Coach Roger Schouwenaar selects national team of newcomers and Dutch players

The Dutch national team is going for the title in Italy. - Foto: KNVB Media

Eleven players, eight nationalities, and all wearing the same orange jersey. New national team coach Roger Schouwenaar has finalized his roster for the Unity EURO Cup. In October, he will travel to Italy with a team of newcomers and Dutch players. There, the Dutch national team will face off against 21 other European teams.

The goals for Italy are ambitious: the Dutch national team is going for the title. But in order to make a serious run at it, Schouwenaar first faces another challenge. He must quickly forge a single team out of eleven players with different backgrounds, languages, talents, and stories. Schouwenaar selected men and women with roots in Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Azerbaijan, and the Netherlands. They will represent the Dutch national team at the UEFA European Championship and the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

Schouwenaar aims for the team and the title

As a former professional soccer player, Schouwenaar knows how important a good team is. He played for AZ, FC Den Bosch, and Vitesse, among others, and represented the Netherlands at various levels. But for his new role, he’s drawing just as much from the period following his soccer career. As an instructor for KNVB WorldCoaches, he traveled to more than twenty countries, where he trained young people in vulnerable areas or situations to become coaches. There, he learned how to bring people from different backgrounds together.

He’ll be able to put that experience to good use in the coming months. After all, how do you quickly build a team of players who speak different languages, come from different backgrounds, and barely know one another? “Building a team is a process. You have to get to know one another, build trust, and foster commitment. Ultimately, everyone has to want the same thing, and we have to work together toward the same goal.”

Sometimes that requires more than just good training. As a WorldCoaches instructor, Schouwenaar learned to understand different cultures. “In some countries, people are so polite that they always say yes. Then you have to learn to ask follow-up questions to find out what they really think. When you work with different cultures, you really have to connect with them.”

What soccer can create

What helps is that the players have at least one thing in common: their love of soccer. Schouwenaar: “Soccer brings people together, regardless of their background, culture, or profession. Just look—no matter where you go in the world, people are playing soccer everywhere.”

The Unity Cup coach saw firsthand in Lebanon what playing soccer together can achieve. “There, Syrians, Lebanese, and Palestinians worked together. At first, some didn’t even want to shake hands. By the end, they were best friends. Those are the most beautiful transformations that soccer can bring about.” He’s bringing that experience with him to the Unity EURO Cup. Because no matter how different their paths to the Netherlands may have been, the same mission awaits everyone on the field: to perform together for the Dutch national team.

WorldCoaches

Over the coming months, the Dutch team will be training at the KNVB Campus in Zeist in preparation for the tournament. Schouwenaar isn’t leading the team alone. He’s getting help from assistant coach Omar, who took the WorldCoaches course last year with residents in Ter Apel.

For Omar, that training will immediately lead to a special next step: in October, he’ll be on the sidelines alongside Schouwenaar at the Unity EURO Cup. There, their first major joint challenge awaits: turning eleven players into one “Oranje” team and then bringing home the European title.