AVV Zeeburgia chairman Huub Wilbrink regularly hears about it from the trainers and other volunteers at his club. Children who try to pay with a debit card without a balance in the canteen. Who are hungry when they come to training. Who have no money for new football boots.
Erwin Rijsdijk, treasurer of the Rotterdam SV Ommoord, sees parents who get into trouble with the contribution, or who cannot pay their own contribution to a tournament abroad.
They are signs of poverty. They cannot say with certainty how widespread this poverty is in their associations. The best indication is that a fifth (Omoord) to a quarter (Zeeburgia) of the members make use of subsidy schemes to pay for the membership fee and to purchase sportswear. But those percentages still paint an optimistic picture, they suspect.
“There are probably also people who do not know how to find their way to the support schemes,” says Rijsdijk. Wilbrink: “You don’t have a good view of that. You do not know what you do not know.”
Zeeburgia and Ommoord have therefore registered for a trial by the KNVB football association in collaboration with ING and several debt counseling agencies. In the coming months, they will install ‘financial confidants’ at amateur associations. Initially, it concerns about seventy clubs, in the course of this year the initiative should also reach the rest of the Dutch amateur football fields.
How commercial football schools earn from the ambitions of children and their parents
Football is a relatively inexpensive sport – as long as you don’t take advantage of the rapidly expanding range of commercial football schools. Contribution from football clubs is usually between 200 and 300 euros per year. Yet nearly half (43 percent) of amateur clubs have members who have difficulty paying membership fees and participating in additional activities, according to an ING poll of 111 clubs. In total, the Netherlands has just under three thousand football associations with a total of more than one million members.
Completely anonymous
Regional and national subsidy pots such as the Youth Fund Sport & Culture exist for people with limited funding, but not everyone who is entitled to it makes use of it, according to the bank and the KNVB. Because people have difficulty with the application, simply do not know about it or because they prefer to keep quiet about money worries.
“There is shame and taboo surrounding this subject,” says Leon Wijnands, ING director of sustainability involved in the initiative. Rijsdijk of SV Ommoord recognizes that. And besides, he says: “The treasurer of the association is not the first to whom you put your financial worries on the table.”
The idea of the initiators is that the presence of a financial confidant at a club lowers the barrier for parents to talk about money problems. This can be done completely anonymously, via a tool on the website of the association, or confidentially in a conversation, possibly outside the association grounds. And if parents do not dare to take that step themselves? “Trainers and coaches know a lot about their players,” says KNVB director Jan Dirk van der Zee. “They must refer to a financial counselor at the club.”
That is someone from the bank or a club volunteer who has received training. They can then help with the application for support schemes or, in serious cases, refer them to the right debt relief organisations. Wijnands of ING: “They should function as signposts, but they are not going to solve the problems. It will not be a debt counseling process within amateur football.”
Vulnerable to subversion
Association directors are generally enthusiastic about the plan, according to a small tour. But to really make a difference, the KNVB and ING – sponsor of the association and 550 amateur associations – should do even more, amateur clubs in relatively poor city districts say. Because not only some of their members struggle with financial and administrative problems, these associations also have these themselves. For example, they often have difficulty generating sufficient income and suffer from a glaring lack of volunteers with administrative and financial knowledge. This makes these clubs vulnerable to undermining, for example through criminal sponsorship or money laundering.
“Financial counselors are a good start,” says Marcel Jille, chairman of DWS from Amsterdam-West. “But ING could also use its network and expertise to recruit treasurers and make clubs more resilient to criminal interference. Clubs that are tight are quick targets of rogue groups.”
Jamal Ahaddouch, president of Atlético Club Amsterdam, calls the initiative “nice idea”, but “a drop in the ocean”. „Clubs in neighborhoods like ours [Amsterdam Nieuw-West] have so many challenges, that is not solved with a financial counselor. And besides, we already have someone who fills such a role. How can I generate more and stable income, that is the question here.”