If it had been up to the neutral spectator, ADO Den Haag-Excelsior would still be busy. This deciding game for promotion to the Eredivisie was almost everything that makes football so beautiful: unpredictability, heroism, many goals and penalties. Including extra time, the squatter finished in 4-4 and after eighteen penalties, Excelsior, which came back from a 3-0 and 4-3 deficit, crowned the winner.
A big stain on the evening was the escalation outside and then inside the lines. Part of The Hague’s hard core entered the field, bombarded the branch with fireworks and even harassed players.
The match against ADO fits seamlessly into Excelsior’s season, which has also been up and down. Last year, the Rotterdam club finished ninth in the Eerste Divisie with difficulty and expectations for this season were far from high. The selection had been thoroughly renewed, but with young, mostly unknown players, Excelsior surprised in the first half of the season with football full of flair, as the house style dictates. The club took a period – good for participation in the play-offs – and went into the winter break as second.
The second half of the season went a lot less. Where Thijs Dallinga scored 25 goals in twenty games before the winter break, the contribution of the top scorer stagnated. The schwung seemed to have completely disappeared from the team of coach Marinus Dijkhuizen, resulting in sixth place in the final standings.
Nevertheless, people in Kralingen dared to fantasize about obtaining a doctorate. In the play-offs for promotion/relegation, Roda JC was eliminated first, then Eredivisie club Heracles Almelo and then ADO Den Haag. As the Real Madrid of Rotterdam, Excelsior showed resilience and lived up to the meaning of the club name: higher up.
Scouting doubled
Cor Pot, who played more than a hundred games in the first team and then was both assistant and head coach of the red and blacks, praises that resilience. “It is actually no longer surprising that they managed to come back. If you peak in the play-offs, you are just the deserved PhD student.”
Pot (70) describes Excelsior as a sympathetic club, where nothing really happens. Boring? “Not that. It is the ideal place for young, talented players to develop and find their way up. In peace.”
Excelsior has invested heavily in the scouting apparatus for this. The number of scouts was doubled, from three to six, and should eventually grow to a team of ten to twelve in total. The three pillars on which this team focuses are live, video and data scouting. Pot: “In this way they show that you can get far with limited resources and without thick contracts. Once again, with that young board, they prove that a success doesn’t just happen out of the blue.”
The young board that Pot is talking about is formed by technical director Nick Kersten (37) and Daan Bovenberg (33), the youngest general director ever in Dutch professional football. Bovenberg, a former Excelsior player, was known in the dressing room as a student because he combined his professional career with a business administration study. The management duo has always indicated that they want to return to the Eredivisie with the club in the long term, but within the framework of sensible policy – without wild gambling and large transfer expenses.
Eredivisie worthy
The surprising promotion yields around one and a half million euros through extra TV money. This will increase Excelsior’s disposable budget slightly. A part is invested in extending contracts and signing new players. A lot still needs to be done to make the club Eredivisie worthy, says coach Dijkhuizen. “There will be boys leaving. I certainly expect Mats Wieffer, Dallinga too. And there will be players. Also players who bring Eredivisie experience, because we hardly have that. On the other hand, we shouldn’t get too many old guests either. We have now also done it with a young team.”
Also around the first team, a lot of Excelsior will have to be tinkered with to be ready for that level higher. Ambitious plans for the stadium have already been unveiled earlier. Nobody dares to burn their fingers on a delivery date, but if the plans that are now on paper are worked out in practice, the Van Donge & De Roo stadium – as Woudestein has been officially called since 2017 – will soon have about 2,200 more seats. It would bring the total capacity to approximately 6,500. Within the club, the hope is that the expansion will gain momentum due to the promotion.
What will definitely be addressed is the gym† Dijkhuizen: “It will be completely new. Just like the trainers room, by the way. It still looks exactly like when I took my first steps here as a football player in 1994. Including the old slats.”
Excelsior also wants to move forward in the field of data analysis, says Dijkhuizen. “We now have someone on staff one day a week. With a view to performing in the Eredivisie and, above all, maintaining, a few days a week must be added. The technical staff and management are more than in order. We can continue with that for a while.”
But the question remains what Excelsior, which has been promoted for the ninth time, will add to the Eredivisie? Dijkhuizen does not hesitate for a second: „We continue to play nice football. Not physical, no long balls. No, neat playmaking, attacking, wanting to score many goals. That is what I stand for with this club.”