Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg has named former Liverpool assistant manager Pep Lijnders as its new manager.
The long-term Liverpool assistant will leave the club along with Jurgen Klopp after the final game of the Premier League season and has now secured a return to management.
Before moving to Porto, the tactician had previously collaborated with Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool. He quickly made his way back to Liverpool under Klopp, where he was crucial to the team’s enormous success.
Vitor Matos, a former elite development coach at Liverpool, takes on a new role as assistant coach under Lijinders. After securing the job, this is what he said,
“I am very proud to become the new head coach of FC Red Bull Salzburg,”. After PSV Eindhoven, FC Porto and Liverpool FC, I am now moving to another exceptional club with a really good structure and a particular focus on youth development. “I want to develop a mentality with the team that places a lot of emphasis on attacking style of play and where passion and hunger for success are the basis of everything.
“Together with my assistant coach Vitor Matos and the entire support team, we will do our best to help the club continue to grow in an ever-changing football world.
Lijnders departs Liverpool having won seven trophies during his hugely successful stint alongside Klopp. Following his departure from Liverpool, he said this.
“It`s not easy, leaving such a club,” “But in life, I feel always you have to do the right thing and the right thing means that in the summer we say we continue and we go with all we have, we make it `the Last Dance`, we make it like a proper ending, he said.
Lijnders first worked under Brendan Rodgers at Liverpool in 2017 after eight years at Porto. In 2018, he managed the second-tier Dutch team, NEC Nijmegen, as he had also managed PSV Eindhoven before.
