From foundation to premier divisionist within six years. The indoor football club VNS United has gone through this stormy development. Since this season, Amsterdam-North has also played in the Eredivisie in Sporthal De Weeren.
“It sounds very simple, but we’ve been through a lot,” says co-founder Khalid Heyouf, who founded VNS United in 2016 with a colleague. “We are young drivers, we had minimal volunteers so we moved mountains to make it a reality.”
United North Scores, where the abbreviation stands for, describes itself as a ‘family club’ with many players from the district. “When we started, I knew there was a lot of potential in Noord,” says Heyouf, who was a sports neighborhood worker in the district for many years. “My co-founder already had a first team and then we started working together. Then we built up VNS and we had the ambition to be the second club in Amsterdam and we are now.”
VNS United has been promoted in all years except the third year. Currently, the club has grown into a seniors’ association with 150 members divided over eight teams. “A lot of young people from Amsterdam-North come here. It’s a bit of us-knows-us. Everyone knows each other and you can see that in the club, that’s just beautiful.”
The first two games at the highest level ended in minor defeats for VNS United. Last week the team from Amsterdam lost 5-4 against Texel ’94 and this weekend Groene Ster was too strong with 5-3. In two weeks, the team of coach Mo Bouchibti will be back in action and will play against Tigers Roermond.