(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-10-12 09:52

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands - Chelsea's signing of Henk ten Cate as assistant to new coach Avram Grant could make all the difference to their European ambitions after three seasons of near misses under Jose Mourinho.

Four years ago Barcelona found renewed success when they hired Frank Rijkaard as head coach and part of the Dutchman's secret was the compatriot he took with him to the Catalan capital.

Ten Cate brings the experience of winning the Champions League to Chelsea, just as Mourinho did in 2004, but unlike the Portuguese, who parted company with the Premier League club last month, the Dutchman can remain out of the limelight.

Ten Cate, the son of Surinam-born parents, never made a big name for himself as a player although he appeared on the right wing for seven seasons with various professional teams.

He started his coaching career in 1988 as an assistant in the Dutch second division and made his first breakthrough seven years later when he joined Sparta Rotterdam as coach.

He steered the mid-table Rotterdam club to the Dutch cup final in 1996 and then moved to Vitesse Arnhem who finished third in the top flight in 1998 with his help.

Despite that success which, as a product of the Dutch school he achieved with attractive football, Ten Cate was sacked by Vitesse.

Although he had a good relationship with the players, Ten Cate earned a reputation for his emotional outbursts and strong views.

DECENT MANAGER

But in Barcelona everything worked out for Ten Cate.

Rijkaard was the calm and decent manager who dealt with the media and the soccer hierarchy and in the background Ten Cate built a team to play exciting football.

They won two titles and the coveted Champions League, beating Arsenal in the 2006 final.

After three years in Spain, Ten Cate returned to the Netherlands to join Ajax Amsterdam as head coach but things did not work out entirely happily.

He failed to forge a comfortable working relationship with technical director Martin van Geel, who had arrived after Ten Cate signed his two-year deal.

In that first season in Amsterdam Ten Cate won the Dutch Cup but missed out on the title by one goal.

In the close season Ajax sold Wesley Sneijder and Ryan Babel, players who had developed under Ten Cate, while Kenneth Perez left for PSV Eindhoven.

Ajax then performed miserably in Europe, failing to qualify for the Champions League and then losing to Dinamo Zagreb in the first round of the UEFA Cup.

However, Ten Cate revealed he would have stayed with Ajax had they resisted his move to FA Cup holders Chelsea.

"I never put the management of Ajax against the wall. If they had kept me to my contract I would have stayed in Amsterdam without any problems," he said.

Ajax did not take long to reach an agreement with Chelsea where Ten Cate will work alongside Grant's other assistant Steve Clarke, a long-serving player and coach at the west London club bankrolled by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich.

He will also get to work again with some of the best and players in the world -- this time not Ronaldinho, Samuel Eto'o and Deco but Didier Drogba, Andriy Shevchenko and Frank Lampard.