Talented Australian coach Jesse Hesford speaks to aleagues.com.au about his journey from the Isuzu UTE A-League to Europe.
Self-belief is evident throughout this fledgling Australian football story – a story of perseverance and trusting your own abilities.
From one-way tickets abroad and going months without pay to countless LinkedIn messages… all just to get a foot in the door.
It has worked for young Aussie coach Jesse Hesford, who packed his bags for Europe with no job and no real connections – just a belief in himself – after working at Perth Glory, Adelaide United and Brisbane Roar in the Isuzu UTE A-League.
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He is coming off a history-making season with Belgian outfit KAA Gent and their youth team.
“I believe you can stay home for too long,” the 28-year-old told aleagues.com.au.
“Your environment can become a bit of an echo chamber of opinion, and this can stunt your growth. You must leave your comfort zone if you want to work at the top level, you should be
comfortable under pressure and being challenged.
“So I purchased a one-way ticket to Europe. From memory, I actually had to pay for the excess baggage, because I was moving all my belongings.
“I landed with no job, no real connections, but I had arrived with self-belief and determination, and well that’s all that’s needed. Entitlement would be expecting a job before acting. I just needed that self-belief, and with that I knew I going to coach in European football.”
There was never a sense of stress for Hesford. Despite no job and living in a share house, he was a man on a mission.
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“I was just messaging coaches, directors, anyone on LinkedIn who I thought could be helpful,
most of whom ignored me, but no hard feelings, that’s normal because at the end of the day I’m a stranger, an unknown Australian coming to Europe,” he said.
“I wouldn’t even call it hustling, it was more like a perseverance to say, if I believe in something, that if I work hard enough, ultimately if I have faith in my direction, that something will come about.
“I met different people, met with different clubs. One of those people was Arnar Vidarsson, who was at the time the U23s head coach at KAA Gent. He offered to just get coffee and have a chat, which is all I needed.
“I remember the first thing I said to him, it was ‘I don’t want to give you a CV. I don’t want to give you a resume of what I’ve done in Australia’. Although I felt like I had achieved something in Australia of merit, in terms of working for three A-League clubs.
“But I’d rather him see what I can do. Maybe there’s more value in action. And, well he
agreed, which was great. He said come to the training ground watch the training and take notes, and that he would gauge my knowledge about football, by me being in the building, in the facility, and we would go from there.
“So of course I am really focused while taking notes, I spot a few things that could in my view improve the training. That sort of naturally builds up to me giving some suggestions, and after a week or so Arnar presents me with a Gent tracksuit, saying, ‘Okay, let’s see how well the Australian can do on the grass’.
“I start off by just serving balls, marking out training sessions, very passive and just trying to build trust in any way I can. And then at one point I realise I must show more of myself and I ask, ‘can I coach? I would like to do some on the run coaching?’ And he said of course.
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“That’s what you’re here for, you’re here to show you have the qualities to be a coach. If you say the wrong things, I’ll let you know, but I’m giving you license to coach the players. I have never been shy in using my voice, but I was conscious to stay authentic, to just be myself.
“I have a background in sports science and psychology, so I tried to integrate all my experience and show the best version of me. It naturally progressed into taking training exercises, helping in the gym sessions, presenting video to players and supporting on matchdays. I could feel I was becoming important and giving value, ultimately this is what you need to bring, value, no one gives you anything just because you are a nice guy.
“I was working two, three months for free and not earning a single cent from the club but that wasn’t important, for an unknown Australian to be given an opportunity at a top Belgian club I knew I had to walk the walk, I saw it as an audition.
“I was going in every day, this wasn’t a holiday for me, it was a performance to show that I belong there and I deserve an opportunity. It was an Icelandic coach meeting an Australian coach in Belgium and seeing something, that’s the beauty of football, an endless number of doors you can walk through in this industry, if you just take that leap.
