FC Twente

Steve McClaren arrived at De Grolsch Veste with a mid-table Dutch side and left it with the only Eredivisie title FC Twente has ever held, in 2010, followed a year later by the KNVB Beker. The club had needed exactly that after 2003, when its parent company went bankrupt — the trophies were proof the recovery had gone somewhere real, not just survival.

Twente was formed on 1 July 1965, a merger of Enschedese Boys and Sportclub Enschede, and it plays out of Enschede in Overijssel under the name De Tukkers, after the people of the Twente region. De Roodhemden — red shirts — describes the same club, and Trots van het Oosten, pride of the East, describes what it means to the area around it. De Grolsch Veste holds 30,205, all seated.

Before McClaren, the closest Twente had come was 1975, a UEFA Cup final lost to Borussia Mönchengladbach. Two Intertoto Cups, in 1983 and 1995, and three KNVB Bekers across 1977, 2001 and 2011 filled in the rest. Then came Doyen Sports: in 2014 Twente sold economic rights in its players to the investment firm, and when the arrangement surfaced it brought a three-year European ban from the KNVB and a financial crisis that dragged the club under. Bottom of the Eredivisie in 2017/18, Twente dropped into the second tier for the first time in 34 years, won the Eerste Divisie back in 2018/19, and returned to European competition in 2022/23.

Against Heracles Almelo, the Twentse derby, the record runs 28 wins from 47 meetings in Twente's favour. The academy gave the club Luuk de Jong and Wout Weghorst before both moved on, and the shirt has been worn by Hakim Ziyech, Dušan Tadić and Marko Arnautović at various points on their way elsewhere. None of them stayed for a title. McClaren did the once that mattered.