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Former coach and assistant manager takes role within the footballing restructure at Reading
Reading Football Club are delighted to announce the return of Eddie Niedzwiecki who joins the club in the role of Director of Player Development.
Eddie is once more reunited with Mark Bowen at a club he knows inside out, having led the club from the dugout as both coach and caretaker boss at Elm Park and then assistant manager under Bowen in RG2.
This broad new role will offer Eddie oversight of both the first team and Academy playing personnel – monitoring, tracking, assisting and enhancing their development to help maximise their individual potential whilst at Reading Football Club and beyond.
Like our new Head of Football Operations, Niedzwiecki is a former Wales international who spent the entirety of his playing days with Wrexham and Chelsea – he made a combined total of 303 league appearances between the posts for the two sides.
A Third Division title-winner whilst still in his teens, Niedzwiecki was at Wrexham for a decade before joining the Stamford Bridge ranks in 1983. Another league title was earned in West London; Eddie was an ever-present in winning the league with Chelsea on goal difference to bring top-flight football to Stamford Bridge for the first time. He went on to make a total of 175 appearances for the Blues.
Niedzwiecki was twice capped by Wales manager Mike England, but he saw his career sadly cut short by injury in 1988, aged 27. However he began his coaching career with Chelsea before Royals manager Ian Porterfield brought him to Elm Park.
He took caretaker charge of the Royals for a short spell, before spending a large chunk of his coaching career as part of the Stamford Bridge set-up, working as reserve team and goalkeeper coach before leaving in 2000 following the appointment of Claudio Ranieri as manager.
He moved across the capital to become reserve team coach at Arsenal, whilst also working part-time with the Wales national team for several years in their qualification campaigns for the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2004.
At club level, Niedzwiecki went on to be part of the coaching framework alongside Bowen at Blackburn Rovers, Manchester City, Fulham, QPR, Stoke City and Southampton. He rejoined the Royals ranks as Assistant Manager in 2019, helping to steer the team away from trouble and up the league table whilst helping the club transition to its brand new training ground and navigate its path through the global pandemic.
He stepped in to take charge for our first match of the 2020-21 season – a Carabao Cup win over Colchester United on the opening evening of a brand new campaign…29 years after initially taking caretaker charge of the club!
And Eddie remained a Royal under Veljko Paunovic, continuing to make an important impact at first team level whilst on the coaching staff as the club challenged for a play-off place in 2020-21.
Now, Eddie is back on the Royals’ books!