“At the end of the season, Arnar comes to me, and he says, Oh, I’ve got to tell you something. I’ve been keeping it from you because I was waiting for it to be finalised; I’ll be the next sporting director of the club. I remember smiling and saying to him how it reminded me of undercover boss the TV series.
“He had been there every day and saw my qualities through his own eyes and saw first-hand what my potential was as a coach in the club, it’s quite a unique perspective for a sporting director to have, because normally they wouldn’t be so hands on or boots on the ground to see the value in the people they’re hiring.
“He was able to really push for my employment at the club which for me as a foreigner, as an outsider, was important. I asked to meet with the CEO as there was still some scepticism. Every moment I was so focused, I prepared for days just to have the best impression possible in that meeting. The CEO agreed with Arnar, that I might not be Belgian but as an Australian coach I had something to offer and they presented me with a two-year contract with the club.”
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That audition and self-belief led to him not only being appointed assistant coach alongside head coach Thomas Matton, but led to an historic 2024-25 season.
In his first year away from Australia, Hesford helped Jong KAA Gent become 1ste Nationale VV Champions. It also secured the youth team’s promotion from the third tier to the Belgian Challenger Pro League.
That feat saw Jong KAA Gent become the first team in the history of Belgian football to be a U23 team promoted to the professional divisions based on merit.
It exceeded all of Gent’s expectations.
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Hesford recalled: “At the start of the season It was suggested that if we stay in the division, the third division of the Belgian football pyramid, from a developmental perspective, they wanted to keep their Under-23s playing in that competition, that would be seen as success.
“It was a younger team. Many players had left or moved on to the first team or abroad. If we just stayed in the division, mid-table, avoided any relegation stress, then that would be seen as a successful season.
“Theoretically, if you finish top of the league, you are promoted to the second division, but
you still need to take a license from the governing body.
“We just kept on winning and that sparked internal discussions about if it would be possible for our U23s to go to the second division, and the owner decided, if you finish top of the league, that he would support our bid for promotion and make the necessary investments.
“Again, this wasn’t part of the plan at the start of the season. It wasn’t probably even recognised as possible.
“All the other youth teams in the league, there’s three other youth teams – it is Antwerp, Cercle Brugges and Leuven – they all finished mid-table or near the bottom and some had to be in that battle for relegation.
“So the fact that we did the job and ended up finishing top of the league, getting that support from the owner and club to push for promotion, well it was a great achievement.”
Hesford’s first-year success abroad all leads back to the theme of this story – self-belief – but also his time in the A-Leagues. In particular with Ross Aloisi.
The pair spent time together at Adelaide United and Brisbane Roar.
“Ross and I really hit it off from the start. We just see football in the same way in terms of how it should be played, how it should be enjoyed and how you build a winning culture inside a team,” he recalled. “He’s very big on the tactical side of the game, which not enough people probably acknowledge him with, in terms of his tactical prowess.”
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At Adelaide, Hesford was working as an analyst for the Reds, who were led by club legend Carl Veart, with Aloisi by his side.
A key moment in Hesford’s development and rise through the ranks came during the 2021-22 season. With Veart sidelined for a trip to Melbourne due to COVID, assistant Aloisi deputised.
Who Aloisi had on the bench for the match at AAMI Park came as a surprise.
“There were a lot of decisions happening internally about who would be the assistant coach for that weekend,” Hesford said. “My name really didn’t come up in terms of the club hierarchy and being assistant coach for that weekend.
“But one person that was very vocal in my being in that position was Ross. He was adamant, that I should be supporting him from the dugout. Then he had the discussion with Carl, and Carl must have agreed to the situation.
“So that would be the first time that I’d walked out on the pitch in an A-League match in an assistant coaching capacity, the first time I’d had the privilege of sitting on a coaching bench in the A-League, and, of course, in an Original Rivalry match where there’s a lot on the line. It was of great value to me.
“I’m very thankful to to Ross but also Carl for giving me that opportunity, because from that point on, I think I must have done something right, because I then happened to sit on the bench alongside the coaches all the way to the semi-final that season versus Melbourne City,
“That was sort of the catalyst for me in my next steps, in the journey of me being a professional coach. So yeah, very grateful for that.”
