Spakenburg

Amateur club stun Dutch football by reaching cup semi-finals

- Klaas-Jan Droppert

There was so much to talk about that it’s difficult to know where to start. The Dutch Cup semi-finals made more than enough headlines and most of them for the wrong reasons: the hostility between arch-rivals Feyenoord and Ajax, who met at De Kuip, culminating in Davy Klaassen being struck on the head by an object thrown from the stands, or the homophobic chants aimed at PSV’s Xavi Simons. It all provoked another social discussion about how to tackle these issues in Dutch football. Again.

With so many shadows cast over the competition it would be easy to forget that there was also something to smile about. A remarkable fairy tale from an amateur club reaching the semi-finals that gave Dutch giants PSV a run for their money and almost caused the Dutch FA another problem to solve.

SV Spakenburg play in the third tier of Dutch football (known as the Jack’s League, for sponsorship reasons), which is the country’s highest amateur level. They are not exactly blowing the league away either, currently set for a mediocre mid-table finish. Yet that didn’t prevent the club from causing one of the most extraordinary giant-killing cup campaigns in the history of Dutch football.