Football-loving Netherlands are often presented with the same menu: 'the big three' and respective side dishes. That's why you take Football zone this season one A look at the Kitchen Champion Division. With the help of the archives and a carefully selected club expert, we put the less exposed Dutch clubs in the spotlight. This edition offers a look behind the scenes of FC Emmen, the club that flew ahead after the arrival of a then anonymous striker.

Before the 1985/86 season, Emmen finally turns into a real football city. The local club, FC Emmen, which was founded sixty years earlier, enters professional football in the first division. This also makes it the only club that represents the province of Drenthe in the highest regions of the Netherlands. The step turns out to be more difficult than expected, and in the second year a loan is already needed to avert bankruptcy. It hardly plays a role in sporting terms until the club management takes drastic measures.

After years of disappointing performances, the board decided in 1989 to recruit a number of players with Eredivisie experience. The club suddenly finishes seventh, after which the mysterious forces of football finally seem to do their work. Although they also need time to get the young club going. The club writes about the 'disappointing' twelfth place in the 1990/91 season: “Trainer Ben Hendriks was eliminated. The only positive thing was actually the arrival of one Michel van Oostrum.” After his Ajax training, the attack leader ended up in Emmen via Telstar, PEC Zwolle and Old Boys Basel.

In 1991 Van Oostrum appeared at Emmen. He is still the top scorer of all time with 186 official goals.

'One Michel van Oostrum'
The arrival of the Amsterdammer appears to have been Ben Hendriks' last good deed. A successful transfer that will echo for a long time in the Butterfly City, as it was once called, to the butterfly garden of the local Emmen Zoo. “Ben wanted to bring me to Emmen two seasons earlier, but to be honest I didn't really feel like it,” Van Oostrum told reporters. Football zone. The club did not yet have any allure at that time. But in 1990 it can be said that the club from the butterfly city has taken the shape of a somewhat more promising cocoon. “For example, there was only one stand left. Ultimately, that all changed for the better.”

Despite the twelfth place and the dismissal of Hendriks, Van Oostrum carves his name in the memory of the city. He scores no less than 24 times. The former striker can still laugh about it. “Whether the team was built around me? No, it was a search. Who's in the rush, who's on the left, who's on the right. It became a bit of organized chaos, which apparently went very well.” Another factor in that chaos is Jan de Jonge. The native of Emmen scores sixteen times and is a co-sign of the club. “He was a hard worker with the absolute will to win,” Van Oostrum remembers. “What always sticks: he was a penalty taker. I wasn't, but if I could score a hat-trick he regularly gave me a penalty. That is special for someone who also likes to score goals.”

While Van Oostrum scored another twelve and eleven goals respectively in the following seasons, FC Emmen remained on the level in the national football landscape. After finishing eighteenth in 1992, the club finished eleventh the following year. Several players, including Van Oostrum, are forced to be sold to maintain the financial balance. “As a player you don't really experience that,” says the former goalkeeper. “There were stories about bankruptcy, but I was also told that the new light poles were paid for through my transfer. Don't know.”

'Everything started to grow'
During his absence, the club continues to develop in the middle of the first division. Van Oostrum eventually returns in 1995, when trainer Azing Griever is also appointed. The former goalkeeper of Heerenveen and FC Groningen is exchanging his position at Heracles Almelo for the red-white. “They sometimes say that you shouldn't make a goalkeeper a coach. I largely agree with that, but he is an exception,” says Van Oostrum. “From 1995 to 2000 was my best period. Everything has started to grow. The new east stand came, then two more behind the goals. We started that year with an average of 2,000 spectators, during the winter break it was 7,500. We had a full swing every week and played legendary matches here,” he recalls the times in the Oude Meerdijk stadium.

Under Griever, who was coach for another year in 2010, everything changed at FC Emmen.

Under Griever, there will be a complete cultural change at Emmen. “We trained twice a day. Simply train, be present, work on your profession, ensure that you forge a team. That has been a turning point: this is how you should play professional football.” The transformed mentality within the club was also reflected in the performances. Griever leads the club to second place in his first year, Michel van Oostrum scores 26 goals. In 1996/97, 25 more goals followed, enough for third place. In the last full season, Griever and his team again reached third place, partly thanks to 18 goals from the super striker.

“During my first period we were known for pushing the ball forward and seeing where the ship would founder. Although that gave me 24 goals in the first year,” describes Van Oostrum. “But under Griever… The positional play came, in the end we played good, attacking football with many opportunities. Make no mistake about the first division of that time. Heracles, Excelsior, Heerenveen one year, Cambuur, De Graafschap and AZ not to be forgotten. These are all clubs that subsequently played or still play in the Eredivisie. It was special that we played the best football during that period.”

In the meantime, the club is growing in several aspects. “If something happens at the club, you have to participate in a sporting and business sense. The players, sponsors, the audience, the organization. That's what happened then.” Even when former player De Jonge takes over from Griever, Emmen will not fall outside the top five. Yet a reward remains missing. “We won several period titles and played in the play-offs every year, but we forgot to get promoted,” Van Oostrum is still disappointed. “We were often unlucky that the first match was always away against an Eredivisie club. Once AZ became champions and we didn't. Then you go into it with a bad feeling, but in the end it is always about quality.”

Finally getting promoted
After Van Oostrum retired in 2002, he continued to follow the club as a supporter. Against his will, he also sees that the club is having a hard time. A new period of dominance has not occurred and in financial terms Emmen is often teetering on the edge. “There is apparently a right to exist for a BVO in this region that performs at a high level. Incomprehensible that it sank like that. It was a lot of fun, but then people appear who revive everything, with the result that you play in the Eredivisie for a few years.”

In the 2017/18 season, the club finally managed to achieve the coveted promotion. After a 3-1 win, Emmen ends its 33-year run in the first division. “I gave more interviews then than in my entire career before. But I always said as a joke: I was not on the field.” In the three years of the Eredivisie, a twelfth place is Emmen's best performance, before it is relegated again in 2021. “I think you can have comments about that. That year there was a decent selection and budget, you can question that. Ultimately, Emmen must become a stable club in the Eredivisie.”

'Emmen has a favorable factor; there is never any misery and the fans always make it a party.'

After a new, immediate promotion and an equally rapid relegation, Emmen had to say goodbye to the Kitchen Champion Division again this year. “There is a selection that has to participate. There are players who have arrived and have been around longer. They play neat football, attacking. The first two will be promoted and that must be the goal. But you have to be very bad not to play the play-offs in the first division.” Van Oostrum thinks that the rest of the Netherlands would also prefer to see Emmen return. “Emmen has a favorable factor, which Heerenveen also had for a time. It's always a great atmosphere; 8,000 people having a party. There is never any misery, the supporters behave. They also say, in the Drenthe style: 'I'll get away from here', and they show that,” concludes the former striker and current supporter of the club.

Voetbalzone is the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division

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