Most cinch Championship clubs tend to focus on the short term. It’s understandable: the league isn’t blessed with a whole lot of money; season-long contracts are the norm; and the unpredictable nature of life in Scottish football’s second tier can see a team’s fortunes and standing shift dramatically from one campaign to the next. But Queen’s Park is not like most Championship clubs.
The past few years have been transformational for the Glasgow outfit, yet it is only the beginning of the Spiders’ journey. After deciding to call time on 152 years of being amateur and entering the professional ranks in November 2019, the team have shot up the SPFL pyramid and were only 90 minutes away from sealing promotion to the Premiership last term.
That rise has been remarkable, but it is what is going on behind the scenes at Lesser Hampden that truly makes the club stand out from the crowd. The appointment of Marijn Beuker, who formerly oversaw AZ’s youth development programme, as director of football in November 2021 was an apt demonstration of Queen’s Park’s commitment to its grand designs of creating a world-class academy set-up – as was the recent hiring of Robin Veldman as the first team’s head coach.
Like his compatriot, Veldman is taking a long-term approach to his duties at Lesser Hampden. After signing a three-year deal with the club, the 37-year-old – who has previously worked in youth development at Ajax in the Netherlands and Belgium’s Anderlecht – believes wholeheartedly in Queen’s Park’s vision and believes he is just the man to bring it to fruition. It will take years, he admits, but it is a challenge that he is relishing.
“I have followed the project a little,” he said. “But I looked at vision the club has, to build a young and attractive team to play football, maybe in a different way to what people are used to in Scotland.
“You look at my history with Ajax and with Anderlecht and that’s the total philosophy of both clubs. Having your own players in the first team, dominating the play, and getting success in the end. Maybe the success is a long-term thing, but now we want to build something attractive and that’s attractive to me.
“I don’t think [coming to Scotland] is unusual. I don’t think it’s easy to just become a head coach at one of the top clubs.
“You need to have a solid pathway and my pathway is that I have never played professional football. I have studied as an academy coach then moved up and moved up. I got the chance to become the under-23 manager at Anderlecht. I was then caretaker manager and it was not usual for a 36-year-old to become interim manager at Anderlecht.
“There was big trust there, but for my pathway I think it was good to step in as a head coach of this project because I believe in working with young talents and also the facilities that we can use to create a style of play that fits in attractive football.
“I think it’s the correct step instead of waiting for Real Madrid or Barcelona coming. That’s not a pathway coming for me, so I think this is a logical step.”
That lack of experience playing the professional game might give some clubs pause when they are on the lookout for a new manager but it isn’t hard to see why Queen’s Park weren’t particularly bothered.
Veldman’s time at Ajax and Anderlecht – two clubs that pride themselves on youth development – allowed him to coach some of Europe’s most exciting prospects. He believes this experience will stand him in good stead in Scotland as he attempts to implement a possession-based style at the club, all the way from the academy set-up and into the first team.
“It [playing professionally] could help because you know the standards, you know the level,” Veldman reasoned. “But I don’t think it’s a solid demand that has to be around you that you played professional football.
“I am experienced for 17 or 18 years, starting with the under-13s and working up to a young Jan Vertonghen playing for Tottenham Hotspur and Benfica. I also trained [Chelsea winger] Hakim Ziyech at under-11s.
“So you have young players who grow up to be professional players. My experience is to grow up and become a professional coach.”
The relationship between Veldman and Beuker will be crucial to the success of Queen’s Park in the coming years. The project will likely live and die on the Dutch duo having a joined-up approach and understanding the building blocks that must be put in place for the Spiders’ dream to become a reality.
“I know we have that,” said Veldman, who began his career as a coach at Heerenveen in his homeland. “In the recruitment process, we spoke about the vision - style of play, scouting and recruitment of players. Marijn has the big job to lead it all but we are on the same page.
“When I came in, we realised we had known each other for 18 years from doing youth tournaments with AZ and Heerenveen - shaking hands three or four times a year. But I am really only getting to know him this week.
“We share the same ideas on talent development, that’s a massive thing. How do talents learn? The coaching style to develop that talent is something we really share.”
Queen’s Park is certainly a club with ambition, and inevitably there will be those who scoff at the project or roll their eyes when senior figures at the club outline their vision of what they club could be. There will always be nay-sayers, but Veldman does not have to look far to see what can be achieved through years of considered and meticulous planning, having worked with some remarkable coaches in his career thus far.
Veldman explained: “I never really looked up to someone but if I look at people who inspire me – it’s Foppe de Haan. I just texted him yesterday because it was his birthday. He was the manager at Heerenveen when they were playing almost amateur football. He was there for 18 years and they made it up to the Champions League.
“He did it in a really personal way. He always talked about, ‘this is the team, but how do we develop individuals? How do we talk to individuals?’. From the start of my career as a coach, he inspired me to make it individual.
“Of course, when you look at the style of play, Vincent Kompany – I was assisting Vincent in the style of play. He inspired me in how to use his profile as a top athlete becoming a top coach, he inspired me to use the right tools to inspire players in the style of play using different methods. I think that has come from Pep [Guardiola].”
Repeating De Haan’s feats in Glasgow’s south side would certainly raise a few eyebrows. As usual, though, Veldman is more interested in the next 10 years of Queen’s Park than the next three.
“That would be nice, huh? That would be a great story if we achieved that,” Veldman said with a smile. “It’s not our aim to play Champions League in three years. For us, the aim is to be solid in the style of play with young players and to get to the level we are performing. Then we will see where it ends.”
