In the series Ex on the Pitch two ex-pro football players come to visit De Voetbalfabriek in Almere. Together with presenter Jelle Kusters, they look back on their career and play a number of mini games. In the eighth episode it is the turn of Ramon Zomer and Jeroen Heubach, who played together at FC Twente and NEC.
Both players got to know each other at the beginning of this century at Twente. Heubach had been playing in the first team for years at the club from Enschede, while Zomer made his debut for Twente in 2002. In the end, the now 39-year-old Zomer played for FC Twente until 2008, after which he ended up at Heracles Almelo via NEC and sc Heerenveen. He ended his career there in 2016 due to knee problems.
Two things
Zomer now owns two businesses: an Intersport branch and a corporate clothing company, both located in Nijverdal. When he hung up his football boots in 2016, he had already opened the Intersport store. “I was able to fully focus on that at the time,” he recalls. “Actually, I’ve never really sat still. I already had that store in the last year that I played football. In the morning I often went to train, in the afternoon I went to the store. So I just played shopping night. When I had to play football on Saturday evening, I often went to the store for a cup of coffee in the morning. I really liked that, because I’m quite a thinker. As a footballer, you have so much free time that you may think too much at times, so that’s why football occasionally went down. Once I had the store, I didn’t have time for that at all.”
Ramon Zomer as a player of sc Heerenveen in a duel with Luuk de Jong
The days of Summer currently look varied. “One day I’m on the road for my corporate clothing company. Then I visit customers. The other day I spend an afternoon in the store. I actually do everything: I manage the staff, do the administration, do purchasing, go to customers… It is very varied work, and that makes it fun, because I am not someone who likes to do the same thing all the time.”
Difficult to educate young people
The 48-year-old Heubach lingered in the football world for a little longer after he himself stopped playing at a professional level. So he started doing a trainer course. “I was a trainer at the FC Twente/Heracles Academy for five years. But then I had to leave Twente at once. I still don’t know why. I received an email, had to go to Hengelo and I was immediately informed that I had been fired. So within five minutes I was outside again.”
Jeroen Heubach took on the Arsenal of Theo Walcott in the preliminary round of the Champions League with FC Twente in 2008
Through a friend, Heubach then came across the Zekere Basis foundation. “I work there with disadvantaged young people. I used to be on the group, and now I’m a cook. I run errands with boys, cook them food. There are 28 boys, and they all live in-house. At the time I started a conversation there, after which we first checked whether it suited both sides. I liked it and they were satisfied, which is why I still work there now.”
Incidentally, it was close to Heubach having become champion with Twente. Halfway through the 2009/10 season, he left for NEC on a rental basis, as he barely got to play with the Enschede team. In the end, Twente became champion that season. “If I had known that Twente would become champion, I would have just stayed in the stands”, Heubach looks back with a smile. “But those are choices you make… I ended up going to all the parties, so that’s fun.”