With penalty cannon Yibbi Jansen, the Netherlands is again European champion: ‘Yibbi can take them with a lot of appearance’

A news prior to the European Hockey Championship in Mönchengladbach: Yibbi Jansen (25) plays international matches on her shirt from now on.

It is something small, but not insignificant. Jansen, voted best hockey star in the world in November, knows exactly what she is doing. She is well on her way to become the face of this hockey generation, a hockeysuperster. Someone who is not only asked for a selfie next to the field, but also in the supermarket. Someone who no longer needs a last name.

And then of course it also helps that your name is Yibbi. “My parents gave me a unique name,” she says a few days before the final. “I can use this opportunity now.” Just like her high tail with blond curls and her white hair band, it is “something recognizable again.”

With her teammates, Jansen will be European champion on Sunday evening, at the expense of home country Germany. A competition that, after a strong Dutch start with two goals (Pien Dicke and Luna Fokke), still becomes very exciting, when Germany scores with some luck in the third quarter. Orange is unable to increase the distance. When Jansen is sitting on the couch with a time penalty, she sees how the Germans get close to 2-2. But time is ticking further and it turns out enough: again the powerful Orange women drag into the European title, the fifth in a row.

With six goals, Jansen is top scorer of the tournament and is elected as the tournament player. Sobking, she walks back to her teammates, after getting the prize in her hands shortly before the medaleceremony. Dicke immediately throws an arm around her. “A bit of discharge,” she says afterwards. It was remarkable, normally Jansen shows little emotion. She just doesn’t always succeed, she says. “So I was pretty happy that it came now. It is sometimes nice if you can let it go.”

Especially in the semi -final, Jansen proves how important she is as a weapon for this orange. With her fatal penalty corner, she owns the duel against Spain on Friday evening.

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That was necessary too, she says afterwards. Because where there is speculation in advance about a Dutch goal festival, it is Spain that takes the lead early. Even the Spanish striker who is nicely tapping the ball, Patricia Álvarez, it hardly seems to believe it. With a wondered grin, she is just sitting on the couch.

But then, in the second quarter, Jansen asserts himself. Her first penalty corner of the match is stopped, but the second, immediately afterwards, goes flawlessly. Hardly left along the keeper. The stadium camera quickly switches to the stands where her parents are. Many hockey lovers will recognize her father: former orange keeper Ronald Jansen.

Jansen then makes two more (final score 3-1), where she had more difficulty scoring in this tournament. With her hat trick she pushes her statistics to an impressive 96 goals in 98 international matches. Also significant: when the Spanish line stop Coti Amundson can stop a corner from Jansen with a feline movement, she celebrates that it is a goal.

Afterwards, in the corner of the stadium where all the family members who came from the Netherlands to the players are also sitting, Ronald Jansen, with an orange hawai chain, also stands over his white shirt. Jansen, who normally does not shy away from the criticism, admiringly speaks of his daughter’s game. “If you get all the media attention, if everyone looks at you, then it is very clever that you just do it again. Of course, that is of course where it often goes wrong with athletes. But not yet with her, apparently. She knows how to stay the peace herself, she knows what she stands for.”

Fissure

What makes Jansen so strong? To start with, she is just a very good field player, says Gilles van Hesteren. Van Hesteren was the coach of SCHC in the past year, the club in Bilthoven where Jansen has been playing since 2019. “You don’t get the best player in the world just a good corner. She has a lot of technology, creativity, she dares to make a walking action, she dares to dribble. She has a splitting pass in the house and also a high, long ball.”

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That said: her corner is of world quality, says Van Hesteren. “Yibbi can take them with a lot of appearance. And with a lot of relaxation, it is not only strength, but also flexibility, technology. She has a good gear, is just like an elastic band. And she can adapt to the moment.” If the ball is not nice and quiet or not in the right place, Jansen is still able to make it.

You have to get better at that step by step. “It is a super complex movement, very unnatural.” And taking such a corner is also difficult mentally. “The pressure is on you.” But Jansen seems to have little trouble with that, he says. Also take that election of hockey star of the year. “You often see that players perform a little less for a while. But not Yibbi, I think. He doesn’t let itself be fooled.”

At a very young age you can see that Jansen has a good corner, Ronald Jansen knows. The choice to specialize comes from her, he says, but he was good at it. “I used to say to her: try to be able to do something extra. If it is right between you and someone else, then you will be chosen earlier.”

