The Kitchen Champion Division has been a breeding ground for national and international talents for decades and this season there are again many footballers with potential on the second level. Football zone, the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division, highlights one of these talents every week, this time focusing on Naoufal Bannis, who prepares herself at FC Dordrecht for a breakthrough at Feyenoord.
By Chris Meijer
Naoufal Bannis is shoveling the main grandstand of the Riwal Lifting Stadium. The nineteen-year-old striker pauses at a ghetto blaster, which, despite apparently no one in the stadium, is so loud that you can almost damage your hearing if you sit nearby for a few minutes. After tinkering with some buttons for a few seconds, the silence descends. “Well, that’s better”, Bannis grins, looking for a seat. He feels extremely comfortable at De Krommedijk. “The first two weeks it took some getting used to. Look, it is a world of difference with Feyenoord. In terms of football, but also in terms of accommodation. You have to arrange almost everything yourself, while at Feyenoord everything is arranged for you. ” Bannis laughs. “If the ball goes into the ditch, you have to get it yourself. Those kind of things.”
Until January, Bannis didn’t know much better. Feyenoord took the born Hagenaar away from ADO Den Haag in 2016. “I’ve been playing at Feyenoord almost all my life. Feyenoord is almost my everything. In the youth there were clubs that wanted to steal me away from Feyenoord, but I never accepted that. My goal has always been to make his debut at Feyenoord and become the first striker, which is still the case ”, he says with a smile. Bannis went through the last years of the youth academy of Feyenoord and grew into a youth international in the successful group that won the European Under-17 Championship in 2019 and finished fourth at the World Cup a few months later. Last season, he made his debut at the age of seventeen in the Eredivisie game with Sparta Rotterdam (2-2) under Jaap Stam (‘unfortunately he didn’t last that long at Feyenoord’) in the first team.
Bannis worked at Feyenoord Under-19 for two years together with Dirk Kuyt: “I had a very good relationship with Dirk Kuyt, a fantastic trainer and a fantastic person. He gave us a lot of confidence, we got along very well with him. Jokes off the field, things like that. ”
Stam’s departure and the accompanying arrival of Dick Advocaat initially changed his perspective. Lawyer sent Bannis back to the Under-19 with Marouan Azarkan and Achraf El Bouchataoui halfway through last season. A very hard blow, that’s what Bannis calls it now. A few months earlier, a lawyer had already said that the youth players were ‘not good enough’ to take a seat on the bench. “Of course that affected me, which is why I started working extra for myself. To ultimately prove otherwise, I turned it into motivation. ” In his own words, Bannis has worked a lot on himself over the past year. Outside the club, he works three times a week with a personal trainer on his physical condition. Because he knows and understands the doubts that exist about it.
“It was true what they said: physically I was not quite ready for it. That’s why I’m here to get physically stronger. The fact that people say that I am physically short is now a motivation to accelerate even more. I want to get the most out of what I have in me. Investing in yourself is certainly part of that. I was the first to join the club at Feyenoord to do strength training. ” Investing also includes working with a mental coach. Those lessons made him conclude in January that a rental period at FC Dordrecht would by no means be a step back. “A lot of people see it as a step backwards, but I don’t see it that way. This is just a way of developing. At first I saw it myself as a step backwards. Only I started thinking about it: you will play a lot in six months, become stronger and come back as a better player. It’s part of the process. If you look at everything positively, you will also play better football. ”
Bannis takes the field during the away game against Dinamo Tibilisi in the preliminary round of the Europa League, his second official appearance for Feyenoord.
“The most important thing was playing minutes, it doesn’t matter where. If you are a good player, you can show yourself anywhere. No matter how difficult that is. This may not have been the easiest step, but it turned out to be the best. I play two or three times a week, that’s the maximum ”, Bannis continues. At Feyenoord he did not have to count on playing minutes in the second half of the season. Bannis started the season in the Under-21, which has not played games since September due to the corona pandemic and is only allowed to train in a group for a number of weeks. “I barely touched the ball in the first months of the season.” Lawyer brought him back to the first selection at the end of October because Nicolai Jörgensen and Robert Bozeník were injured at that time and Dylan Vente was found not to be fit enough.