How Hesford got into that position is remarkable in itself. It is similar to how he landed his role at Gent.
Hesford took his first steps in the A-Leagues via Perth Glory. As an analyst, he worked alongside the likes of Richard Garcia, Terry McFlynn and Steve McGarry in the youth space while Tony Popovic and Hayden Foxe oversaw first-team duties.
Determined to forge a career in the game, Hesford regularly came to the club at 5:00am to see the sun rise when the NPL team would train with the reserves and U18s until 9:00pm at night when the academy lights were switched off. When Popovic departed for Greece, Garcia offered Hesford his first job in professional football – first-team analyst.
After almost two years at Glory, Hesford initially joined Adelaide United as a remote analyst in 2021, providing opposition preview analysis from Perth. However, he felt a disconnect.
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“I felt to have a real impact I needed the opportunity to work day to day with the football
club. There was sort of an informal invitation to come to Adelaide to just spend a week there,
maybe watch one game, and to help with the workflows of the analysis side of things at the
club because I was only working remotely.
“But I saw it as a very different opportunity than initially offered, It wasn’t enough for me to
just show my face at the club and spend a nice week away. I saw it as an opportunity to
cement myself in the club and to forge a greater opportunity, to build a more intimate
connection with the coaching staff and in all honestly it was always from the point of offer
going to be a permanent move to Adelaide.
“I remember I packed two suitcases, filled to the brim, to the point I was jumping on top of the suitcase to close the zips, and my mum just turned to me and said, I thought you were going for a week, because all the discussions with my family, you know, I was just reiterating what the coaches had said, that you can watch a game and be here for a week, enjoy a short holiday in Adelaide and that’s all it was supposed to be.
“I packed all my belongings and got on the plane, a one-way ticket, and said to myself that I’m going to make this work, by any means. I stayed in a hotel for the first few months, had to make a deal with the management of the hotel to get a cut-price deal, because obviously, staying in a hotel for even a week’s period is quite an expensive endeavour especially for someone without a full-time job. But I was just determined to stay in Adelaide and to forge an opportunity for myself.”
Hesford, having started his journey in the NPL space with former Socceroo Chris Herd’s father Willie, a man responsible for producing many A-Leagues and Socceroos alumni from Western Australia was the first person to say “you are going to be a professional coach” when Jesse was aged just 18. He made an impact with the Reds board and with the players.
Recalling a conversation with Reds legend Craig Goodwin, Hesford said: “I did a presentation in the hotel and I remember him on the massage bed, and he goes, ‘Jesse, come here’.
“He says, ‘the level of detail in your presentations, the only other person in football that I’ve seen with that level of detail is Ange Postecoglou’. Obviously coming from someone of his stature in the game it was further motivation that I was on the right path.”
It was significant praise for a young coach. That mark he left on Adelaide also opened the door for a new role in Brisbane.
When Aloisi left Adelaide to join Kevin Muscat’s coaching staff at Japanese side Yokohama F.Marinos in 2022, he made a promise to Hesford.
“One thing he did say when he left was when he got a head coaching job, I would be one of his first phone calls,” Hesford explained.
“And true to his word when he got the job at Brisbane Roar as head coach, I was one of his first phone calls, if not his first phone call to join him as assistant coach.
“That’s the other thing, right? At Perth Glory I was an analyst, at Adelaide United I was an analyst, but I always wanted to be a coach,” he continued. “It was just a way of getting a foot in the door into the professional game. He was one of the first people to realise my potential and to really help me develop that self belief, because it helps to have validation from outside of yourself also.
“He was another mentor who was adamant that I will be a professional coach, and he told me that very conclusively.
“It was an easy decision, because again, the way he sees football, well in my eyes it’s the right way, I believe he is one of the top Australian coaches, and he will do great things in the game, of course he already has, but also in his own right as a head coach one day.”
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