From Netherlands to India via Germany: Pasha Gademan and the pursuit of ‘sporting high’ in hockey

“You could say I’m addicted to it [sports]. You start consuming it at a young age, more and more and then at some point, it’s like now you need it, and you’re at that point where you can’t live without it anymore,” Pasha Gademan puts it philosophically, when asked about what lies ahead for him.

For the Dutchman, it has been quite the ride from Iran to India, where he is currently the head coach of the Hockey India League (HIL) table-topper, Hyderabad Toofans.

Along the way, he has seen several high points — the World Cup 2023 win with Germany as the assistant coach, coaching Rot-Weiss Köln to the Bundesliga championships (2019-21, 2021-22, 2022-23), and Canada at the Tokyo Olympics 2020 — and he’s just 36.

Gademan’s pursuit of this feeling began when he was just six in Almere, in the Netherlands, where his parents immigrated. 

Almere is the youngest city in the Netherlands, which was built in 1975 to relieve the overcrowding of population in the nearby Amsterdam, with over 200,000 people living on a land, once covered by the waters of IJsselmeer. The Almere Hockey Club was established in 1979, three years after the first house was built in the city. 

Gademan and his family didn’t know the sport when they chanced upon the club while seeking a football club for his brother. “We have no history with the sport at all but we became members. Just the society feeling that you had within that club was so warm and it just became an integral part of our life,” he recalls to  Sportstar.

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Gademan had to wait 21 years more to see the club play in the  Hoofdklaase, the premier hockey league in the Netherlands, and he got to witness it up close as the captain of the side while playing alongside his brother. 

On June 10, 2017, at Almere’s home ground, Gademan fell to the turf, with his hands on his head, after beating Schaerweijde in a penalty shootout to keep his team in the division.

But that game also turned out to be Gademan’s last game as a professional hockey player aged 29 as eight months ago, Alex Verga, the outgoing coach, had asked his captain to take over the reins from him at Almere. “It was a bit of a big decision because I loved playing, but I also knew that as a player I had reached my limit,” says Gademan, who played as a defender.

Like many youngsters in Europe, Gademan had spent hours on devising tactics playing  Football Manager, a football-themed computer game, but no level of simulation could prepare one for coaching in the top division of Dutch hockey. In the years leading up to what would be his eventual retirement, Gademan had been coaching the Almere youth team, training future stars such as Jonas de Geus, Olympic 2024 gold medallist and Terrance Pieters, the first player of colour to play for the Netherlands national team.

He credits Verga, the former Argentine international, who had coached him for most of his playing career, as his biggest influence in hockey. “The man is so passionate, and always gave his heart and his soul to the project. I really loved that and there was something that always spoke to me in the way he did that. It just always inspired me and gave me power in all elements of my life,” he says.

But mostly, it was Gademan’s love for hockey and creating a culture, which he was afforded in Almere, where his “real journey” began as a three-year-old. Gademan’s parents, who were both political activists fighting against the Islamist regime of Iran, had to move to the Netherlands seeking asylum.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 led to the overthrowing of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The new regime curbed the rights of the Iranian people, leading to his parents campaigning for freedom rights.

“There were big challenges for us in the political climate there. My mother is now a public figure in the Netherlands, but she was imprisoned from a young age in Iran for political reasons and it was difficult for our family to…difficult is a soft word. It was impossible for our family to live there,” Gademan retells the story. 

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Gademan is grateful for the opportunities his parents and the Netherlands have offered him. “I’ve been brought up in a western free world. As first-generation immigrants, my parents worked hard to study, learn and work, and take care of us and provide us with a life of free will and free choice in every aspect we wanted. I’ve been granted that in a country, which has its challenges, but also its absolute beauty and opportunities,” he says.

So, when Verga offered him the role, he saw it as a possibility to evolve. He kept Almere in the  Hoofdklaase for two successive seasons before he took up a job as assistant to Andre Henning at Rot-Weiss in Cologne, Germany. The pair then reversed roles with the Canada men’s national team in 2020 before they switched again with the German national team in 2022, becoming World Champions and Olympic silver medallists.

He is now in search of his next stimulant in the form of HIL with Toofans, aiming to win a competition which is unlike anything he is used to. “You are comparing very different elements with each other. We don’t have anything like this where you just form a new team, buy some players in the auction and start from scratch,” he says.

Gademan is cautious in stating his ambitions while he is keen to continue chasing the rush of working at the top level. “It’s the nerves, it’s the unknown, the tension, it’s whatever, but you’re addicted to the thrill and the performance side of things. That’s unfortunately what happens with sport…you’re searching for that next high. That’s one of the reasons why I’m here. This is searching for the next high. This is living it and experiencing it,” he signs off.