. This is why we believe that we should be able to do the same with players from different continents if we do our work properly and thoroughly enough.
I’m interested in this idea of the comfort zones and the learning zones that you use in training as outlined in your series on Playmaker. How do you keep a player out of their comfort zone and continue to challenge them if they have been learning the same concepts from such an early age?
That’s the key thing of what we’re trying to do. We decrease the complexity the younger they are, like I said, without removing the core things within the game of football. Then we try to increase this complexity.
This could be adding more players, it could be reducing time and space, it could be linking even more phases of the game into a certain activity. All of these things are very much linked to time and space as the primary things.
You can see certain principles of defending being worked on at under-12 level in a two v two setting. Then as we get to work more with the players it will be with more players.
In a way, the things we demand from the players in training are harder than the things that are demanded of them in a game. We try to work with a complexity that is above the complexity and is tougher than the demands that they will actually face in a match.
If there is something that we believe the players are very good at and if it is a time and place where we really want to challenge them, we believe by training in this way — for example, in an activity where the time they have to do a certain action or the time they have to observe the reference points that we are asking of them is shorter than it is in a match — then when they play in a match they are actually able to use their resources even better because we have pushed them in that way.
How do you increase a player's cognitive level? How much of that can be done through training and how much of that comes from a natural ability to understand football?
From our point of view, we don’t believe that there is anything in this that we cannot teach them or work with. Of course, you have different starting points, backgrounds, cognitive levels, all this stuff, but we strongly believe that any human being or player we have can be taught these things. We can move them from one point to another.
Different players are moved and developed best in different settings and environments, so we have a strong sense of belief in the training pitch. We really believe that we haven’t reached our full potential in what we do on the training pitch yet, the game is underdeveloped and so is the training that we do in-house.
We mix it up with having players going to the tactics board, having the players decide tactics before the game, within the game, at half-time breaks. Having players discussing videos, giving feedback, suggesting certain tactical ways of solving things or approaching a game. All these things we try to include and evolve.
First and foremost, we believe that it starts on the training pitch. We don’t believe that, even though we have some skilled coaches, we can just put up a drill and that activity will teach the player a bunch of tactics.
We believe we need to ask questions and hear their thoughts. We need them to do reflections on the pitch within certain situations. We need to replicate situations and simulate the stuff that goes on in matches and we need them to be aware of why they do the stuff they do. To try and play and position themselves and make decisions on a conscious level.
For some it will only be conscious for their body, it will not be cognitively conscious if you can put it that way. But their body will still be able to fit into the way of playing and to our principles.
Surely some players might not have such a keen interest in the tactical and technical side and so on, do they always respond well to that level of detail?
You’re absolutely right. Of course, some players respond more to the long analysis meetings than others whereas some respond better out on the pitch. We have players who are not that curious about this part, they have been used to or prefer to play more intuitively. But it is a big part in our house and it’s very tough for any player to be here with us if he doesn’t buy into these things.
That’s what we are very good at and it’s the way we believe in developing the players, so we push them in this sense. Some find it more enjoyable than others, that’s just the way it is. We also discuss if it’s the right time to get into this level of tactical detail or is this too much for them. These discussions are normal in a learning environment.
We are also very clear that this is key for us in the way we develop players. If we decrease the amount of tactical stuff — the amount of speaking and education about the game that goes on — we lose our strategy for winning football games.
What is your relationship like with the players? Do you prefer to keep it formal or informal?
I think it’s very informal. Of course, we have a lot of formal stuff with analysis and preparation and training and evaluations and video and all this, but we also have a lot of informal settings.
We very much believe in involvement and a flat hierarchy, this includes the coaching staff as well. We believe in taking ownership and trying to work from your own intrinsic motivation rather than us putting a stick to you. That’s the basic concepts of the co-operation together with the players.
Would you say you take on more of a leadership role than you might at other clubs?
I do take a big leadership role, but it is open for everyone to do the same because of this flat hierarchy and this belief in everybody being able to speak their mind. Everybody is entitled to their own opinion and everybody is obligated to listen to that opinion.
In regard to my own role, that comes from the management team in the club and the way they believe in developing players and human beings. Also, of course, from Flemming Pedersen who is, besides like I said before, a mentor for me on a personal and football coaching level he is also, as a human being, a big inspiration.
He is very open and wants everyone to take responsibility. It’s not him that’s speaking in front of the team the whole time. Of course, he does it sometimes but it’s equally as much as everyone else in the coaching staff.
This is very special for this club. It makes it so inspiring to work in and it also makes it very demanding because you need to take responsibility for what you do and what you do has the opportunity to have a great impact on the team and in the performance. This is something I find highly motivating.
It’s because of Flemming and the way the club believes in developing human beings that I play a big role, but, like I said before, I don’t play a bigger role than anybody else. It’s because of this way of seeing things and this flat hierarchy more so than it’s because of the player's age.
What are the biggest lessons that academies can learn from FC Nordsjælland?
I would say that what FC Nordsjælland is very good at is that they have, a very long time ago, decided a strategy for this club and they have stuck with it through good times and bad times. If you keep changing all the time, then it will be very hard for your youth players to have a better opportunity to succeed in your club than others.
You need to decide what your strategy is, and you need to adapt this to the way you develop people, the way you develop players, and you need to stick with it. You cannot change just because you have a bad season or because a new owner comes in or because the board is angry or whatever it might be. You need to stick with it.
You need to make sure that all the paths within the strategy are linked in a way that makes sense. The way you want to play needs to be linked to the way you develop people, to your scouting process, to your recruitment process, to the coaches you bring in.
All these parts need to add together, it cannot be in all different directions. You need to do it very well for many years. Every time you change, you’re starting over.
Do you see yourself as a manager in the future?
Yes, I do. But at the moment I am in a quite unique club and it’s a privileged and unique opportunity to be able to work with Flemming as the Head Coach. I really want to make the most of it and see where this can go because I think we have a very big potential within this club and this team.
But I’m also a guy that really enjoys challenges and being out in deep water. I really enjoy being challenged and trying to prove myself to see how good or bad I am in different environments.
At some point I would very much enjoy being a Head Coach again. I would really enjoy it if I, at one point, get the chance of doing it in a different culture and a different country, a different environment than the one we have here in Denmark, also to get the experience with the family.
But at the same time, I really think I am in a privileged position at the moment where I am learning a lot and it’s such a good place to be. We have such good staff and a bunch of very good people and they give me so much on a football level but also on a personal level. I want to make sure I enjoy this and that I’m able to give something back.
How do you measure success with the project that you are part of at the moment?
We are aiming to play at the top of the league with a squad full of academy players. That will be the ultimate thing for the project — if we could bring in players from the academy in Ghana and the academy here in Farum and compete at the top of Danish football.
I don’t think it’s all the way up in the clouds. I actually think there’s a possibility for this.
- Feel free to leave any feedback/suggestions below or on my twitter.
- Find Frank Hjortebjerg on Twitter here.
- Find FC Nordsjælland on Instagram here, link to their website here.
