Everybody loves NEC!

General Manager Jacco Swart has to think about their trip to Bukarest some weeks ago when NEC had to play Dinamo.

“It was crowded with press and camera’s. But Steau Bukarest had just landed who played a CL game in Florence and in another hall Hamburger SV was waiting to leave the country. And we were there too: NEC! Can you believe it. That’s such a kick.”

Tonight, NEC will start the group phase against Dinamo Zagreb in the UEFA cup tournament. It takes a lot for NEC to deal with all this. “Man, we have three people working full time on our adventure. It takes a lot to do this, but it is so rewarding. As a club, we learn a lot from this process. Our organization will grow because of this and we also hope to be an enrichment on the pitch.”

But, it’s mainly pure enjoyment what NEC gets out of it. “Take the draw in Nyon. For most clubs, that’s a boring evening. A sort of obligation. For us, it’s like the Oscars. It’s new and exciting. We met with the management teams of our opponents and we felt like Alice in Wonderland. We had an information pack for these people because no one knew who we were. The people of Spartak Moscow didn’t even know in which country Nijmegen was. Isn’t that great?”

Straight after the draw, club officials traveled to Moscow, Zagreb and the other away venues to check hotels, the facilities and all that. “And our stadium needed some minor changes as well. Think logo’s and advertising and all that. Hospitality rooms, press facilities… We pool our resources with Twente now, so we only have to have one sign we can share, hahaha…”

NEC assumes it will gain a profit from this European adventure, based on the tv-contracts. “The game against Tottenham is hot, for instance, but the English TV hasn’t contacted us yet. They have so many English clubs to chose from. We’ll play at 7 pm, so the Dutch tv can broadcast Ajax-HSV straight after us.”

Swart feels that NEC Nijmegen has a lot of goodwill in the whole of The Netherlands. “I can sense that our attractiveness has grown. The performance and results have done this, but coach Mario Been deserves the credit too. He is our figure head. He doesn’t bullshit in the media, he is straight, has humor and his football intentions are very positive. We realize that this is probably a one-off. We won’t get cocky or become arrogant. We will thoroughly enjoy this, but we need to now try to stay at this level. And that’s always twice as hard once you reached a certain level…”