Arsenals AirPod Albert Stuivenberg: Incredible football brain, master of detailed mat

When Albert Stuivenberg stands in for the suspended Mikel Arteta against Aston Villa this weekend, he will do so with the Arsenal manager’s absolute trust. This summer’s surprise departure of Arteta’s other assistant coach, Steve Round, solidified Stuivenberg’s position as his closest adviser and confidante.

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Yet theirs is a partnership that almost did not come to pass.

Like many relationships, it owes plenty to timing. Arteta took his coaching badges with the Welsh FA, under the tutelage of coach Osian Roberts. The Welshman became a mentor, guiding the Spaniard through his UEFA B License during Arsenal’s 2015-16 season, his final year as a player. Arteta went on to complete both the A License and Pro License also on courses overseen by Roberts.

During his time serving as Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City between 2016 and 2019, Arteta began to prepare thoroughly for life as a manager. He held talks over several possible first jobs as a boss before ultimately rejoining Arsenal, and had begun assembling a hypothetical backroom staff. The plan was for Roberts to join him at the Emirates Stadium as his assistant.

Wales manager Ryan Giggs (centre), Albert Stuivenburg (right) and Osian Roberts during a Croatia vs Wales game in 2019 (Adam Davy/PA Images via Getty Images)

It was not to be.

When Arteta ultimately got the Arsenal job — at the second attempt — Roberts had just committed to join the Moroccan Football Federation as technical director. Arteta had to go back to the drawing board, and turned to Roberts for advice.

“It’s not unusual for a young manager to come and ask me for recommendations — they usually know the profile of coach they want, but might not know the name,” Roberts tells The Athletic. “I knew Mikel and what he would need from his right-hand man.

“I thought about it for a few days, and the one that met the profile best was Albert.”

Stuivenberg and Arteta met privately to discuss their football philosophy. They found a match — Roberts’ hunch was right.

“I want to play recognisable football,” Stuivenberg has said. “For me, that means that we play dominantly both defensively and offensively.”

Roberts had met Stuivenberg during their time serving as Ryan Giggs’ assistants with Wales. Giggs had worked alongside Stuivenberg during Louis van Gaal’s tenure at Manchester United and was sufficiently impressed to bring the Dutchman into the national team setup.

From left: Giggs, Van Gaal and Stuivenberg at Manchester United (John Peters/Manchester United via Getty Images)

Van Gaal had brought a modern take on coaching to Manchester United. His staff were specialists. They had clearly defined roles, were computer-literate and capable of producing their own presentations and analysis. Stuivenberg fitted the mould of a modern coach.

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Fellow coach Tony Strudwick worked with Stuivenberg at both United and Wales. “Albert’s tactical knowledge and understanding of the game is excellent,” he says. “He’s got an incredible football brain.”

Alongside Stuivenberg, Arteta appointed Round as his other assistant.

There was an informal delineation of responsibility.

Round focused on reshaping the club culture and helping Arteta come to grips with the practical realities of his first management job. As a former sporting director for Villa, he was able to form a bridge between the manager and other departments. Stuivenberg’s area was more to do with tactical and technical matters. Working with Arteta, he assumed responsibility for Arsenal’s coaching methodology.

“If you were forced to divide coaches in two, you’ve got two basic styles,” explains Roberts. “There’s the ‘man-manager’ type, who specialises in motivating players, getting the best out of individuals, and strong relationships. Then you’ve got the ‘teacher’ type — highly detailed, tactically-minded, with a big emphasis on (being a) coach.

“There’s usually some overlap. But I had to put Albert into one camp, I’d say he’s more of a ‘teacher’ coach.”

Neither Arteta nor Stuvienberg fits either description perfectly, but they clearly dovetail to form an effective partnership.

Stuivenberg takes an active role in designing Arsenal training sessions, helping the players hone their technique and providing Arteta with valuable feedback. On a matchday, he’ll scrutinise both teams’ warm-ups, looking for any insight that could help turn the tide in Arsenal’s favour.

Stuivenberg takes Netherlands Under-21s training (VI Images via Getty Images)

One of Stuivenberg’s best qualities is his ability to be lucid amid the drama and tension of a match.

“His bench behaviour is very calm, methodical,” says Strudwick. “He doesn’t get wrapped up in the emotion of the game — he has a laser focus on what’s happening on the pitch. That ability to make clear decisions in-game is invaluable for a manager.”

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Among Arsenal fans, Stuivenberg has earned the nickname ‘AirPod Albert’ — a reference to the fact that he’ll often use a wireless headset to communicate with coach Miguel Molina, who is usually among Arsenal’s in-game analysts watching the action from a higher vantage point.

Although Arteta is banned for the Villa game after his third yellow card of the season, managers in such situations are permitted to give a pre-match team talk and to be in the dressing room at half-time, and they can discreetly pass on information for their assistants to relay during play. Direct communication, however, is forbidden. It is likely that another member of Arsenal’s coaching staff will don the AirPods and give Arteta’s messages to Stuivenberg.

