Fred Rutten joins the supervisory board of NEC. The 58-year-old Gelderlander will be responsible for technical matters and is therefore the successor to Leen Looijen, who joined the Supervisory Board in October 2017. The 74-year-old Looijen will remain associated with the Nijmegen club as a scout and ‘culture guard’.
Rutten’s appointment is not a surprise on the one hand, as he has been involved with NEC since February. Then his good friend Ted van Leeuwen became technical director and he was already advised by Rutten. “I did not involve Fred Rutten, but Fred Rutten is a very involved person. It is known that we interact a lot,” Van Leeuwen said earlier in conversation with Broadcasting Gelderland.
Rutten, born in Wijchen near Nijmegen, has joined the Supervisory Board through the intercession of financier Marcel Boekhoorn. The wealthy businessman is busy restructuring NEC and was previously responsible for the arrival of Van Leeuwen. General director Wilco van Schaik, however, did not believe that Rutten would fulfill an official position at NEC. “Fred is not going to take up a position at NEC. He doesn’t have that ambition either,” the driver previously assured in conversation with Football International.
“That would only be an issue in a few years. For now Fred still has too much ambition to be a trainer himself. And that certainly does not happen at NEC.” Rutten already visited a number of NEC matches in the Kitchen Champion Division last season and it was also known that trainer Rogier Meijer regularly uses Rutten’s knowledge.
Rutten had his greatest successes in the service of FC Twente, with which he won the TOTO KNVB Cup and qualified for the Champions League. With Vitesse he finished in fourth place in the Eredivisie in 2013, but he was fired from Schalke 04, PSV, Feyenoord and Anderlecht.
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