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Heracles Almelo

ARTIFICIAL PITCH, REAL CLUB

Many Eredivisie players were not overly enthusiastic when Heracles Almelo clinched the First Division championship in May 2005. The reason: the Almelo club were one of the first clubs at the top flight of a European football league to play their home games on an artificial pitch. 'Fake' grass... It's the future, by all accounts, but for now players and fans seem to hate the stuff. Ajax's January 2004 friendly at Heracles' Polman Stadium was the Amsterdammers' first ever competitive game on artificial grass and the players were unanimous in their judgement: absolutely terrible.

Apart from 'that plastic stuff', however, one can only be delighted by the fact that Heracles Almelo are back in the Eredivisie (and actually survived their first, hard seasons). Founded in 1903, the club has a long and great history that Holland's younger football fans know too little about: Heracles won two Dutch championships, the first one long before the Second World War (1927) and the second one right in the middle of it (1941). Named after Heracles (a.k.a. Hercules), the ancient Greek warrior, the club still play in their classic 'zebra shirts': black and white, vertically striped, just like Juventus.


Heracles, Dutch champions of 1927. [Photo: Heracles Almelo.nl]

Heracles were once a major force in Dutch football, but their role in 'modern' Dutch football was (and still is) a modest one. Heracles' current spell in the Eredivisie is only their third since the start of the professional Eredivisie in 1956, and they will hope that they can stay up a bit longer than the previous two times: they lasted four seasons from 1962 to 1966, and then there was a single season in 1985-1986. The only thing that eased the pain during that brief, catastrophic Eredivisie campaign of the mid-80s was a spectacular 0-3 away win in Enschede, against arch-enemies and 'next door neighbours' FC Twente.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of remarkable Heracles history to tell about. The First Division championship of 1962, for example, was clinched thanks to the club's magnificent duo of strikers: Joop Schuman (47 goals in one season, an all-time record in Dutch football) and Steve Mokone, nicknamed the 'Black Meteor'. Mokone, a South African, was the very first black player in Dutch football, years before the arrival of the first 'Surinamese wave'. He was an exotic attraction in 1950s The Netherlands. Dutch sports journalist Tom Egbers of Studio Sport, a life-long Heracles supporter, used to watch Mokone from the famous wooden main stand of Heracles' old ground on Bornsestraat, which the club left for new Polman Stadium in 1999. Egbers told the story of Mokone's life in his superb book De Zwarte Meteoor ('The Black Meteor').


Heracles in 1958, with 'The Black Meteor', Steve Mokone. [Photo: Heracles Almelo.nl]

Today, both Schuman and Mokone have a stand of Polman Stadium named after them. A third stand was named after Folkert Velten, yet another flabbergastingly productive Heracles striker, who almost singlehandedly brought the crisis of the 1980s to an end. This was in the relative anonymity of the First Division, but what made Velten a cult figure all over the country was the fact that he was a devoted Calvinist who refused to play on Sundays. Luckily, most First Division sides play on Friday or Saturday evenings. Promotion to the Eredivisie would have been a serious dilemma for Velten...


Those were the days: the old, wooden main stand of Bornsestraat stadium. [Photo: Heracles Almelo.nl]

Heracles' two most famous clashes with Ajax were the two cup games for which Ajax came to Almelo in 1974 and 1996. Remarkably, on both occasions Ajax visited the modest First Division club as the reigning world champions, but both times Heracles caused a tremendous upset by knocking the Amsterdammers out of the cup. In December 1974 two goals in extra time made Bornsestraat stadium go mad: 4-2. In 1996, when Louis van Gaal's unbeatable (?) team visited Almelo, Heracles did it again: 1-0.


Heracles captain Nico-Jan Hoogma lifts the First Division championship
shield, May 2005. [Photo: Heracles Almelo.nl]

Now the proud Almelo side are back in the Eredivisie. Nice detail: when promotion was secured in May 2005, Heracles received the championship shield from KNVB official Henk Kesler, who used to be general manager of rivals FC Twente back in the 1980s. Kesler outraged the Heracles fans at the time by saying that the club no longer had the right to exist independently, and that Heracles would have to accept a merger with Twente if they wanted to survive. The merger happened to a certain extent (Twente and Heracles integrated their youth systems, so that their youth teams in younger age categories play under the name of Twente/Heracles), but otherwise the Almelo club wished to continue independently. On 20 May 2005 Henk Kesler returned to Almelo to present them the First Division championship shield. He was enough of a gentleman to crack a joke about his 20 year-old remarks. What a sweet moment it was. (MP)

HERACLES ALMELO FACTS

Founded: 03 May 1903 as Heracles. Named changed into SC Heracles '74 on 01 July 1974 and into Heracles Almelo on 01 July 1998.
City: Almelo
Stadium: Polman Stadium
Capacity: 8,500
Official website: http://www.heraclesalmelo.nl/
Honors:

  • Dutch champions: 1927, 1941

Recent History: Ajax vs Heracles Almelo