Unlike Arteta, Stuivenberg did not have an illustrious playing career.

He retired at just 19, succumbing to the after-effects of a freak injury he suffered tumbling out of bed as a teenager. He turned instead to coaching, spending 13 years in the academy at Rotterdam-based Feyenoord, the current Dutch champions. During that time, he helped bring through a host of stars including future Arsenal striker Robin van Persie.

 
After two years leading youth development for Al Jazira in Abu Dhabi, Stuivenberg returned to his homeland to join the Dutch Football Association. As Netherlands Under-17 manager, Stuivenberg won back-to-back European Championships in 2011 and 2012. Those under-17 teams included players such as Joel Veltman, Stefan de Vrij, Georginio Wijnaldum and Memphis Depay. Later, he stepped up to become the Netherlands’ under-21s coach.

One interesting aspect of Stuivenberg’s final tournament training sessions was that the coach focused on simulating specific in-game situations: defending a lead, playing against 10 men, having to come from behind. That focus on detailed match scenarios is a theme of his work.

Van Gaal used him as a scout for the Dutch senior side and was sufficiently impressed to add him to his staff when he moved to Old Trafford in the summer of 2016.

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The following January, Stuivenberg took his only senior club management position to date, at Belgian side Genk. In December of that year, after some patchy domestic form, he was dismissed.

“The management panicked because of the results, they were afraid that we would miss the (title) play-offs,” Stuivenberg later said. “There were two possibilities: either we continued according to the vision that we fixed ourselves on, or we let ourselves be guided by feelings. Emotion is part of the game, especially among the supporters. Management must set longer-term objectives and an action plan … I regret that Genk lacked patience.”

“I’m sure he would have liked it to last longer, but (it means) he has been a manager,” points out Strudwick. “He’s not inexperienced or out of his depth.”

Stuivenberg addresses players as Genk head coach (Vincent Kalut/Photonews via Getty Images)

For Stuivenberg, standing on that touchline before the crowd on Saturday evening will not be an unfamiliar feeling. That made him ideal to support novice manager Giggs with Wales — and Roberts tells The Athletic that Stuivenberg “had a major role in the relative success Wales experienced in that time”. Strudwick recalls Stuivenberg working “14- or 16-hour days” for the benefit of the team.

Stuivenberg is known for his warmth and good sense of humour but is also not shy about saying what he thinks when necessary.

“Albert can be quite direct, which isn’t a bad thing – it takes some getting used to,” Giggs said in 2020. “If someone is not doing what he wants in training, he’ll tell them. It doesn’t matter who they are — he would always tell me what he thought. He will never be a yes-man. He’s a brilliant coach.”

That straight-talking approach has inevitably complicated some of his relationships with players. During his time at Genk, he did not always see eye-to-eye with their star midfielder Alejandro Pozuelo.

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“It was a love-hate relationship,” admitted Stuivenberg. “He (Pozuelo) is a talented and creative player but these people are not always the most approachable. I would have liked him to be more demanding of himself, to want to progress. He liked it easy and was not always disciplined. I put a lot of energy into convincing him, but we didn’t often agree. His vision of high-level sport was not the same as mine.”

Those standards — that inflexible set of ‘non-negotiables’ — is a vision Stuivenberg shares with Arteta. When big-name Arsenal players including Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang have been cast aside, Stuivenberg has stood firmly beside the manager.

Although his primary remit is coaching, Stuivenberg has been involved in discussions on recruitment and squad-building.

He was an advocate of Sander Berge, who he had signed at Genk and ended up at Sheffield United and now Burnley, but Arsenal’s loose interest never developed into something concrete. Stuivenberg’s account of working with Leandro Trossard at Genk played a part in persuading Arteta to pivot to Brighton’s Belgium international in last season’s winter window after losing out to Chelsea on Mykhailo Mudryk.

Having taken his first steps into management, Stuivenberg might well have been wary of taking a role as an assistant at club level. The prospect of joining Arsenal, however, proved too good to turn down.

Round’s departure this summer caught many close to the club off-guard. While it ostensibly created a pathway for young coaches such as Carlos Cuesta, it also consolidated Stuivenberg’s position as Arteta’s immediate deputy.

One question is whether Stuivenberg still has aspirations of being a head coach again.

His close relationship with Van Gaal, now in an advisory role with Ajax, led to him being linked with the vacant managerial position at the Amsterdam club earlier this season.

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Perhaps another game standing in for Arteta will see Stuivenberg rediscover a taste for management.

Should he one day want to leave, Arteta will not let him go easily. Over the last four years, Stuivenberg has proven himself to be the Arsenal manager’s most trusted collaborator.

(Top photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)

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