{"id":5466,"date":"2026-06-25T11:34:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T11:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5466"},"modified":"2026-06-25T11:34:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T11:34:53","slug":"hearts-wouter-vrancken-close-to-becoming-new-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5466","title":{"rendered":"Hearts: Wouter Vrancken close to becoming new head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Hearts are moving closer to appointing Belgian football&#8217;s manager of the year, Wouter Vrancken, as the club&#8217;s new head coach.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 47-year-old left hometown club Sint-Truiden this summer after leading them to third place in the Belgian Pro League &#8211; their highest finish in 60 years &#8211; in his first full season in post.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Derek McInnes departed Hearts for Rangers last week after taking the club to second place last season, missing out on a first title since 1960 on the final day to Celtic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hearts are now close to confirming his replacement. Vrancken is set to take charge of a first club outside his homeland after impressive spells at Sint-Truiden and Genk, whom he took to the brink of the Belgian title in 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Having started his coaching career in Belgium&#8217;s lower leagues, his return to the top flight was as assistant at another of his former clubs, Kortrijk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He took over as boss of Mechelen in 2018 and led them to promotion and the Belgian Cup in the same season before three top-eight finishes in the top flight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hearts are moving closer to appointing Belgian football&#8217;s manager of the year, Wouter Vrancken, as the club&#8217;s new head coach.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}