Professionalism and a family feeling at FC Twente

The real click between the players of FC Twente and the new technical staff led by coach Robert de Pauw never came. “It was not the ideal interaction,” says technical manager René Roord. Early in the season he initiated “conversations” with representatives from the selection, with trainers and other involved. Something had to change, Roord knew, if FC Twente wanted to participate again in the battle for the national championship in women’s football.

It didn’t help much. “Then we decided in December that it was better not to continue with the trainer next season,” says Roord. He now knows that clarity brought peace. “I have to give the staff and players a big compliment for that. Strangely enough, things got better from that point on,” he says.

The results in the competition support his conclusion. After a somewhat difficult first part, FC Twente hardly lost any points in the second half of the season. On Friday evening, even with a difference of nine goals, it can be lost against number two Ajax, then the eighth national title has still been won.

Personality

Once again FC Twente keeps the two clubs with a larger budget, Ajax and PSV, below themselves in the ranking. “It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes the difference. I can’t look in the kitchen at those other clubs,” says Roord. The preconditions that FC Twente creates, the family feeling, he always gets that back from players in the almost six years that he has now been technical manager. That extra joint activity, having lunch together or just playing games; it must ensure that acquisitions easily adapt every season. Young talents from their own training are taken care of by older teammates.

Family is also the first word that comes to captain Renate Jansen when she describes her feeling at FC Twente. Jansen, who played fifty times for the Dutch national team, has been playing in Enschede since 2015. Her teammates have never been far away since. Result of the club policy, which prescribes that a selection member may not live more than fifty kilometers from Enschede. “It is very nice that we live close to each other with the girls. You are often together after training sessions and competitions. You quickly become a close-knit team.”

When finalizing the selection for a new season, the personality of players is also taken into account, Jansen knows. She sees it back on the field. “We invest in keeping the group close together,” says Roord. If someone is through, then the group must be strong enough to quickly cheer them up again.

Cozy feeling, warm feeling

Despite the professionalization of recent years, the cozy feeling remains important. The two also go well together, says Roord. More money and more professionalism need not be a ‘killer’. The German top club VfL Wolfsburg, where he regularly sits in the stands to see his daughter and international Jill in action, is an example in that regard. “They follow the same pattern there. A professional environment, but with a warm feeling.”

Since the summer of 2020, Roord is no longer a volunteer as a technical manager. From that moment on, the women’s branch again fell completely under the professional football organization FC Twente. Since 2017, when the club stopped playing women’s football due to financial problems, the women were accommodated in a foundation. “We have always been financially supported by the club. But it’s a good feeling when you really belong to the organization again,” says Roord.

There is also more possible for the women’s selection. Jansen mentions the sports psychologist who has been added to the coaching team. “He managed to stimulate us a little more at important moments,” she says. The lines have also become shorter within the club, also to the first team in the men. But what exactly is possible coincides with performance. “I can’t just keep asking if there’s nothing in return,” says Roord.

First professional club

The foundation for the successes was laid more than fifteen years ago. FC Twente was the first professional club to set up a women’s branch in 2006. For a moment Joop Munsterman, then chairman of the club, thought that he should start with the first women’s team in the fourth division of the amateurs. But in the same year, the KNVB football association set up an eredivisie for women.

Munsterman wanted to do something with women’s football. “I actually couldn’t understand that something like this didn’t exist yet. In the region around Enschede alone, so many women were already involved in football.” That women’s and girls’ football had potential was apparent from the scouting day that Twente organized. “So many girls came to that. Even from Denmark and England,” says Munsterman.

“We didn’t believe that we only had to put on amateurs a good outfit to let them be professionals,” says Mary Kok-Willemsen. As manager of women’s football she was involved in setting up the professional academy for football players at FC Twente. The first team as a flagship, surrounded by a training structure. “In the hope that it would reinforce each other,” says Kok-Willemsen.

Talented girls were given the option to combine training with their education. Not first kilometers on the bike back and forth to school and then training, but an adjustment of the rhythm. Something that was already common with the boys. “If a generation of football players is used to training four times a week, the next group will also find it normal,” says Kok-Willemsen, who also trained the first women’s team from 2007 to 2011.

Salary

In 2011, another step forward followed, when FC Twente became the first club to provide players with a salary. “We raised enough sponsorship money to pay them,” says Munsterman. That payment was related to the number of games played; the player with the most caps earned the most.

It gave FC Twente even more appeal. Top players such as Sherida Spitse, Sari van Veenendaal, Lineth Beerensteyn and Stefanie van der Gragt liked to come to Enschede. “We gave them a house, a car and money to live on,” says Munsterman.

The level went up in width, players from the youth academy moved on to the first team. National titles followed, FC Twente also took part in the Champions League. Midfielder Spitse was the first Dutch football player to be sold in 2013, for allegedly 25,000 euros to Lillestrøm SK in Norway. After her, more Dutch players went abroad.

„Did we know that at that time we had the players who later became European champions [met het Nederlands elftal, in 2017] would become? New. Did we know that they would become the role models for Dutch women’s football? Not even,” says Kok-Willemsen. “But we knew that we had created an environment in which football players were given opportunities. In that respect, not much has changed at FC Twente.”