Football Season Guide

Sparta Rotterdam have been climbing up to the Eredivisie this summer, along with Go Ahead Eagles, after claiming the championship in the Jupiler League in the season 2015/2016. They created a comfortable gap towards their rivals during the second half of the season, but it took them a while to finally claim the well-deserved league title. Coach Alex Pastoor did a great job to immediately enforce promotion to the Eredivisie in his first full season as the Sparta coach. Pastoor and his team will of course try to maintain their place in the Eredivisie in the upcoming season. If relegation play-offs are necessary, then so be it, but they will be working their socks off to avoid those play-offs and finish the season at least at the 15th place on the league table. Something that usually happens to a club, that has just become champions in the Jupiler League, is that other clubs in the Eredivisie are eager to take over their best players, which makes it hard for the promoted side to avoid relegation. Sparta Rotterdam will be very happy that this has not happened to them (yet). Only two players have left the club. These are striker Johan Voskamp and winger Sherjill MacDonald, who played for Sparta on loan from Westerlo during the previous season. Even though Sparta's best players of the previous season are still on board, the Rotterdam side has added a few players to the squad, in case some others will depart before the transfer window closes. Defenders Bart Vriends, Abdul Bai Kamara and Florian Pinteaux have come over from Go Ahead Eagles, NEC Nijmegen and LB Chateauroux respectively, while midfielders Ivan Calero and Craig Goodwin were taken over from Derby County and Adelaide United respectively. Sparta also managed to sign striker Zakaria El Azzouzi, on loan from Ajax. A very surprising move was the addition of David Mendes da Silva to the squad for the upcoming season. The midfielder made his debut for Sparta in 1999. He played in Rotterdam until 2004 and since then he represented NAC Breda, AZ, Red Bull Salzburg and Panathinaikos until 2015. Mendes da Silva became an assistant coach at the last mentioned club in the previous season and he announced his retirement from professional football, but he decided to continue his career, when Sparta promoted to the Eredivisie. His experience could be very imporant for the Rotterdam side, as they have quite a young squad in general.