For one of the first times since arriving in Glasgow late last year, Nils Koppen can talk with a degree of hindsight.

Until now Rangers' director of football recruitment hasn’t had much of it. Arriving on the eve of a winter window, restructuring a department that had been through a year of flux and planning for a summer rebuild (15 exits and 11 arrivals) were all carried out amid an environment often featuring uncertainty in one form or another.

During a two-part, wide-ranging exclusive interview with the Rangers Review, Koppen does not try to dress up realities. The two men who led his recruitment, John Bennett and James Bisgrove, are no longer at the club while his role and remit have changed during 10 months in the building. Rangers have, after all, altered manager, structure and strategy at will since Steven Gerrard moved south in 2021 - pretending otherwise won’t help anyone, least of all a disenchanted support. Only recognition of the issues that have been created will allow a suitable plan for a route out.

Koppen’s diagnosis of what’s gone wrong comes in tandem with a sharp vision and focus detailing how the club, from a squad building and recruitment perspective, can protect itself from such choppy waters in the future, however. He’s convinced that good work has been done in the summer window to bolster Philippe Clement's squad and shares details that should improve those in the future. Today in part one, Koppen discusses how the Rangers recruitment department has been restructured, a philosophy for buying players, steps to fix the much-discussed player trading model, recruiting in the Scottish market alongside untapped leagues and much more.

(Image: Rob Casey - SNS Group) Tomorrow, he delves into the most recent summer window. From how many players Rangers tried to acquire, to what happened in the case of Abdallah Sima and Jose Cordoba, the No.6 position and plans for the future.

Koppen arrived to complete the ‘football board’ structure adopted by Rangers last December. Of the seven executives who formed that body 10 months ago only he, Philippe Clement and club doctor Mark Waller remain, pending the exit of Creag Robertson as head of football operations. Bennett and Bisgrove’s decision to move away from an overarching sporting director role was driven by a belief that a football board, headed by an active CEO and chairman, would allow specific ownership and expertise at the top of each department. That remit was viewed as a perfect fit for someone of Koppen’s experience and expertise. 

Koppen’s role, by admission, has grown and changed as a result of the moving parts at an executive level. Alongside Clement, he leads on contracts, squad planning and recruitment. The core of the job, and the reason Rangers appointed him in the first place, remains the same - bringing long-term consistency and success to the recruitment department.

“Coming to Rangers was the ideal opportunity for me,” says the 39-year-old.

“The club were looking for someone to join a specific set-up who specialised in scouting and detecting talent. I thought it was the right step for me - going abroad and implementing a vision at a club where there had been, at that time, a lot of trouble on the pitch. I was surprised at some aspects of the situation when I arrived, so I cannot think the work we’ve done since is not good.

“I think this summer we made a good first step. The previous strategy was focused on winning now at all costs. Of course, this club has to win. Second is not good enough but we also need to think long-term and that strategy is going to take some time.”

Koppen is not an ex-player who has transitioned into off-field roles. Rather his story in the game starts as a young coach in Belgium at Lommel where a role as head of academy would eventually lead back to the chosen career path of scouting and spotting players. A stint as head of academy recruitment at Genk, known for their talent identification, was followed by joining PSV’s scouting department. After working his way through the ranks, Koppen became a senior international scout with significant influence on the Dutch outfit's recruitment. The prospect of working as a head of recruitment at Rangers was too good an opportunity to resist last year.

“My first role at PSV was recruiting players between the academy and first-team, specifically scouting younger players,” he says.

“I joined PSV as a scout responsible for Belgium and academy players in France. Quickly there were more opportunities to progress inside the club. In Holland, there’s a culture of being able to prove yourself and getting thrown in at the deep end.

“Johan Bakayoko was signed as an academy player by PSV from my region in Belgium, Ismael Saibari too. They’re both examples I discussed during my interview process at Rangers and that was part of the remit when I was hired - to attract and identify young talents like these two examples, bring them to the club and get them in the first-team right away. The club were looking for someone with experience of that pattern.”

