The first few steps onto the pitch at De Kuip were enough for one of the Keylane players to joke that he was ready for a career change. He wasn’t going to. But walking out under the empty stands where Feyenoord and the Dutch national team normally play, the joke felt reasonable to at least some members of the squad.
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On 5 June 2024, seventeen colleagues took part in a corporate football tournament at Feyenoord’s home stadium. Most were from the Rotterdam office, a few from Utrecht. It was a mixed group — engineers, consultants, Keylane Academy members, a senior manager — and the shared trait was less “footballer” and more “willing to try.”
Twenty companies had entered. Five groups, then knockouts. Matches of twenty minutes each. Most teams looked like they had been training for it. Some had brought players who clearly played competitively somewhere else.
Keylane had brought Patrick, who runs marathons.
Patrick can outrun most people over 42 kilometres. Over twenty minutes on a football pitch, against someone who has actually played the game since they were six, the maths works out differently. He was not alone in this. The squad included at least one very committed table-tennis champion — Jurriën van den Brekel, senior Design Engineer and lifelong Feyenoord supporter, who took on the coaching role. Joost Scholtanus from Keylane Academy was one of the few colleagues who genuinely knew what he was doing on the pitch, which was made only slightly awkward by the fact that Joost supports Heerenveen and lives in Groningen. He had come south to represent Keylane at Feyenoord’s stadium. Football does this to people.
Eric Bastiaansen, a senior manager, normally watches Feyenoord from a seat somewhere in the stands. That afternoon he was on the pitch itself, which — depending on who you ask — is either a career highlight or the exact opposite of what a senior manager should be doing on a Tuesday.
The results were honest. No wins across the tournament. One draw. One goal scored, at some point, by someone. The number of goals conceded is not part of this article, on the grounds of dignity.
What the team lacked in tactical shape it made up for in willingness. Colleagues threw themselves at every ball. Sliding tackles on grass they’d never played on before, blocked shots, the goalkeeper going full-stretch for saves that occasionally worked. Nobody who watched them play could reasonably accuse the squad of not caring. If the tournament had been scored on effort per goal conceded, Keylane would have finished near the top.
Between matches, the LED advertising boards around the pitch cycled through sponsor logos. When it was Keylane’s turn, colleagues took photos. A lot of photos. The number of selfies produced that afternoon — squinting up at the Keylane logo, standing on the centre spot, framing the empty stands behind them — is difficult to estimate but almost certainly exceeded the number of passes completed.
Two players, both since sworn to secrecy, took small pieces of the pitch home with them. The identity of these grass thieves is a matter for their own consciences. Feyenoord, if you’re reading this: it was a very small amount.
After the tournament there was a barbecue and a group photo on the pitch, everyone still in kit, some visibly relieved. Somebody who had walked out of the tunnel joking about a career change was, by then, firmly re-committing to the day job.
For Jurriën — a Feyenoord supporter since he was young— coaching his colleagues on that grass was probably the part he’ll remember longest.
Jurriën van den Brekel
For everyone else, it was the mix that stuck. The marathon runner sprinting after strikers. The Heerenveen fan carrying the team’s technical hopes. The senior manager on the pitch instead of in the stands. A Design Engineer running the tactics. Sixteen people who had never played together deciding to take it seriously anyway.
The tournament also had a Keylane content creator on site, a Feyenoord fan who had been hoping for a triumphant story. What he got instead was probably the better one: a team that lost most of its matches and clearly did not mind.
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