The Appeals Committee on License Affairs of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) also finds that the Arnhem football club Vitesse does not meet the requirements to retain its professional license. The committee announced this on Thursday. The club appealed earlier this month, after the KNVB license committee withdrew the professional permit from the club.
Vitesse would play his first game in the Kitchen Champion Division on 9 August against Almere City FC. Although the club can still challenge the decision of the KNVB at the court, the question is whether the ruling will be on time so as not to miss the start of the competition. In a first reaction, the club says “defeated” to be By the decision and that she is expected to go to court.
The Appeals Committee of the KNVB concludes that there has been a “multi -year pattern of deception, bypassing and undermining” of the licensing system, and a lack of transparency. Vitesse has been in financial problems for years and gives about investors who report to solve those problems structurally too little information, the license committee wrote earlier. In this way much remains unclear about the origin of their money and they are not subject to thorough research by the club.
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According to the appeals committee, the pattern of deception of the licensing system is “structural, serious and persistent.” That is why the withdrawal of the professional license was rightly a few weeks ago, the committee writes.
Parry and Abramovich
Last year the Arnhem club was in a similar position: Even then, the license committee withdrew the professional license, but Vitesse won the case at the appeals committee. He thought that the club had made enough effort: a new, conclusive budget had been submitted and demonstrable that the Common Group of the American investor Coley Parry was no longer involved with the club.
Parry is one of several controversial investors who has had Vitesse in recent years. Research from NRCin collaboration with international partners, it turned out that the Russian investor Valery Oyf, who sold the club after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, had financial ties with the Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich. After Oyf, Parry presented himself as an investor, but the license committee did not approve him because he did not give access to the origin of his money and investors.
Arnhem mayor Ahmed Marcouch mentioned opposite De Gelderlander “Unbelievable” that Vitesse could no longer participate in professional football “after 133 years”. It is “a huge disappointment of our city and in particular for all Vitessenaren,” he said. “It’s a way of life for many people from Arnhem.”