PSV had created a role for Koppen, assistant to their sporting director alongside an acting senior international scout, blending hands-on talent identification and in-person scouting while assisting contract negotiations, transfers and squad building. That very mixture of tasks now a responsibility for Koppen in Scotland is why the then-Rangers decision-makers decided to task him with the challenge of getting recruitment right at Ibrox. Not a small job by any means.

It took Koppen and co three months to restructure the scouting department while attempting to bolster Clement’s squad in the January window. “My key tasks were detecting players, providing a vision for player trading and implementing that in the form of a strategy” he suggests, reflecting on a remit that has grown in responsibility since.

(Image: Rob Casey - SNS Group) For the Belgian, it was not a case of ripping everything up and starting again but providing clarity, direction and required changes to a department that had grown “disjointed”. Following Ross Wilson’s departure in early 2023, the scouting body was reduced and that summer’s transfer window driven by Michael Beale and his backroom staff, who would be sacked a few months later that October. With managerial lifespans increasingly short in the modern game there’s a reason the best-run clubs run recruitment alongside, rather than in the hands of, the man in the dugout.

Koppen speaks of shorter communication lines now in place and “picking and winning the right fights” in terms of player identification. Without the resources of a Premier League club, it helps no one if Rangers’ recruitment competes as one. Much of the first year has been spent reestablishing resources to give the club the range of talent identification necessary while not missing out on the depth. Using data to provide a wide scope of key markets and talents before using resources in the right areas - a balance that required attention.

What has changed? Live scouting very much still exists but is far more targeted. Koppen stresses the importance of agent relationships and a wide network, but not total dependence on those factors. New markets, epitomised by the arrival of Hamza Igamane from Morocco (a player initially identified during a data sweep of the league) and Jefte from Brazil, are targeted. While data is vital it’s used in conjunction with a strong network and agent tips, not in spite of. There are multiple layers of virtual and live scouting, data and injury profiling, alongside a range of criteria that must be hit before a transfer reaches the final stages.

“We’re not going to know every player in the world in depth, we have to pick out fights, be specific where we use our resources, we cannot copy a blueprint of a Premier League club in England, because that’s not what we are,” Koppen reasons. In his view there’s no point scouting every player sporadically, Rangers must use data to scour all corners, pick their targets and scout those individuals extensively.

The club have hired two data engineers to build a custom scouting platform in-house and are working to establish an emerging talent wing in their scouting system. That in-house data investment is viewed as a significant step, not least because the platform provides scouting data detailing players’ technical qualities (xG, passes played, etc) alongside physical data to offer a holistic picture concerning a league where duels matter. The wage bill and average age of the squad have dropped significantly. There’s been a move to reestablish a wage structure and increase the money being spent on the attacking areas, due to the weight of wages attributed to the defensive areas instead in recent years.

Rangers use their in-house scouting platform to scan huge numbers of players and use data to comb through the volume - taking tens of thousands of possibilities to tens before allowing scouts to focus specifically on knowing everything about a certain number of players. They're then pitched to Koppen and later Clement, with multiple scouts providing multiple reports in the intervening period.

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While a scouting presence exists in England Koppen says he “doesn’t believe” in recruiting from the Championship because of inflated prices for those good enough to move to Ibrox. Instead, the club’s plan is to cover a lot of wide bases using data that narrow down searches. A presence in key markets, a strong agent network and a blend of video and targeted in-person scouting make up the picture.

Koppen emphasises that at PSV, a club renowned for its success in establishing a youth pathway, the scouting team was relatively small. It was picking the right fights, being ahead in the right markets and sticking to a vision that allows them consistent wins - alongside selling at the right time.

“At the moment, I'm still quite involved in the process of identifying players,” he adds.

“I'm still travelling out to watch games and for the moment, that's something I want to do. I think a lot of sporting directors get distracted from the biggest part of the job - transfers. If you're not able to keep up on the developments on the pitch, and you have to make a decision on a player, for me you enter a tricky zone.”

This summer’s window, discussed at length in part two of the Rangers Review’s interview with Koppen, is viewed as step one in a process. There is a concession across the board that more quality is required and sales made to fund future acquisitions.

The average age of 11 incomings (23) this summer is far lower than the average age of 15 outgoings (29) - all while achieving a significant reduction in the wage bill.

