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An exciting fight against relegation, two new clubs and a big name back in the Netherlands: what can we expect from the new Eredivisie season with the women, which starts on Saturday?
New competition setup
The competition setup of women’s professional football has been renewed from this season and now has a pyramid structure with three levels: Eredivisie, First Division and Second Division.
The relegation scheme is weighted once. Next season, two or three clubs will relegate. The songs eleven and twelve degrade anyway, the number ten only if the champion of the first division meets the license requirements and can therefore promote.
NAC makes his debut in Eredivisie
Fortuna Sittard decided after last season to pull the plug from the professional women’s branch. Financial reasons were the basis for this. NAC Breda decided to jump into the gap that has arisen, so that the Eredivisie again consists of twelve clubs.
But it was a race against the clock for the people of Breda to be ready for the Eredivisie on time. With the announcement of the promotion, mid -June, the club has not yet had a single player with a professional contract, while there must be at least twelve.
Another requirement for an Eredivisie club is that there is a promise team, NAC did not yet have that either. It was not possible to set it up in a few months, but the KNVB showed its head and granted the club postponing. The intention is that there is a promise team during the course of the season.
First independent women’s profit club in Eredivisie
It was exciting for a long time whether Hera United would participate in the Eredivisie. Last Wednesday finally came green light. The independent license committee of the KNVB ruled that the club meets the license requirements that are set for professional football organizations (BVOs) in the Netherlands.
With that, Hera was officially permitted to take over the women’s football license from Telstar and to participate in the Eredivisie. Earlier the other BVOs agreed to Hera’s accession.
Hera United is the first independent professional football club for women in Dutch professional football.
Roord back in the Netherlands
Jill Roord surprised at the end of May with the announcement that she returns to the Netherlands. The Oranje-International left Topclub Manchester City behind and signed for three years at FC Twente, where she started her professional career and played between 2012 and 2017.
At Twente, Roord comes to an excellent rotating club. In the past two seasons, the Enschedees became champions of the Netherlands, in total they already became champions ten times. Twente had to say goodbye to Kayleigh van Dooren and Liz Rijsbergen last summer.
Roord is back at FC Twente and again celebrates ‘normal life’
Van Dooren, good for 25 goals last season, left for AC Milan. Rijsbergen, who scored twelve times last season, exchanged Twente for PSV. But with Roord, Twente has regained a lot of scoring capacity. In 2016 she became top scorer in the Netherlands with twenty Treffers, for Oranje she already scored 29 goals.
Struggle for the title
Last season, the battle for the national title until the last round was exciting. Surprisingly, it was not a battle between FC Twente and Ajax, but PSV also joined it. On goal difference, the Eindhoven team saw the championship passing by, for the tenth time in the history of the Eredivisie, Twente became the national champion.
And too this season, Twente, including Oranje-International Roord, seems to be the team to beat. In the Supercup, PSV made it very difficult for the club from Enschede, but Twente came back from a backlog of two goals and thus grabbed the first prize of the season.
Twente is led by a new head coach this season. Corina Dekker has succeeded Joran Pot, including Twente many successes. There is also a new trainer for the group at Ajax. Anouk Bruil is the successor of Hesterine de Reus, who had to leave the field prematurely after a little successful year.
At the beginning of July we spoke about her new job as head coach at Ajax.
Bruil clearly about the objective Ajax women: ‘Of course want to win prizes’
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