The backgrounds of the former Manchester United treble winner and his assistant are worlds apart but they form a formidable partnership and take on Fulham in the play-offs with the Premier League in their sights

Their CVs may be worlds apart but in the Reading dugout Jaap Stam and Andries Ulderink are proving quite the double act. They are an intriguing combination – Ulderink began coaching at 24 and never played professional football – and when Stam won the treble with Manchester United in 1999, his assistant was coaching in their native Netherlands at an amateur club close to the German border, SV DCS Zevenaar.

It was Marc Overmars, the former Arsenal winger now technical director at Ajax, who first created the coaching hybrid, asking the pair three years ago to oversee Jong Ajax, the club’s under-21 side, who play professionally in the Dutch second division. Ulderink, technically, was the manager although only because Stam had not completed his Uefa pro licence.

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“I needed somebody at the time who did have those papers,” Stam says at Reading’s Hogwood Park training base before the Championship play-off semi-final first leg at Fulham on Saturday. “I spoke to him about his philosophy, what he wanted to do and it clicked. He has got a lot of experience in coaching, managing, making schedules and everything. That was what I needed; you do not always need to be a professional player to do well in a certain league.”

The pair worked with Ajax’s next generation, some of whom have helped the club towards the Europa League final, before Reading’s technical director, Brian Tevreden, a former youth coach at Ajax, came calling last summer. This season, their first together in England, they have exceeded all expectations.

“I did not expect to maybe play a final at Wembley but you know when you are involved with a manager like Jaap, you know that that route can come along the way,” Ulderink says. “Jaap was a top player and became a manager. I was an amateur player and I have got my experience through coaching to become a manager, so we have had different kind of routes.

“It is a nice route, not only because we are performing now, but it is nice working with him because he is not a manager that is doing everything by himself. He gets everybody from the staff involved – not in every decision – but in the way we want to play. We watch clips together about an opponent, about what we see, what we think as staff. We analyse games back and he always wants to know our opinion at the end of training and it’s a thing we do together – it’s a very nice feeling.”

Stam was an unknown quantity as a manager and his appointment 11 months ago was viewed as a gamble but in Ulderink, also a former scout and a manager at De Graafschap and Go Ahead Eagles, he has almost 25 years of coaching experience at his side. The first-team coaches, the former players Said Bakkati and Steven Reid, and the goalkeeping coach Dave Beasant, form the rest of Stam’s trusted inner circle. They have propelled Reading towards the Premier League.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jaap Stam has impressed in his first season in charge at Reading and says his team have ‘nothing to lose’ in the play-offs. Photograph: Ben Hoskins/Getty Images

Ulderink says: “When we first met almost three years ago, before we started with Jong Ajax, we had a talk with each other and halfway through the conversation, I said: ‘Listen, everything is OK but I am not the type of person who puts cones for you on the pitch and then stands on the side and watches how you do the work – I am not that type of manager.’ Also Said, Steven too, they are not that type of trainer to just let the manager do what they want. We work together as a team and so far it is working out to be very positive.

“I think in football, you also have people who have double agendas and the thing is working with Jaap, from the first minute, he does not have double agendas. I can say whatever I want about that substitute, my opinion about that substitute and while I have to know he is the one making the decisions, in the way we work, I also have the feeling that I can tell him what I think and that is what I like. He always says what he thinks about what I think so it is always a very open, honest way of working.”

At Jong Ajax Stam is credited with developing Kenny Tete, Jaïro Riedewald and Donny van de Beek, among others, who are now fully immersed in the club’s first team. At Reading, too, he has used his eye for young talent, with the 21-year-old midfielder Liam Kelly, who spent the back end of last season on loan at Bath City, thrust into his starting lineup. Stam is happy to blood youngstersbut his experienced heads, the goalkeeper Ali al-Habsi and the striker Yann Kermorgant, who have a combined age of 70, have been invaluable at either end.

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Together Stam and his assistant did their homework before walking through the door. Ulderink estimates they watched 12 to 14 matches to gain an insight into the players they might end up working with. Coupled with the numbers – Reading finished 19th and 17th over the past two seasons – they knew how difficult a season in the Championship would be.

They lean on each other and Stam, who spent three seasons in England as a player, was able to show Ulderink the ropes a little. “I needed to tell him about the English way of playing, the way of thinking and the philosophy of football here,” says Stam.

Reading finished third and have won four of their past five matches but are the bookmakers’ outsiders to reach the Premier League. The statistics favour them, with the third-placed team in the Championship the most successful in gaining passage to the top flight since the current format was introduced in 1996.

Their opponents at Craven Cottage on Saturday, Fulham, are favourites. Slavisa Jokanovic’s side beat Reading 5-0 in December but Ulderink believes the play-offs will be “totally different games”. The Reading managerputs it even better. “I don’t care how people talk about us – we know what we can do,” Stam says. “The play-offs are going to bring stress and tension, and that can do a lot to players, but we’ve got nothing to lose.”