With that said, for the positive starts of the likes of Jefte (20) and Connor Barron (22) one pressing frustration for supporters this summer was the inability to attract high fees for those who departed.

Of course, competing clubs knew of the unenviable situation Koppen and Clement found themselves in, inheriting a squad built by a variety of different people for a variety of styles. So, how do Rangers fix their player-trading problem? How can they consistently sell in order to consistently reinvest?

“There are multiple layers. It's firstly about lowering the age because if you look at clubs that are willing to buy, they're not going to buy a 28-year-old. They're going to buy a 19, 21 or 23-year-old. It’s about bringing the age and salary down,” Koppen continues.

“Take Sam Lammers, if he had been younger and on a lower wage, we would have been able to get a higher transfer fee. That's just logic. Bringing salaries down and the average age down, both of these things will allow you to sell more easily.

“This summer it was impossible with how the squad was built, the profiles and salary profiles, to get decent transfer fees in. It’s also about selling in the right moments.

“If we have a player like Jefte who is doing well and the right offer comes in, we should sell him and be brave enough to say that we can find the next one.”

(Image: Alan Harvey - SNS Group)

One of the topics departed chairman John Bennett often lamented was “sporadic wins” in terms of player trading. Yes, Rangers were able to sell Nathan Patterson for £16million and Calvin Bassey for north of £20m. Equally, they have lost over 10 players in the past two summers for free upon the expiry of contracts.

For Koppen, arriving from a footballing culture where sales are expected annually, there’s nothing controversial about saying it out loud. Not only does a successful player-trading model feed a necessary, constant revenue stream back into the club, but it simultaneously makes Ibrox a more attractive destination for young players looking for the right place to make the next step in their careers.

“We need another summer window to phase some players out, get some others in. Maybe we’ll have to sell one of the younger players,” Koppen adds.

“I think that when the club won the league [in 2021] the thinking was, ‘We're going to keep everybody and keep winning’. But winning 55 with all the players in the best moments of their careers is the time to transition and reinvest in order to win again, even though keeping that side together should've returned more success. That’s one of the key things I want to change.

“You have to let the players go, also because that’s how you attract them, they come with an ambition to go. We cannot force them to stay. You have to say to them, come here to be successful and win, but this is not your end station.

“Of course, you need some of these guys, like John Souttar, to stay for a long time at the club. Guys who understand the DNA of the football club and can pass that knowledge onto new players. That's super important. But 80% of these players who move to the club should come with the ambition to go. Ultimately, that is only achieved by winning and progressing so that everyone can benefit - the club and the player.

“Cody Gakpo at PSV is a good example. He was on a relatively low wage but knew, ‘If I can make the next step, I’ll get the financial benefit’. It’s about changing that mindset, you don’t push players to leave, you push them to work hard and go for the next step by winning. If you give players comfort and high numbers, then they don’t have to play for that. That can create laziness.”

Rangers’ attention in new markets cannot come at the cost of missing out on the best Scottish talent, however. Overlooking the best talent outside of the Old Firm has also vexed supporters in recent years. Signing the likes of Connor Barron only makes sense if you throw them in, however.

“It’s about getting the right mindset, that we should be able to play young players. Young, for me, is not 21, it’s 18,” adds Koppen.

(Image: Alan Harvey - SNS Group) “Getting that mindset right is key. Maybe he will drown a bit while he tries to swim and that will be the next step. Protecting our academy players for too long and keeping them in a safe environment, they're not going to be the players who manage regular minutes. That's a step we have to take.

“We have to be aggressive in the youth market to try to get the best young players in the country and keep investing in that. Because the strong core of Scottish players should come from your own academy. And sporadically, you buy somebody from other clubs, like with Connor Barron.

“It’s one of our objectives, to try and sign one player a season from another Scottish club if they’re there and the deal makes sense and it fits the plan.

“There are so many circumstances with every transfer call you make. Does the money make sense, is the player arriving in a position you’re looking for, are you killing the value of another player in that position? You need to always consider the overall picture."

In part two, released tomorrow morning, Koppen talks about what happened with a move for Abdallah Sima, the Jose Cordoba situation, reviewing the summer window and more.