Aston Villa Women have appointed Robert de Pauw as their new manager.
De Pauw, 42, joins from Bayer Leverkusen where he led the club to two top-six league finishes during his two-year stay in Germany.
“I’m very happy and very honoured that the club chose me as their women’s coach,” he said.
“It’s a privilege to be here and I’m looking forward to the challenge.”
De Pauw added: “I saw the potential of the team with the young and older players, so the experience is there but also the talent.
“The ambition of the club is to be in the top six and everything is in order to make the team tick.”
He was previously head coach of the Netherlands Women’s Under-17 team and won the Dutch title during his time in charge of FC Twente.
The Dutchman will be charged with building on the foundations laid by his predecessor Carla Ward, who led the club to a seventh-placed finish in the Women’s Super League (WSL) last season.
In May, Ward announced she would be stepping down at the end of the season after three years in charge of the Midlands club.
“You have to give credit to the organisation, the former manager and her staff, and everything looks good,” said De Pauw.
“The players are a very big part of it. They’ve grown as a team over the past few seasons and shown that they are a stable factor in the league.
“I’d like to win something, like every coach,” he said.
“We’ll be doing fine if we end up in the top six, but we have to be ambitious, we have to dream. In the future if we can build towards European football that would be a dream for everyone in the organisation.
Villa’s head of women’s football Lee Billiard said: “After an extremely methodical and extensive managerial search, we are delighted to welcome Robert to Aston Villa Football Club.”
“The process we used in order to find the best fit for the managerial position took some time and included a thorough search of the best leagues in women’s football.”
(Photo by Selim Sudheimer/Getty Images)
