Brugge's Belgium goalkeeper Simon Mignolet attends a press conference at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kiev. .Club Brugge will face Dynamo Kyiv on the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round second leg football match at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kiev 13 August.
Brugge's Belgium goalkeeper Simon Mignolet attends a press conference at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kiev. .Club Brugge will face Dynamo Kyiv on the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round second leg football match at the NSC Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kiev 13 August.
Simon Mignolet’s playing career ended on 24 May, when he started Club Brugge’s final match of the 2025-26 season at home to KAA Gent. The goalkeeper left the pitch in the 78th minute to a guard of honour as Brugge won 5-0.
Brugge had clinched the league title days earlier, the club’s 20th. By April, Mignolet had won four league titles and a Belgian Cup with the club, which he joined in 2019.
Before Brugge, Mignolet signed for Liverpool from Sunderland in 2013. He played 204 matches in six years at Anfield. He also won the 2019 Champions League with Liverpool as Alisson Becker’s backup.
He did not leave football, but moved into a management role at the Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) on 1 September. He is now the federation’s technical manager, and one of his first assignments has now produced a result.
The RBFA announced on Sunday that Lenie Onzia is the new head coach of the Belgian Red Flames. Mignolet publicly endorsed the appointment.
Onzia replaces Elisabet Gunnarsdottir, with whom the RBFA ended its collaboration on 22 October. The decision followed Belgium’s elimination from a 2027 World Cup play-off by Poland, who won 4-3 on penalties after the tie finished 3-3 on aggregate.
Belgium won the first leg 1-0 in Leuven. They lost the second leg 3-2 in Poland.
Onzia, 37, is a former Belgium international with 51 caps. After her breakthrough at OH Leuven, she played for Arsenal and FC Twente, among other clubs.
She ended her playing career in 2022 and joined the Red Flames’ technical staff for UEFA Women’s EURO 2022. She then became assistant coach of the Under-23 side and later head coach of the Under-17 team.
She rejoined the senior staff as an assistant coach in 2024 and earned her UEFA Pro Licence in September 2026.
Mignolet said Onzia knows the organisation “inside out”. He described her path as a player, youth coach and assistant as making her the ideal person for the role.
He added that the federation needed continuity after Gunnarsdottir’s dismissal. Onzia said her promotion from assistant means the team does not have to start from scratch.
She was presented to the media at the RBFA headquarters in Tubize on Monday. She called the job an honour and said ambition would be the team’s standard.
The RBFA has also strengthened the technical staff. Kevin Bogemans becomes assistant coach, and Irene Fuhrmann joins as Senior Technical Advisor.
Bogemans, 41, was head coach of the Belgium Under-23 women’s team and an assistant with the Under-19s. Fuhrmann, 46, coached Austria from 2020 to 2024, including their run to the quarter-finals of EURO 2022.
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