Sander van Roekel will stop as assistant referee at the KNVB, the football association announced on Wednesday through a major interview. The linesman was part of the team of referee Björn Kuipers for a long time, but says he has ‘no more goals’. On Tuesday, December 21, he takes the flag in his hand for the last time, when he assists in the Eredivisie match between Vitesse and PEC Zwolle.
47-year-old Van Roekel was Kuipers’ permanent assistant for many years and traveled throughout Europe in that capacity. He was active 169 times internationally, including the Europa League finals twice (in 2013 and 2018), the Champions League finals once (in 2014) and the European Championship final last summer as icing on the cake. Kuipers decided to put a punt behind his career immediately after the European Championship. “I was not done with it then,” says Van Roekel on the website of the KNVB. “If I had stopped immediately after the European Championship, I might have regretted it.”
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At the beginning of this year, Voetbalzone spoke to Nicky Siebert, who also ended his career as an assistant referee.
“We used to set our goals together before the start of the season. We want to achieve this and we are working towards that. By stopping Björn, that has now disappeared and that felt very different to me,” Van Roekel continues. “There was no longer a dot on the horizon to work towards. In recent weeks I noticed that I could determine for myself that the time had come to stop. I have achieved things that I would never have achieved as a referee. The maximum taken out of my career. I could never have dreamed that.”
Van Roekel closes with three European Championships, two World Cups and therefore a final of the European Championship. “If you can lead such a final somewhere, then Wembley is the pinnacle”, he looks back on his peak last summer. “Our family was allowed to come over for the final. My daughter was even in a stadium for the first time. During the warm-up, that mighty reverberation Football’s Coming Home by Wembley. Then I thought of my daughter sitting there among all those fans in the stands. Gosh, what an impression that will make on a girl like that. It brought tears to my eyes.”