In memoriam: Joop Stoffelen (1921-2005)
27 June: Joop Stoffelen, player of Ajax-1 between 1940
and 1950, has passed away in his town of residence, Lelystad.
Stoffelen, an Ajax great in the mid 20th century, was 84
years old. Almost everyone who knew him described him as
the 'life and soul' of the teams he played in and worked
with. A great Ajacied has left us.
Johannes Hendricus Stoffelen (born Amsterdam, 23 January
1921) started playing football for SEO, a tiny Amsterdam club.
He joined the great Ajax at age fifteen in the mid-1930s, an
era of tremendous success for the Amsterdam
club. Stoffelen needed only a few years to make it to
the Ajax-1 squad, coached by the great Jack Reynolds.
The golden generation of the 1930s was ageing. Stoffelen,
easy to recognize from the stands as he always wore
his glasses when playing, belonged to the
generation that replaced them.
He made his first team début against KFC on 24 March
1940, just over a month before the Nazi invasion of The
Netherlands. Stoffelen had the tremendously difficult job to
replace legendary playmaker Wim Anderiesen, who had just
retired. Stoffelen was as a playmaker (the position known
as 'number four' at Ajax today) for two years, then
surprisingly moved to the position of left winger.
No-one was surprised that Stoffelen soon became captain of
Ajax-1: he was an intelligent, eloquent and witty man (a
typical Amsterdam chatterbox according to some...) and a
true leader on and off the pitch. Stoffelen got to
lift the championship shield of 1947 as Ajax's captain. He
also became a starter in the Dutch national team: in
total he played 12 games for Oranje,
including five as the Dutch captain.
The reason why Stoffelen won 'only' 12 caps for
Holland was the process of professionalisation in Dutch
football after World War Two. Football was a
strictly amateur affair in The Netherlands. Playing for
money was considered depraved in the Calvinist
Dutch society of the late 1940s. In those years an
increasing number of Dutch footballers opted for a
professional career, in many cases in France.
Stoffelen left in 1950: he played his 193rd and last game
for Ajax on 26 November 1950 and moved
to French side Racing Club de Paris. He netted 22 times in
total for the Amsterdam club. The Dutch Football Association
immediately added his name to the blacklist of 'moneygrabbers':
it marked the abrupt end of his career as an international.
Stoffelen wouldn't last long in France. He had short spells
at Racing Club de Paris and Toulouse before returning to The
Netherlands, where he admitted his 'mistake' ("professional
sport is no sport") but was immediately suspended for three
years by the KNVB, as a punishment for his adventures as a pro.
The ban was lifted after one year and Stoffelen finished his
player career at Neerlandia and Blauw Wit.
After his career as a player Joop Stoffelen coached Dutch
amateur clubs such as DCG, De Spartaan and Zuidvogels. He was
also a member of the notoriously exuberant 'Lucky Ajax'
team of ex-players. In 1977 he became the coach of the
team of 'Former Internationals' that plays an annual
demonstration game on New Year's Day against Holland's oldest
football club, Royal HFC from Haarlem. He coached the
'Ex-Internationals' for 25 years and was also a key figure in
the Dutch 'Player of the Year' competition, until he was
diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1992. Last week he
lost his battle against this disease.
Joop Stoffelen played for Ajax-1 with legendary
team-mates such as Rinus Michels, Cor van der Hart, Jany
van der Veen (known as 'the man who discovered Johan
Cruyff') and Bennie Muller. The latter said, after having
heard the news of Stoffelen's death: "Joop was a true mate.
I've had so much fun with him. People just lightened up
whenever he entered the room. He was the life and soul of the
team." (MP)
Sources: Ajax.nl, Het Parool, De Telegraaf
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