Piet Hamberg

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Piet Hamberg (born in Winschoten) is a Dutch former footballer and manager. Currently he works at Liverpool as a technical manager for their Academy.^[1]

In his playing career Hamberg served NEC Nijmegen, FC Wageningen, FC Utrecht, Servette FC and AFC Ajax. Hamberg considers himself to have failed at Ajax as his goal was to become a part of the Netherlands national football team, but he never managed to make that wish come true.^[2] During a European Cup clash in Madrid his knee was injured and it took him quite a while to get fit. Once he was declared fit the same knee was injured in a match against PSV Eindhoven and he was sidelined for quite a period yet again, eventually resulting in the end of his career.^[3]

After his career he became coach and worked in Saudi Arabia, Libya, the United Arab Emirates and Togo.^[4] He led the Saudi Arabia under 20 squad towards the World Cup before becoming a manager at Lybian club Al-Ahly (Tripoli). In 2003 he replaced fellow Dutch manager Jan Versleijen at Al-Jazira Club in the United Arab Emirates.^[5] For Togo he was the assistant manager of Otto Pfister at their 2006 FIFA World Cup campaign. However Hamberg and Pfister stepped back from their position after it was announced that their players had not received any promised money for qualifying for the World Cup.^[6] Eventually Pfister returned before their World Cup opener against South Korea, but Hamberg decided not to and told the press he is a man of his words.^[7] In between he was head coach of the Grasshopper-Club Zürich squad three times from 1997 to 2007, leaving the club in April 2007.^[8] In July of that year he joined the Liverpool F.C. Academy.