Well, it didn’t take until midseason.
But the head coach hiring process went about as far as it could without actually dragging a body into the job with the league actually up and going.
And despite having made an actual hire I’m not convinced we’re really past the “What the..?” stage, because the coaching quality of the new gaffer looks pretty opaque to me.
Meet the new boss; Jan Robert Vilahamn.
Here’s the basics, from his Wiki page:
- Vilahamn played as a scoring central midfielder for several clubs, all in the Swedish leagues, ranging from the top flight (the Allsvenskan) to their Division 3.
- He seems to have had a half cup of coffee with the Swedish juniors, three matches. Didn’t catch on.
- By the late Oughts he was assisting the manager at his final pro club, Ytterby IS.
- His managerial record at Ytterby is mixed. With Vilahamn as player-manager Ytterby got promoted from Division 3 to Division 2 (in 2008) then Division 2 to Division 1 (in 2009) but was immediately relegated in 2010 and then finished 7th in 2011.
- He hung on at Ytterby for another four seasons, as player-coach until 2015 and as manager for that season. Ytterby were dire through that whole period; as the gaffer in 2015 Vilahamn “led” his crew to a second-from-bottom finish.
- Vilahamn knocked around a bit after that; coached a junior (U-19) side, ran Qviding FIF in a promotion season in 2018-19, then as assistant at BK Hacken in 2020-21 (where the club made the Europa League but were knocked out nearly immediately) and then as manager of BK Hacken FF – the women’s side – from late 2021 to late 2023.
- There Vilahamn seems to have done well; second in the Damallsvenskan in 2021 and 2022, two runners-up medals in the Swedish Cup, as well as a UEFA Champions League berth in the 2021-22 and 2022-23 editions (where they were unceremoniously booted in the pre-group qualifiers, by the Norwegian club Valarenga in ’21-22, and by Paris St. Germain in ’22-23). When he was hired away Hacken FF was top of table in the summer of 2023.
- His final gig before Portland was at Tottenham Women, between July 2023 and June 2025. There his record is exceptionally mixed; the club was runners-up in the 2024 FA Cup (albeit only to be spanked 4-nil by ManU in the Final) but finished only sixth in the FAWSL (8-7-7, 24 points behind the champions Chelsea, 31GF, 36GA) and the following season utterly cratered, going 5-5-12, 11th of 12 in the league and 30 points behind Chelsea, 26GF, 44GA, which got Vilahamn canned in July 2025.
I don’t have any sense at all of how a Vilahamn club plays.
His records aren’t much of a help, either. Will his Thorns be BK Hacken, or the Tottenham of 2023-24, or Ytterby, or the Spurs of 2024-25? Certainly his record in knockouts is all over the place; early exits with both the BK Hacken sides, but a Cup run all the way to the Final with Chelsea in ’24.
This is all a long form way of saying that as a head coach this guy is very much a “peaches/lunch meat” to me at the moment, and that I don’t see him changing that most quick smart. There’s no way he really stamps whatever it is he stamps on the squad before Opening Day.
But once there?
We’ll just have to see.
Here’s my single biggest overall concern about this; if this guy is all that, he was available July of 2025.
Which suggests to me that either 1) the club was targeting someone else, someone with a better c.v. and a bigger profile, but couldn’t land them so they went with this guy as the fallback option, or 2) the club couldn’t find anyone bigger and better and finally took this guy as the best they could get before the season. That’s not reassuring.
Either way, this is who we’ve got, and we’ll have to hope that he’s what the top end of his resume says he is.
Any thoughts on this?
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