Zeb Jacobs interview: Rangers Academy Director on his football journey

It is accompanied by a snap of the fingers. Just like that, the career of a Belgian youth internationalist was over. Jacobs will never know what he could have achieved as a player, but he is not one to look back when he has so much to focus on in the future.

The reputation and knowledge that Jacobs earned as a player was transferred to a career as a coach and has been enhanced many times over since. He no longer strives for marginal gains to improve his own individual technique or collective prospects but the search for improvement, for innovation and for success continues to drive him now that he has risen to the position of academy director at Rangers.

His office at Auchenhowie overlooks one of the pitches where kids who share the same aspirations that he once held look to realise their dreams. Their fate is partly in his hands.

In his first exclusive interview since being promoted in the summer, Jacobs outlines his vision for the future at Rangers. An in-depth, enlightening conversation starts at the beginning and at an end.

“I had a career,” Jacobs tells the Rangers Review. “I started really young, of course, and played elite youth football at the highest level in Belgium and played at Royal Antwerp and KV Mechelen and went to the performance schools in Belgium also. Then, at 19, I had football burnout. I was driving towards the session and literally stopped at the side of the road, phoned my mum and dad and said ‘I am stopping. I don’t want to do this anymore’. That was it. I had invested my whole youth career in football with one aim. At 19, just driving, I said ‘I don’t want to do this anymore’. In one moment, that dream just disappeared. Then you have the question of what is next?”

It didn’t take Jacobs long to determine his next move. The time, money and effort put into becoming a footballer hadn’t paid off, but it had given a young adult with an obsession for the game and a passion for learning the platform that he still builds on today.

READ MORE: Rangers land SFA youth development honour in landmark academy success

Working on his badges was just the first step. Jacobs spent almost three years as a youth coach at Mechelen before joining Antwerp as head of development. He also became involved with Double Pass, an organisation that advises and educates associations, leagues and clubs to help them optimise their talent development pathways. Football was his calling, just not in the way he initially believed it would be.

“That love of the game never goes away,” Jacobs continues. “No matter where you have been involved in football, once you are in it you are in it. It is like an animal that grabs you and never lets you go again. I had that one aim and everything in my life was towards that. From 12 I lived in the residence next to the performance school and went all in, so did my family and parents. And then you stop playing football. Then the big question is what is next? I analysed, like we do here. It is the same as players. What are you good at? What is your weapon? What is your super strength? And then where do you get your energy from? Then something exciting comes.”

That search for energy would have been a straightforward one for Jacobs. An engaging, enthusiastic character, the Belgian speaks with fervour when discussing his principles and his processes and his thirst for knowledge is clear as he continues to tell the tale of how he ended up in Glasgow.

The decision to hang up his boots left him at a crossroads. It was soon evident which path he would go down. That attachment to the game and his infectious outlook on life made him ideally suited for a career on the other side of the white line.

“I thought I was good with people, good with communication, I loved football, I loved the development of young people and learning,” Jacobs says. “I went for youth criminology then decided to do my coaching badges. I could bring things together, I had an understanding of how people learn and behavioural change. I loved football and had knowledge of the game, so it was about how I mixed that together. I started thinking about methodologies, about training sessions, about making plans and things came together. Then you are in a rabbit hole.”

Jacobs kept digging. He embarked on a learning curve that saw him travel around Europe in search of advice and information and he references his time in Alkmaar and Zurich in the formative stages of his career.

READ MORE: Inside Ross McCausland's Rangers rise: A vital trip home, modelling Davis and belief

Asked about particular influences on him, he replies that it would be wrong to start listing names, partly in fear of missing one out off the top of his head. At every club, including Rangers, he has had figures that he has been inspired by and learned from.

“You surround yourself with people you look up to,” Jacobs adds. “I always surround myself with people who are better than me. I am never the smartest in the room and I don’t want to be the smartest in the room. You surround yourself with people that inspire you. You travel, you read books, you listen to podcasts, you want to speak to people. In that rabbit hole, you keep diving and diving and diving and before you know it you are the academy director of Rangers Football Club.”

The promotion to that position came as part of a wide-ranging overhaul at Ibrox and Auchenhowie ahead of the new campaign. Ironically, all three of the men who played a part in Jacobs’ appointment two years ago this month are no longer at the club.