Jansen has ‘the happiness’ that Ronald Ken Siepman knows Penal Cornergoero, which she has been working with from an early age. “Then she went by once every two months and gave advice: do a little bit more this or that. I have no look at it. But it has helped her 100 percent, because it is not as if she has tree trunks of the poor. It is all technology, technology, technology.”

Always fanatically practiced

The choice for the corner has been smart, says Marc Lammers. Ten years ago, Lammers, former national coach of the women, was a period trainer of the youth team of Den Bosch ten years ago, where Yibbi Jansen Hockeye hockey. Lammers’ daughter was also in that team. Lammers still remembers how ‘fanatic’ Jansen always practiced her penalty corners on the artificial grass field at the back of the garden. “She just started that specialty very early. And maybe as a hockey player she wasn’t completely fully grown, but if you have a good corner, you make playing minutes and get better.”

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Making clear choices, that typifies Jansen, says her former SCHC coach Van Hesteren. That penalty corner is just an example of that, he thinks.

That’s right, says Jansen himself. For example, as a 16-year-old talent from Topclub Den Bosch, she left for relegation candidate Oranje-Rood, with the idea that she could make more playing minutes there. A decision that did not understand everyone. Jansen: “That just felt good. That may sound somewhat floating, but you can feel best: this suits me. And it has worked out well: I have been able to play many penalty corners, have been in midfield.”

Another clear choice: at the age of 21, not long before the Tokyo Olympic Games, Jansen took a distance from Orange. Temporary, although of course that was not certain at the time. “I came to the Dutch team at the age of eighteen, I ‘hung up’ for a number of years. When I was 21 I said: this way it is not going to work for me. This is not going to contribute to who I am as a person and as a hockey star. With faith: I will ever succeed.” That choice also brought her a lot, says Jansen. “It has been very good for me. It will gnaw at you if you walk on your toes for too long.”

Yibbi madness

Jansen played a key role at the Paris Olympic Games. In an extremely difficult final against China, in which the Netherlands feverishly chased an equalizer, Jansen scored in the last quarter with a penalty corner. Orange won on shoot-outs.

Van Hesteren saw how afterwards the Yibbi madness erupted. After competitions, Jansen is sometimes “with fifty hockey girls around him,” who hope for a selfie, signature, or her white hair band. “I have also said: Yibbi has to leave now, even though it wasn’t really the case. But otherwise they would stay there at the field.”

Jansen is increasingly aware of her image, especially now that she has become more famous in the past year. “It’s nice to put yourself down,” she says about it. She has, especially for a relatively small sport such as hockey, many followers on Instagram (more than 100,000). They post sports photos, some sponsorships and here and there something of a holiday or a coffee on a terrace.

Her last post is a picture of her shoot For Menblad FHM. In May she was voted Sportswoman of the Year – the magazine has no longer speaks of ‘most beautiful sportswoman’ because of the spirit of the times this year. Jansen has “the guts” to say ‘yes’ to it, says Van Hesteren. “It used to be seen as a meat inspection. Enough girls said ‘no’ on it. But Yibbi who consults that with some people and then decides: I have never done that before, that seems nice to me.”

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“In this woke The world of course thinks something about it again, “says Ronald Jansen.” But I think it’s great, an appreciation for such a small sport. “

And that name on the back, he likes that just as well. “Everyone knows her as Yibbi, why would you walk on your back with Jansen? Yibbi is just a brand.” The special name comes from her mother, who thought he had heard him in a BBC documentary.

Yes, says Jansen himself, Yibbi has become a brand. A brand with which she has plans. “I certainly have ideas about that.” But, even though that may sound “a bit faint”, now she doesn’t want to say anything about it.

But no matter how nice he likes that brand, in the end everything stands or falls with the sports performance, her father says. That is the basis, perhaps even more as soon as an athlete becomes a familiar face. “Because you also know how that goes. If you no longer perform, it’s the first time.”

Jansen, top scorer and player of the tournament, does not have to worry about this in Germany on Sunday evening. And even after the game there is all that attention again. Journalists stand in line for her. And then the hopeful girl’s army awaits the side that it has put a scream. “They are loud,” Jansen notes. But she promises that she will walk by soon.

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