Who is Henrik Pedersen?
Product of 'the Red Bull Way' and as avidly analytical as his new boss. Like Röhl experience that belies his age - and someone avid about Gegenpressing at previous clubs and not without controversy.
Vendsyssel FF of the Danish second tier announced Thursday that Sheffield Wednesday had ‘bought’ their head coach Henrik Pedersen, confirmed earlier today on Friday October 20 by Wednesday.
The chairman of Vendsyssel FF, Jacob Andersen, explains he got a call Monday night (October 16) ‘and from then everything went quite fast’. Danny Röhl was announced as Wednesday manager three days previously, on October 13, so little time was wasted in getting in someone who will be well-known to him from their mutual grounding in Red Bull system of clubs: Röhl from 2010 to 2018 and Pedersen from 2008 to 2014.
The headlines of the piece below tell a quick 30 second story of Henrik Pedersen the coach:
Red Bull buddy reunited with Röhl: ‘There’s no such thing as loss of possession, only a bad Gegenpress’
Nine knee operations that ended a player - and created a driven coach
Head coach on mission to ‘Red Bull’ Danish second tier club
Fiercely ambitious - both about his employer and his career
Assistant at a Union Berlin on the fringes of realising its great potential
Determined head coach at Braunschweig - but bowled over quickly
Racism charges overshadowing and ending spell in Norway
Created order from (more) chaos closer to home
Single-minded man of detail and ambition
Signed for £120k
According to the Danish football website, bold.dk, it required a fee of ‘close to a million Danish Kroner’ (up to £120,000).
Even with little time wasted, though, it could be that one of Röhl’s first calls as member of his coaching staff turned him down, as he outlined his wish to sign three German (Sascha Lense) and one English coach (Chris Powell) to his staff in the press conference unveiling him as manager.
Red Bull buddy reunited with Röhl: ‘There’s no such thing as loss of possession, only a bad Gegenpress’
Regardless, Henrik Pedersen is hardly a bad fall back option and the similarities with his new boss are many: Lots of responsbility at a young age, scaling the career ladder quickly and a thorough grounding in, appreciation for and dedication to an analytical approach to football and playing ‘the Red Bull way’: Aggressive Gegenpressing, high intensity, quick transitions from winning the ball high up the pitch.
Read on below as I go through his career up to now and what we can expect him to bring to the table as one of the assistants to Danny Röhl.
Nine knee operations that ended a player - and created a driven coach
At 19 he started out as youth coach in his native north-western Jutland at Holstebro Boldklub and moved to Esbjerg fB at just 24, traditionally one of the better youth academies in Denmark, to coach their U16s.
After four years he joined Aarhus GF - another youth academy powerhouse - to coach their U19s before in 2008 - as a 30-year-old - joining RB Salzburg as head coach of their youth team. RB Salzburg isn’t just any youth team: Only Chelsea, FC Barcelona and Benfica have been more successful in the UEFA Youth League (the U19 Champions League). That competition didn’t exist while Pedersen was there, but the team lost just six of the 61 games he was in charge for.
He moved on to become head of the entire Red Bull football group’s global football strategy/talent development and in 2012 was rumoured to become head coach of Odense Boldklub (OB), one of Denmark’s big traditional clubs.
Head coach on mission to ‘Red Bull’ Danish second tier club
He made the jump into head coaching in 2014 instead pitching up tent at HB Køge - having interviewed at Aarhus GF but ultimately losing out to now assistant of Denmark, Morten Weighorst - and charged with installing ‘the Red Bull Way’ at the club: ‘Here at HB Køge we pass it forwards, not backwards or sideways’ as the headline says here with a playing style he himself dubbed as ‘extreme’: Pressing from the front, especially after losing the ball, attempting to win the ball high up the pitch and initiate quick transitions/counter attacks and strike at goal quickly before the opposition has reorganised itself. Summed up succinctly by Pedersen himself: ‘I actually don’t care that much whether we have the most possession or not. As long as we create more chances than the opposition’.
At the second tier Danish club he hired a full time analyst - at the time unheard of even at top tier clubs in Denmark - and had every training session video filmed for analysis. A relentless approach mirrored by the demands he wanted to place on players: ‘I want to challenge the sometimes spoiled Danish players and their mentality and training culture. There needs to be a consequence from not performing’.
Interestingly he had an eye for wider club strategy too, including how the playing style he was implementing could be married to a transfer market strategy of selling players to Germany: ‘When I work as a coach of HB Køge I’m focused on createing players we can sell to Germany in particular. That’s why all of them have to be great at pressing, and we can live with them sometimes having more underwhelming days while on the ball. The German [scout] in the stands will be noticing their mentality first and foremost anyway and see that it’s what it should be.’
Fiercely ambitious - both about his employer and his career
His time at HB Køge came to an end after 18 months as Pedersen didn’t feel the club’s ambitions and progression off the pitch was what he’d been promised. Throughout his interviews he adopts a very player like focus on ‘my career’ and he’s clearly an ambitious coach (‘I want to be a top coach in Europe’), living out his football dream through coaching after even a gruelling nine (!) knee operations couldn’t salvage a playing career.