“I seized that opportunity with both hands. Every minute is a bonus, so I am grateful to Advocaat that I have been able to show myself. Even if they weren’t complete matches. As a young boy you dream of making minutes in Feyenoord 1, even if there are five or ten. That’s better than nothing, especially when you’re eighteen. ” In the away match against FC Emmen, Lawyer brought Bannis in the field in the first half, as the replacement for the injured Steven Berghuis. He gave Feyenoord a 2-3 victory in injury time with his first official goal. “I saw ninety plus on the scoreboard and thought: no, I have to make it. I think I had already missed an opportunity before that. That last ball came. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it. All emotions came out. I got a lot of attention after that game. Positive, but also critical. Of course you become more eager, you want more and more. ”
Bannis celebrates the winning goal during the duel between FC Emmen and Feyenoord (2-3), his first goal in the main force of the team from Rotterdam.
In any case, a month after his first goal, he was rewarded in the form of a new contract, running until mid-2023. “We had been working on a contract for a while and I knew I would stay at Feyenoord. It is a nice reward if you sign your second contract a week after your first goal. Whether I had expected more opportunities as a result? Ultimately, it is all up to the trainer. If it doesn’t come now, it will come later. I keep believing in myself and wait to get a chance. Until then I will continue to work very hard. ” But wasn’t the winter arrival of Lucas Pratto an additional disappointment in that regard? “Competition is part of football, it only makes you sharper and better. They get competitors at every club ”, Bannis answers correctly. Yet it seems precisely because of this that he had come to play in the second half of the season. Lawyer usually prefers Bryan Linssen in the point of the attack in favor of the real strikers Jörgensen, Bozeník and Pratto. “You never know if I would have gotten more minutes, but I am satisfied that I took this step. I am fitter than I was at Feyenoord. ”
The physically strong Kitchen Champion Division provides Bannis with valuable lessons, all the more so because FC Dordrecht fights for the points at the end of the rankings. “At Feyenoord you always play in half of the opponent, that is not the case here. You have to be patient, sometimes you get one chance and for that you have to be sharp. I learn from that, I hope it will help me to immediately punch in that one opportunity at Feyenoord ”, Bannis nods, while he peers over the field for a moment. His first field goal for FC Dordrecht took a while. Until the away game against De Graafschap three weeks ago, Bannis shot two penalties, but at De Vijverberg he was the big star with two goals and an assist in the surprisingly 0-3 game. “In the beginning I was only looking for goals, but that got in the way of my game. Then you are just not sharp enough, an assumption is just wrong. I have started to focus more on other things: running actions, assumptions, being strong in the duels. If you do that well, the goals will come naturally. Many people only look at his goals with a striker. I don’t necessarily look at my goals now, but more at my development, whether I am getting stronger, match rhythm, assumptions. ”
“I notice that I have taken physical steps, mentally I have become stronger. More mature, I think. At Feyenoord I was still a bit playful. I am working very hard to come back stronger to Feyenoord and I cannot wait until the time has come ”, it sounds determined. New opportunities await next summer, when Arne Slot succeeds Advocaat. “Slot is a very good trainer, he has proven himself at AZ with young players and I hope that I will get my chance. I consider myself ready for that. It has been a long time since a striker broke through in Feyenoord 1, I would like to show that to the supporters. ”
Name: Naoufal Bannis
Date of birth: March 11, 2002
Club: FC Dordrecht (rented from Feyenoord)
Position: rush hour
Strengths: technique, speed, insight
Voetbalzone is the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division
Click here for exclusive interviews, talent scouts, current positions and the program on our Kitchen Champion Division page.