Hibs Appoint Marink Reedijk After Unbeaten Belgian Title Season

Hibernian have appointed Marink Reedijk as their new manager on a three-year contract, bringing the 35-year-old Dutch coach to Easter Road after a season in Belgium where his SK Beveren side just forgot how to lose.

They played 32 league matches, won 28, drew four and finished with 88 points. Beveren scored a league-high 74 goals on their way to the Challenger Pro League title and promotion, becoming the first professional Belgian side since 1934 to complete an entire league campaign unbeaten.

Reedijk now swaps a team that couldn’t lose for one badly needing a winning touch. He replaces David Gray with Hibs 10th in the Scottish Premiership on seven points from seven matches, and assistant Rogier Molhoek will make the move to Edinburgh with him. A trip to Dundee United on 10 October will be his first league game in charge. Hibs’ current position is confirmed by the SPFL table, while the club confirmed Reedijk’s appointment and three-year deal on Thursday.

The unbeaten season catches the eye, but Reedijk’s background makes the appointment more interesting than the record alone. He began coaching at 18 and later worked with Dutch youth selections, Ajax and West Bromwich Albion before moving into senior football. At Ajax, his age-group sides included players such as Matthijs de Ligt, Donny van de Beek, Brian Brobbey and Ryan Gravenberch. He later worked with Roeselare and Vitesse before taking charge of Anderlecht’s U23 side, RSCA Futures.

That year at Anderlecht gave him something much closer to the job Hibs are asking him to do now. RSCA Futures competed in Belgium’s professional second tier with a squad built around development, and Reedijk spoke openly about using senior competition to prepare young players for Anderlecht’s first team. When he left, the club said both of their main aims, developing players and retaining their Challenger Pro League place, had been achieved.

Beveren then gave him his first proper senior managerial job. His first season brought a fourth-place finish before the second became rather more memorable. By the end of it, Reedijk had combined the development work that shaped the early part of his career with a side capable of overwhelming a league.

Hibs clearly liked the combination. Sporting director Malky Mackay described Reedijk’s teams as “proactive, high energy and dynamic” and pointed towards his record of improving players. Executive chairman Ian Gordon said the club want to develop footballers while competing regularly towards the top end of Scottish football and in Europe.

Reedijk’s own description of the job was a little simpler.

“I want us to be an assertive team - brave, intense and committed. A team that gives everything, plays with purpose and gives our supporters something to really get behind.”

There is no shortage of expectation attached to that at Easter Road. Hibs have spent much of the last two seasons back in the European places and Gray had taken them from the bottom of the Premiership in December 2024 to third by the end of that campaign. Seven games into this one, the club have already decided another change is needed.

They also had more familiar options. Shamrock Rovers manager Stephen Bradley was strongly linked with the vacancy after years of sustained success in Ireland, but Hibs eventually went to Belgium for a coach still only 35, with an academy-heavy CV and one extraordinary senior season behind him.

Reedijk will have a training camp before Hibs return to league action at Tannadice. Beveren gave him 32 matches without defeat.

Hibs would probably settle for getting through the first one.