Hércules CF

In the second round of the 2023–24 KNVB Beker, an amateur side from Utrecht beat Ajax 3–2. The reward was a Round of 16 tie with SC Cambuur, which ended the run. René van der Kooij, the manager that night, left soon after for Rijnsburgse Boys in the Tweede Divisie.

The club had been in Utrecht a long time by then — founded on 22 April 1882, which places it among the oldest football clubs in the Netherlands. It plays at Sportpark Voordorp, where roughly 1,700 can watch, in marine blue and white stripes with black shorts.

Wout Buitenweg played here between 1924 and 1936 and went on to the Netherlands national team; two other internationals came through in the same era. Tim Pieters left the Hercules youth setup for FC Utrecht's academy in 2014 and later came back. Shanon Carmelia, a Curaçao international, arrived in 2022 after NEC Nijmegen.

Promotion to the Topklasse came in 2014, and the competition kept the club after it was renamed the Derde Divisie. Three times — in 2021–22, 2022–23 and 2023–24 — Hercules reached the promotion playoffs for the Tweede Divisie, and three times went out in the early rounds.

The fixture that matters most is against SV Kampong, the other Utrecht amateur club, played as the Utrechtse derby. The two also meet at cricket, which gives the rivalry a second season each year. Matches with Jong FC Utrecht are billed locally as a derby too, but they tend to be friendlies.