Mitchell van der Gaag
Dutch footballer and coach
Mitchell van der Gaag (born 22 October 1971) is a Dutch professional football coach and former player who played as a centre-back. He is currently in his second spell as head coach of Primeira Liga side Marítimo.
He made 208 Eredivisie appearances, scoring 19 goals, for NEC, Sparta Rotterdam, PSV and Utrecht. Abroad, he had spells at Motherwell in the Scottish Premier League and Marítimo in Portugal's Primeira Liga, playing 174 total games for the latter and scoring 19 times.
As a manager, van der Gaag led several teams including Marítimo and Belenenses in Portugal, as well as Excelsior and NAC in his country.
Playing career
Club
Van der Gaag was born in Zutphen and raised in Brummen, Gelderland. After graduating from PSV Eindhoven's youth academy, he spent three seasons on loan to NEC Nijmegen and Sparta Rotterdam, returning to Eindhoven in 1992. He went on to play 50 games for the PSV first team, alongside the likes of Luc Nilis, Romário and Ronaldo.
In March 1995, van der Gaag signed with Motherwell for £400,000. He made his debut for Alex McLeish's side on 1 April 1995, in a 1–1 draw against Celtic, however his season was brought to a premature end with an injury in his second match against Partick Thistle.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q9293193. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 1992 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mitchell van der Gaag” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.