NEC Nijmegen

Three young men from Nijmegen's Benedenstad tried to sign up with Quick 1888, the city's established club, and were turned away. Guus Lodestijn, Antoon Kuypers and Wouter van Lent went home and started a side of their own instead, drawn from the lower town Quick had no interest in. A second club, NVV Nijmegen, grew out of players who had since fallen out with Quick, and on 1 April 1910 the two merged into Nijmegen Eendracht Combinatie — NEC. The founding meeting, under the original Eendracht name, had taken place a decade earlier, on 15 November 1900.

The club stayed amateur through its early decades, turned professional only in 1954, and did not reach the Eredivisie until 1967. Since 1945 it has played at the Goffertstadion, built in 1939 and now holding 12,650.

Red, green and black make up the shirt, and the nickname De Superkrenten — the super raisins — has stuck regardless of form. Guus Hiddink wore that shirt before he went on to manage elsewhere, and Frans Thijssen, who came through at NEC, was part of the Netherlands side beaten in the final of the 1980 European Championship.

Nothing marks NEC's history quite like its record in the national cup. The club reached the final in 1973, 1983, 1994, 2000, 2024 and again in 2026, and lost every time. Its only silverware sits a level down: two Eerste Divisie titles, in 1974/75 and 2014/15, from a division the club has spent much of its history bouncing in and out of. Vitesse Arnhem remain the closest rival, in the fixture known as the Gelderse derby.

Six cup finals. Not one of them won.