Rafael van der Vaart will start as an interim trainer at Esbjerg. The 109-time international has been temporarily appointed by the Danish second divisionist with assistant coach Michael Kryger as the successor to Roland Vrabec, who was fired on Wednesday.
Due to lesser results – Esbjerg lost four of his last five league matches – the Danish club has decided to evict head coach Vrabec. Esbjerg is looking for a coach and reports that Van der Vaart and Kryger will do the honors for the time being. “We are confident that Michael Kryger and the rest of the coaching staff can guide us through the coming period,” Esbjerg wrote in a statement on the club’s website.
There is a chance that fifteen-year-old Damian Van der Vaart will make his official debut for Esbjerg in the coming weeks under his father. Last month, the young midfielder came in as a substitute in the exhibition game with Aarhus Fremad fifteen minutes before the end. Esbjerg lost the exhibition game with the one level lower Aarhus Fremad by the way with no less than 0-4, so that the club site spoke of a ‘black evening’.
Van der Vaart moved in with his father in the summer of 2020 to join Esbjerg’s youth academy. Until then he played for Victoria Hamburg, but with the move to Denmark he followed in his father’s footsteps. Van der Vaart senior ended his career at Esbjerg, where he settled because of the handball career of his girlfriend Estavana Polman. His son apparently impressed in his first year at the club, as he signed his first professional contract in May of the previous year on his 15th birthday.
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