Philippe De Ridder
De Ridder is highly regarded for his specialty in discovering young, unknown talent, and his ability to revive teams from troublesome situation.
[2] De Ridder played his professional football career in Belgium with the club RWD Molenbeek and he was part of the team which became Division 2 champions in 1985.
He was captain of the Belgium national youth team where he played alongside several World Cup winners like Patrick Vervoort, Marc Degryse, Stéphane Demol and Filip De Wilde.
His most notable event while with East Bengal was the victory against arch rivals Mohun Bagan in the biggest derby in Indian Football in front of 90,000 people.
East Bengal then won the Super Cup in a one match face-off tournament against the 2005-06 NFL Premier Division champions, Mahindra United, beating them by a solitary goal.
De Ridder then patched up the team from their miserable condition and went into the national level tournament Federation Cup as underdogs.
After being manager of the team for some part of I-League, De Ridder decided to move to a different role of football director for United Sikkim.
[11] [12] [13] In November 2013, De Ridder was confirmed as the Technical Director cum player of the club Mizoram premier league.
In that match, Batumi led by 1 goal, but conceded the lead due to an unmindful individual mistake in the closing few moments of the game.
Batumi did very well, but the championship was cut down at the end due to some suspicion of abnormal betting movements in the competition (none that involved his team though).
Ridder accepted the challenge of taking the role of Technical Director of Dayu FC in Beijing China - a very popular club created by a former star of Chinese football.
While with Dayu, de Ridder started with setting up the bases of excellence through developing the youth academy players with the 360 CFT method.
He also worked with senior players like Mehtab Hossain, Bhaichung Bhutia and Harmanjot Khabra to transform and develop their playing abilities.
De Ridder also provided Jhingan with a chance to become the first Indian player to go to China and trial for a club in the Chinese First Division Football League.
De Ridder also initiated the international development of Chinese U9, discovering 8 talented players and bringing them to the best youth football tournament in Belgium.
After developing the likes of Abhra Mondal and Gurpreet Singh Sandhu, De Ridder also became the first football coach in India to bring a foreign goalkeeper from South Korea to the I League.
Many players participated for several years in these elite training centres, such as Faris Haroun (Blackpool), Arnor Angeli (Mons), Rosario Saporito (Diegem Sport), Fabio Tonini (FC Brussels), and Bernard Malanda-Adje (Wolfsburg).
In India, De Ridder successfully implemented the 360 CFT method on a full professional team with East Bengal and gave some unknown Indian players a chance to express their talent.
Ridder is an art director, photographer, cartoonist, dancer, musician, saxophone player, management professional, writer and a sports journalist.
He has worked with several international organizations such as Management Centre Europe and Tenue De Soiree Magazine (Brussels), Metropolitan Life Insurance, Morgan Stanley and AVI (Disney account) (New York City), Bowhaus and IMEDIA (AT&T account) (New Jersey), Telmark International (London) and LEON cultural magazine (Tenerife) as graphic designer and art director.
He started in jam sessions with his professional musician friends at Brussels, and debuted on the Indian music scene with his performance at the Guwahati Club, Assam, and showed immense potential.
Ridder had the chance to learn marketing and management skills from a very young age due to the injury which ended his playing career.
He has helped in raising fund through football and also sponsoring and giving free training to the orphaned and needy children in Africa, Belgium and India.
