Newcastle Jets Head Coach, Gary Van Egmond, will depart for Rome tomorrow, Tuesday 22nd April, on a scouting and reconnaissance mission. The current Hyundai A-League Coach of the Year will join Jets’ Director of Football, Remo Nogarotto, in Europe for a period of two weeks before heading to Tokyo for one week.

He will land at Fiumicino Airport on Wednesday morning, and will spend one week with Serie A powerhouse AS Roma where he will run an eye over the operations of current AS Roma Manager, Luciano Spalletti. A week of scouting players in Italy, Switzerland, and Holland will follow, and Van Egmond hopes to bring back some top quality players to the Hunter in this time.

“We’re going over there for some personal development, and also to look at players to come back either in the Marquee status, or of very good quality. We’ll be looking at the types of players that you simply can’t get in Australia at the moment,” Van Egmond said.

Van Egmond will then depart Rome for Tokyo, where he will spend 5 days with Newcastle Jets striker, Joel Griffiths, who is currently on loan to Japanese 2nd Division side Avispa Fukuoka.

“I’ll spend some time in Japan with (Avispa Fukuoka Coaches) Pierre Littbarski and Ian Crook and see what they do, and bring more ideas back to improve on what we’ve done in the previous two years,” said Van Egmond.