Meet the 31-year-old coach who has already worked with Guardiola, Kompany and Bellamy

Ten years ago, Brentford asked each of their staff to write down three career dreams. Some dithered over their choices, but Piet Cremers, now assistant manager of Wales’ national team, was a 20-year-old with crystal-clear vision.

His first goal was to be part of a Premier League-winning club. His second was to reach a Champions League final. His third was to coach at a World Cup.

The Dutchman ticked off the first in 2019 while serving as Manchester City’s head of analysis, as they pipped Liverpool by a single point. The second was gone from the list in 2021, even if it was a bittersweet landmark as City lost 1-0 to Chelsea in that final.

The third?

That will be realised if Wales can navigate two single-leg play-off ties in March – beating Bosnia & Herzegovina would set up a decider against Italy or Northern Ireland a few days later, with both matches being played on Welsh soil in Cardiff – and make it to North America next summer. A pretty kind group-stage draw has joint-hosts Canada, Switzerland and Qatar waiting for them if they manage it.

Last month, with head coach Craig Bellamy serving a suspension, Cremers took charge of Wales’ 1-0 win in Liechtenstein. At 31, it made him the youngest manager of a UEFA-recognised national team in a competitive match since a 30-year-old Terry Neill managed Northern Ireland in 1972.

“I cannot describe how proud I was to have that opportunity,” Cremers tells The Athletic. “I was incredibly grateful for Craig trusting someone my age with that responsibility.

“Everything we have done the last 14 months was to qualify for the World Cup, and the last game, winning 7-1 against North Macedonia, a lot of the pieces came together. We had a lot of good performances over the campaign but didn’t reward ourselves, so that was really powerful. Every day I wake up with the thought of realising that World Cup dream driving me.”

Ambitions of becoming a head coach, although very much there, are on the back burner for now. But to have almost completed his football bucket list by the age of 31 and worked over 500 senior games — 350 of them assisting either Pep Guardiola or Vincent Kompany — has required total commitment since the age of 14, when he took on his first coaching assignment.

At City, Cremers spent four years serving as Guardiola’s second set of eyes, exhaustively analysing every upcoming opponent so that he could have the answers to any questions his boss might pose.

Those demands snowball: 60-65 games per season, one every four days; analysing training, matches, travelling the world; all while finding time to watch each opponent play up to 10 times — working two fixtures ahead of schedule just to keep up. It is why Cremers would come into the training ground on his days off, following Guardiola’s example, and was the only member of staff to work every single day of the Covid-19 delayed 2019-20 season.

So, after leaving the Etihad in 2022 to spend two years on City great Vincent Kompany’s coaching staff at nearby Burnley, there was no prospect of joining the Belgian in his new role as Bayern Munich manager.

They both knew he needed a break from the intense demands of elite club football.

Piet Cremers, second left, coached Vincent Kompany as a player at Manchester City, then was part of his Burnley backroom team (Darren Staples/AFP via Getty Images)

“For 12 years, I worked between 80 and 90 hours a week. I had no social life,” says Cremers.

There were a couple of moments which made him realise it was time to come up for breath.

“One time, I slipped in my house and split my head open on the wall getting some water,” he says. “Hospitals were closed because of Covid, so the club doctor stitched me up at 3am at the training ground. After 14 stitches, I was back at my desk. The doc walked in at 7am and said, ‘What the hell are you doing?’

“That was my dedication. When other people used the few spare hours on Champions League trips to go sightseeing, I was thinking, ‘Pep might need something here’, or I was thinking about the next game (after that one). People around me warned there would come a point when it became too much. But when you are young and aspiring to be at the top level, it becomes addictive. I do look back and think I should have enjoyed those moments more.”

At that time, in his mid-twenties and working with some of the best players in the world, Cremers was too invested to know better.

He developed a collaborative, personalised way of working that saw analysis integrated as part of the preparations for a game, right up until kick-off. As soon as the opposition team sheet arrived in the City dressing room, he and his team would decide how they thought the other side would set up, take it to Guardiola, and once he was satisfied, he would write it on the board. Then it was time to deploy his hard work.

“We got to the point where John Stones was asking me, ‘Pete, Pete, where is the iPad?!’

“Every player was given one and, working with the club psychologist, was able to get what they needed going into the game. One player would say, ‘Just show me the weaknesses of my opponent, so I can score goals tonight.’ Another player might say, ‘Give me as much as possible. Be as detailed as possible’, but you have to be careful with that, too. You don’t want to overload them on matchday.

“The most powerful thing we were able to create was the players communicating (among) themselves. Whereas it had been me showing (clips) on the screen, now you had Gabriel Jesus bringing up Bernardo Silva saying, ‘If you make this movement, I have a tap-in at the front post’.”

Which player was most invested?

Cremers is already laughing.

