Willem van Hanegem

Van Hanegem was born on 20 February 1944 in Breskens, the son of Lo van Hanegem (1905-1944) and Anna van Grol. During an Allied bombing raid on Breskens on 11 September 1944, his father Lo, brother Isaac and his sister were killed. After the war, he moved to Utrecht with his mother.

During a training session of Velox, he stood on the sidelines and every ball that went wide of the goal, he shot back so accurately that coach Daan van Beek asked him to come and play for the club. Six months later, he played in the club's first team.

 

Van Hanegem spent six years at Velox, playing 109 games and scoring 39 goals. After six years with Velox, Van Hanegem moved from Utrecht to Rotterdam, where he played for Xerxes, which had just won promotion at the Eredivisie. In the 1967-68 season, Van Hanegem was the second best top scorer in the Eredivisie, scoring 26 goals.

Ajax was interested in Van Hanegem's services, but coach Rinus Michels refused to buy the player, believing that he was not suited for "modern football" due to his lack of pace and "one-dimensional" playing style. Van Hanegem would instead sign for Ajax's rivals Feyenoord, where he would enjoy his greatest successes, and play alongside players such as Wim Jansen, Franz Hasil, Coen Moulijn, Ove Kindvall, Ruud Geels, Theo Laseroms, Rinus Israël, Theo de Jong, Johan Boskamp and Wim Rijsbergen. He also established a father-son relationship with club coach Ernst Happel. With Van Hanegem's playmaking skills, Feyenoord won three Eredivisie titles, an European Cup and an International Cup in 1970 and a UEFA Cup in 1974.

Van Hanegem left Feyenoord in 1976 to join AZ Alkmaar, where he played for three seasons alongside striker Kees Kist and midfielders Peter Arntz and Jan Peters, winning the KNVB Cup in 1978. He had a brief stint with Chicago Sting in 1979, until he returned to the Netherlands the same year to play for FC Utrecht (a merger of clubs VV DOS, USV Elinkwijk and Velox, the club that he played for in his younger years.). He returned to Feyenoord in 1981, playing for two seasons.

Van Hanegem played 52 times for the Dutch national team, scoring six goals in total. At the 1974 World Cup, he formed a formidable midfield with fellow Feyenoord teammate Wim Jansen and Ajax midfielder Johan Neeskens. He also played in the UEFA Euro 1976, winning a bronze medal. He was initially selected to play for the Netherlands in the 1978 FIFA World Cup, but after his AZ teammate Hugo Hovenkamp suffered a knee injury, Van Hanegem declined to go. He last played for the national team in 1979.

Van Hanegem is widely considered one of the greatest Dutch players of all time, and by some as one of the finest midfielders in football history. Capable of playing as an attacking, central and defensive midfielder, Van Hanegem was renowned for his tactical insight and was well known for his fantastic passing range and his ability with the ball at his feet. Both his way of sprinting (he had bandy legs), and his skill to give the ball a curve (achieved by striking the ball with the outside of his left foot) gave him the nickname De Kromme (The Crooked). Whilst being known for being a playmaker, he was capable of scoring goals (being the second top scorer in the 1967-68 season of the Eredivisie) and also excel in defensive duties such as breaking up plays through tackles. In some occasions, Van Hanegem played as a sweeper whenever his fellow Feyenoord teammate Rinus Israel was injured, and would later play the same role in his last years at Feyenoord. Van Hanegem was also known for his leadership skills, workrate and tenacity. His primary weakness was his lack of pace.^[4]

After retiring as a player, Van Hanegem joined Feyenoord as assistant manager in 1983 and stayed in the post until 1986. He then joined FC Utrecht as assistant, before moving to FC Wageningen. He returned to Feyenoord as manager in 1992, winning the league in 1993 and the Dutch Cup in 1994 and 1995.

In 1995, he had a spell as manager with Saudi Arabian club Al-Hilal, then took the post at AZ'67 in 1997. He joined Sparta Rotterdam in 2001. His stay was short-lived, and afterwards he became assistant manager of the Dutch national side. He was appointed manager of FC Utrecht in July 2007 and was fired on 23 December 2008.

Van Hanegem was known for rough, passionate play against German sides (before the 1974 final, he exhorted the Dutch side to "stuff the Germans").^[5] "I don't like Germans. Everytime I played against German players, I had a problem because of the war."^[6] His hatred was summed up after the 1974 final, "The important thing was to beat the Germans by any score, as long as we humiliated them. They murdered my father, sister and two brothers. I am full of angst. I hate them." After the game (with Germany winning 2–1) Van Hanegem was the only Dutch player that left the field in tears.^[7] In later years, however, Van Hanegem used a more conciliatory tone, when commenting on the war.

He married Truus de Nijs in 1963 and divorced her in 1983. Willem's son, Willem van Hanegem Jr., is an international electronic dance music artist and DJ. Together with Ward van der Harst, he forms the DJ/producer duo W&W. His other son, Gert van Hanegem, played football professionally at FC Utrecht. Van Hanegem was diagnosed with prostate cancer in January 2018, but recovered in March. He received the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2024.^[8]

 

Feyenoord

• Eredivisie: 1968–69, 1970–71, 1973–74
• KNVB Cup: 1968–69
• European Cup: 1969–70
• Intercontinental Cup: 1970
• UEFA Cup: 1973–74

AZ'67

• KNVB Cup: 1977–78

Netherlands

• FIFA World Cup: runner-up 1974
• European Football Championship: third place 1976
• Tournoi de Paris: 1978^[9]

Individual

• Dutch Footballer of the Year: 1971^[10]

Feyenoord

• Eredivisie: 1992–93
• KNVB Cup: 1993–94, 1994–95

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Willem van Hanegem.

• Statistics
• Willem van Hanegem at Wereld van Oranje (archived) (in Dutch)