After a long, long time us West Ham fans waited for news of who would succeed Sam Allardyce as manager. Finally, this week, old boy Slaven Bilic was confirmed as the man to lead us in one of the most crucial seasons in our history. Plenty has been said and written about the Croatian and what we can expect from him. But what about the people who’ll be coming along to help him in his mission?
Nicola Jurcevic
Like Bilic, Jurcevic is a former Croatian international and has been with the new West Ham boss, as his assistant, for the majority of his managerial career. Having served as number two with the Croatia national team, Lokomotiv Moscow and Besiktas, Bilic hopes that Jurcevic will join him in East London, subject to a work permit hearing which the club are confident he will pass. Additionally Jurcevic has experience of being a manager after a short stint at Dinamo Zagreb in which they won the Croation cup and Croation super cup. As a former attacking midfielder his playing career took in spells with Dinamo Zagreb, NK Zagreb, Royal Antwerp, SV Austria Salzburg, and SC Freiburg. The 48-year old also made 19 appearances for his country and participated in Croatia’s Euro 1996 campaign. Every good boss has a key right hand man by his side and Bilic is no exception. Here’s hoping that this partnership continues to flourish for us.
Edin Turzic
Turzic is the man Bilic considers to be his ‘second assistant’ and ‘a great coach’. The 32-year old Croatian, who was born in Germany, had an unremarkable playing career but his coaching has been far more successful. Originally hired by Borussia Dortmund as a scout he soon became the assistant to their under 19s side. Dortmund have one of the most revered youth academies in the world and to be hired in this capacity shows how highly rated he is as a coach. He was then tempted to Besiktas, by Bilic, where he continued to show and develop his skills. No doubt, considering his experience with youth, his arrival at West Ham will be good for developing some of our younger players, such as Reece Burke and Reece Oxford.
Milijenko Rak
Also someone supposedly following Bilic from Besiktas to West Ham is fitness coach Milijenko Rak. The Croatian has been described by Bilic as a ‘legend’ as he won Olympic medals as fitness coach with the Croatian Handball team. He has gone on to enjoy fitness coaching success in other sports before he came into football at Besiktas, under Bilic. No doubt he will get all the players whipped up and into shape. It has also been rumoured that Bilic will be looking to bring in a new goalkeeping coach to replace Bobby Mimms. Hopefully the new coach will have a similar effect on Adrian as Mimms did. With all these new faces coming into the backroom staff we can only hope that, with all their combined expertise, the players will respond well. Collectively they managed to get Besiktas playing strong attacking football and, maybe, we can see this replicated from our boys in claret and blue.