“That’s an easy one…Vincent (Kompany, City’s captain and centre-back). I was helping him set up the analysis software on his laptop. He had me putting together best-practices of different teams in Europe — while he was still playing.

“As a manager, he was incredibly good at looking outside of the framework he was working in. He would love (then Liverpool manager Jurgen) Klopp as much as he loved Pep. He is constantly looking ahead. He is never satisfied with what is happening right now, even if it is working. So when things get tricky, he already has solutions.”

It was Cremers’ relentless work ethic that Bellamy admired during their time together at Burnley, and convinced him to appoint him as his No 2 when he got the Wales job in July last year. The former Newcastle United, Liverpool, West Ham United, Manchester City and Wales striker has spoken glowingly about Cremers, who believes that openness goes against the reputation Bellamy had as a hot-headed player.

Piet Cremers has been highly impressed by Craig Bellamy (Dan Istitene/Getty Images)

“I would be lying if I said I didn’t have that same image some people had of him, because of that fiery personality. But if you look at who he actually is now as a coach, you realise it is outdated to judge him on that old version,” Cremers says.

“That intensity is still there, which is what you need to be a top coach, but the unpredictability isn’t. He is calm and knows exactly how to manage pressure. Over the last few months, that emotional energy he had as a player has become a strength as a coach. It is now controlled and purposeful.

“A lot of the talk is about his personality, but look at the way the team plays in a small amount of time in very limited training moments. It has a really clear tactical identity. It shows you he is not just a motivator. He is a coach with a clear plan, real detail, and clarity.”

How did Cremers get here? How has he been exposed to so many great football minds at such a young age?

“I read research by the British Olympic team recently that found people who come through a negative life event or have gone through trauma in their youth are more likely to be ruthless and stick to what they believe in,” he says.

“My parents supported me with everything, but because they split when I was young, it meant I had to do things myself and mature before others. I had to get to school, cook my dinner, and get to training myself. I was constantly moving cities and schools, having to adapt to new environments and make new friends. Football gave me a place away from that chaos, something to enjoy away from those challenges. It was an escape.”

He immersed himself in coaching from 14.

He was still playing for his local youth side in the Netherlands, VV Union, but when he finished school at 3pm he would cycle there and wait for the facilities to open at 5pm. He coached two age groups and then trained himself. His obsession with improvement meant he applied to professional academies, but he was rejected numerous times in favour of players coming from other academies.

At 18, he won an all-encompassing analysis internship with NEC Nijmegen. He would travel the country on Saturday mornings with their under-13 team, assist the under-19 side — many of the players were older than him — and then help the first team’s head of analysis. If Nijmegen’s senior side played on a Sunday, all seven days were spent coaching.

His school grades suffered, but he became chief analyst at Rotterdam side Excelsior in January 2014 and impressed the first-team manager, Marinus Dijkhuizen, so much that he took him to Brentford, then a Championship side, with him in summer 2015. When Dijkhuizen was sacked after less than four months, it did not look good for Cremers. He was called in for a meeting and expected the worst, but Lee Dykes, the technical director, told him the west London club wanted to retain him.

The following summer he did leave, joining NAC Breda in the second division of Dutch football. It was a move that puzzled many of his colleagues, but Cremers saw the strategic benefit of working at a club that had just become part of the City Football Group stable. He was proven right as his work with young Manchester City loanees at Breda, such as Brandon Barker, earned him kudos. He interviewed to become City’s under-21s analyst and impressed so much he was offered the same role with the under-23s instead — a group that included Phil Foden.

“From that moment, my career went through the roof,” Cremers says.

Within a few months, he was promoted to the first-team staff. Less than a year after that, he was department head.

“ln the early stages of my career in the Netherlands, I struggled with some players because they were asking why they had to watch their clips. So, my first thought when going into that top environment at City was that they might think they can do everything, but what I experienced was the opposite. Even if you had a non-playing background, if you were able to give them something that could help them, they were open to it,” Cremers says.

“I realised that those Dutch players hadn’t been exposed to what it takes to make it to the top — and stay there. I have, but I made sure that I didn’t just experience it, I took one or two things from every one of those people.

“It’s about who you get exposed to. I worked with Pep, Kompany, (City assistant and now Arsenal manager Mikel) Arteta, (then City set-piece coach and now in the same job at Arsenal) Nico Jover, (City academy boss and now Manchester United director of football) Jason Wilcox (ex-City chief operating officer and now CEO of neighbours United) Omar Berrada, Txiki (Begiristain, City’s long-time director of football who left the club this summer). I was only 26 or 27, but I was having meetings with these people. You can either just experience it or try to learn one or two things from each person.”

In March, when Wales face Bosnia & Herzegovina in that play-off semi-final, Cremers will hope to put those learnings to good use and help guide the Welsh to qualify for consecutive World Cups for the first time ever.