In the archives of the 2013/2014 season, the week leading up to Christmas is defined by a bizarre scheduling quirk: FC Groningen had to face NEC Nijmegen twice at the Euroborg in the span of just three days. While we previously documented the Eredivisie clash on December 22, page 3 of this special KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup) programme from December 19 serves as the tense, high-stakes prequel.
Manager Erwin van de Looi uses his “De Warming Up” column to lay all his cards on the table. The team was in a frustrating slump. He references the painful Away match vs Feyenoord , where the team played well but missed three massive chances and lost 1-0. He also laments the poor performance in the Home match vs ADO Den Haag and the frustrating draws in the Home match vs PEC Zwolle and Home match vs Roda JC . “We haven’t won at home since the Home match vs PSV on October 20,” he admits bluntly.
For Van de Looi, this cup tie wasn’t just about reaching the quarter-finals; it was about psychological survival. “Both duels with NEC determine with what feeling we enter the winter break,” he declares. The pressure was immense. A cup exit followed by a league defeat would have plunged the club into a winter crisis. He demands that his players show the same resilience that NEC had shown the previous weekend when they came back from 2-0 down. It was a call for absolute focus in a knockout environment.
A Look into the Future
We know from the historical ledger how this double-header ended: FC Groningen won the league match 5-2, saving Van de Looi’s Christmas. But this specific cup tie was equally crucial. The lessons learned during this 2013/2014 KNVB Beker campaign—navigating the unique, sudden-death pressure of midweek knockout football—served as the ultimate dress rehearsal. Exactly one year later, Van de Looi and this core group of players would use that exact cup experience to march all the way to De Kuip, winning the 2015 KNVB Cup and securing the first major trophy in the club’s history. This cold December night against NEC was where that cup-winning mentality was forged.