Ross Wilson quit his role as sporting director in April and Jacobs succeeded Craig Mulholland as the main figure at the academy before a ball was kicked this term. Just months later, Michael Beale – who had left Ibrox first time around before Jacobs could get down to work in Glasgow - was sacked as manager as his second spell came to an end.

There has been a changing of the guard in the boardroom and the dressing room. Jacobs now also sits on the newly created football board as his blueprint continues to evolve and his influence increases.

“It was a recruitment process,” Jacobs says of the proceedings that saw him step down from his post as talent coordinator in his homeland to join Rangers at a time when the first team were in the transition phase following Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s arrival. “Michael was assistant manager and they were successful under Steven Gerrard and won 55. That vision, when they were successful, had to be aligned to the football structure. I came in through the recruitment process and presented to a couple of people in the club at the moment in time.

"We felt really quickly that there was an alignment in how we saw things with player development in the centre of what we do. We don’t speak about tactics, we speak about principles. We speak about how we want to do things, about putting the player in the centre, about the individual not only the footballer. The whole recruitment process, I outlined my vision about playing, creativity, exploration and it was a match. Now I am here two years and going into my third year as the academy director.”

The marker points that have been passed along the way could not have been predicted. Jacobs has seen Van Bronckhorst leave and Beale come and go and he has risen to prominence as part of a structure that is overseen by chairman John Bennett and James Bisgrove, the chief executive officer. The appointment of Nils Koppen as director of recruitment completed the football board and the former PSV talent spotter is next to chap the door of Jacobs’ office. A scouting meeting follows a morning of interviews, firstly with RangersTV and then with the Rangers Review.

The approach from Rangers is collaborative at the sharp end, where the decisions are made, but each head of department, including Creag Robertson and Dr Mark Waller, is entrusted to use their expertise and experience for the benefit of the individual and collective. The role that Jacobs fulfils is crucial in football and financial terms for Rangers.

READ MORE: Inside Nils Koppen's Rangers move: Beating competition, PSV buys and a new approach

Jacobs will ultimately be judged on the players who progress to Philippe Clement’s first-team squad or who are sold for significant sums. Those aims are more defined for the players who have already climbed the first few rungs of the ladder, but Jacobs has a development plan for every member of every squad and each kid who drives through those blue-crested gates of Auchenhowie. In the second part of this exclusive interview, the Rangers Review will detail the methodology behind the Jacobs mantra.

The overriding message is to make the most of the opportunity and the challenge, and that applies to the parents and carers as well as the players themselves. Jacobs has seen kids step foot on an aeroplane for the first time thanks to their association with Rangers and he encourages his staff to celebrate academic and sporting achievements, such as one youngster who has become a karate champion, as much as their endeavours with the badge on their chest.

“I don’t tell the story explicitly because I always say you have your own journey and it is you versus you in your own story,” Jacobs continues when asked if he had used his own career tale as part of his pitch to players. “But it is the principle that there is more than debuts only and in this academy, we also celebrate more than debuts only. We want to make sure that every player who gets in touch with Rangers Football Club has the best possible experience. Nobody knows how good someone will become.

"We want to maximise potential but nobody knows how big that potential is or where it will take them. We don’t know how long it will take. Enjoy everything that comes with Rangers Football Club and the Rangers academy because you don’t know how long it will last. That is a key factor. There is so much more than football, especially at a young age, and we want to make sure that we have an impact on football but also on life and giving people life-changing experiences.”

Jacobs knows that it is the few rather than the many that ultimately make it at Rangers. His task is to raise those numbers and increase the success rate in the coming years and he has embarked on that assignment with typical verve.

He will never claim to have every answer but he will continue to ask questions, to try and be at the forefront of best practice and modernisation. It is true, after all, that if you keep doing the same things over and over again then you will only achieve the same results.

Last year, Jacobs established a group involving Rangers, Real Sociedad, Southampton, RB Leipzig and the German FA to discuss coach development and monthly meetings see blueprints shared and flashes of inspiration discussed. Knowledge is power.

“I love to network,” Jacobs says. “I look a lot in the mirror but also a lot out of the windows. I am reflecting on what I am doing and what we are doing but also looking out at what the top practitioners are doing, what the top academies are doing. It is a continuous journey of meeting people and challenging each other. I put that group together because I want to get more knowledge and better knowledge. It is more of a mindset. It is not about learning from one person, it is about picking the brains of top practitioners, that evolves and it changes the moment you meet someone else and it is him and him and him. It is continuously connecting dots around you to surround yourself with the best people to become the best version of yourself.”