In his time at the club they bought Bruninho, later sold by FC Nordsjælland to the Chinese Super League for £3.2m, and Kristian Pedersen, later sold by Union Berlin to Birmingham City for £2.5m - using ‘Henrik Pedersen’s strong international network’ as per the club.
Assistant at a Union Berlin on the fringes of realising its great potential
Henrik Pedersen then joined Union Berlin as assistant to Jens Keller - a highly regarded coach in Germany, who had taken FC Schalke 04 to 3rd and 4th in 1. Bundesliga - and they finished 4th in the German second tier the same year Wednesday did likewise in England, 2017, again implementing a ‘really aggressive and forward-minded press and quick transitions and that’s certainly more extreme than what a lot of the players have been used to’.
On his time at HB Køge he reflected that ‘back then I was perhaps too wedded to a playing style and not focused enough on the human behind the player and that experience has taught me a lot about myself as a leader and as a man’.
Union were in that same position, 4th in the 2. Bundesliga, when Keller - and Pedersen - were sacked for not doing well enough after three losses in four before the German mid-season winter break in 2017-2018. Ironically the club finished the season 9th, with Pedersen the co-victim of a proud working class club beset by a fan base size (>20,000 average attendance) and expectations belying its general historical record - sounds familiar..?
Determined head coach at Braunschweig - but bowled over quickly
Henrik Pedersen then joined Eintracht Braunschweig (Brunswick in English) - a traditional club in a town that industralised rapidly only to then go into decline (sounds familiar (again)..?) - but he failed to breathe life into a team newly relegated into the third tier, sacked just 11 games into the season with the team last in the table.
Typically for Pedersen the many losses and goals conceded were generally answered in an analytical way: ‘We’ve analysed the game […] and have big problems due to our losses of the ball. We’ve learned a lot from that and I’m sure that [the next game] will bring a step in the right direction’.
The short spell also showed a head strong head coach, relegating a player to the reserves via a statement on the club’s official website over attitude: ‘Nobody is bigger than the club and the team. [The player] showed a lack of respect towards others and we neither can nor will allow that. […] We’ll generally never allow a player to fall when he’s made mistakes. But sometimes it’s necessary to send a clear signal to facilitate the necessary introspection’.
Racism charges overshadowing and ending spell in Norway
Henrik Pedersen then joined (another) traditional club, Strømsgodset of Norway’s top tier, where he was effusively praised at his unveiling by their sporting director, ex-Blades striker Jostein Flo for his leadership qualities, ambition and hunger as well as ‘a clear and attacking style of play’. The club was in the relegation zone after two wins in 11 when he joined, but managed to save them from relegation - just! - in a ridiculously tight bottom third of the Eliteserien table that saw two teams relegated by virtue of goal difference.
Strømsgodset scraped survival in his second season - by four rather than two points this time - but he never rose from Norway’s November-to-May winter hiatus. Seven reports - described as ‘anonymous, without concrete content, wording or episodes, but more general’ - of racism perpetrated by Henrik Pedersen while coaching Strømsgodset was sent to the Norwegian PFA (NISO) after the club announced Pedersen would continue as head coach after an internal investigation.
Three days later - April 9 - a defiant Pedersen left by mutual consent ‘especially for the good of everyone who loves Strømsgodset’ after members of the board had resigned in protest over the club’s initial ‘full confidence in Pedersen’ message, leaving a club in chaos off the pitch.
Drammen, the Oslo suburb Strømsgodset hail from, is a Norwegian Milton Keynes - bland, but ethnically diverse - so racism charges hit all the harder in a town where more than one in four inhabitants born outside of Norway, the second highest proportion of the country.
Norway’s FA, having been referred the case from Strømsgodset, announced two months later that ‘evidence [was] insufficient to lead to charges’ against Henrik Pedersen.
It’s clear that Pedersen at the very least is a man with an unflinching attitude to football and someone who you can get hurt by when working with, which is evidenced by ex-player (from Strømsgodset) Marcus Mølvadgaard, who made a number of accusations of Henrik Pedersen around the time of Pedersen leaving Strømsgodset, and would be distraught if Pedersen ever worked as a coach again. Pedersen’s denied the accusations via his lawyer.
Created order from (more) chaos closer to home
In July 2021, a month after the Norwegian FA refused to press charges, Pedersen joined Vendsyssel FF of the Danish second tier. A(nother) club in turmoil that had just been rescued from bankruptcy by a local investor after the previous owners had withdrawn all cash from club’s accounts leaving £500k of arrears and just 14 players under contract a week before the start of the season.
Once again a new job referred to by Pedersen as ‘a project’ albeit ‘not a particularly exciting project when I started the job, but we’re creating that and I’d like to take that much further, so I’m using all my energy on that’.
From those meagre beginnings he led the club to comfortable safety in his first season, to 12 points short of promotion to the top tier in his second season, a position similar to the one he leaves the previously tumultuous club in.
Even shortly after joining he was crystal clear that he’d like to coach abroad again at some point. That time is now.
Single-minded man of detail and ambition
A clued up football man, reflected about his (many) experiences, single-minded bordering the possessed about performance and tactical detail and brimming with both personal and professional ambition.
Velkommen til min klub, Henrik. Welcome to Wednesday, Henrik :-)