🏏 Sun, 9 Aug 2026 16:45 CEST
SC Heerenveen
vs
FC Twente
4-1-4-1 vs 4-2-3-1
Substitutes
Substitutes
Match Preview
- This is the season opener for both clubs. Sixteen of the league's teams have already completed their round-one fixture — Excelsior sit provisionally top on three points with a goal difference of +4 — so Heerenveen and Twente are the last pair to get started. Heerenveen line up in a 4-1-4-1, Twente in a 4-2-3-1.
- The reunion story of the night belongs to Heerenveen centre-back Maes Willemsen (23, 190cm), a Twente academy graduate who came to Heerenveen via De Graafschap. He starts in the middle of the back four against the club that raised him, and he does so as one of the more studious professionals in the division, combining his career with university study.
- Twente lead the line with 197cm Wout Weghorst (34), a target man who scored 70 goals in 144 games for Wolfsburg and has also played for Manchester United, Besiktas and Ajax. Heerenveen answer with height of their own: 191cm Sam Kersten (28) alongside the 190cm Willemsen. How that aerial duel and the scraps around it are settled will shape the game.
- The midfield shapes do not match cleanly. Heerenveen use 168cm holding midfielder D. Proper (24), an NEC academy product, as a lone anchor, with 189cm Swede Markus Linday (23) ahead of him. Twente field a double pivot of Algeria international Ramiz Zerrouki (28), back on loan from Feyenoord with 108 club appearances behind him, and deep-lying playmaker Thomas van den Belt (25), who joined in 2025 after scoring six times in 40 games on loan at CD Castellon.
- Marko Pjaca gives Twente's front three a genuine pedigree: a Croatia international and 2018 World Cup runner-up whose career has taken in Juventus, Schalke, Fiorentina and Torino. He is a right-footer used on the left who likes to drift inside, and Daan Rots (25), a left-footed Twente academy graduate, does the same thing from the opposite flank. Heerenveen's central defenders will be pulled into a lot of one-v-one duels.
- Heerenveen's attack runs through striker Dylan Vente (27), a Feyenoord academy product who made his Champions League debut against Manchester City before spells at Roda JC and Hibernian in Scotland. Supply comes from No.10 Ringo Meerveld (23), an attacking midfielder signed from Willem II, and Denmark's Jacob Trenskow (25), a quick right winger bought from Kalmar FF for a reported 1.5 million euros.
- The full-back selections are a study in contrasts. Heerenveen have Greece international Vasilios Zagaritis (25) on the left, a left-footed crosser who won promotion from Serie B with Parma, and 19-year-old Mats Egbring on the right, a former Vitesse youngster who made his Eredivisie debut at 16. Twente counter with left-footed Dane Aske Adelgaard (22), who loves to join the attack, and Bart van Rooij (25, 174cm), who spent more than five Eredivisie seasons at NEC.
- There are 16 years between the two goalkeepers. Twente trust 198cm, 103kg Lars Unnerstall (36), first choice since arriving in 2021 after a career that began in the Schalke academy and included PSV. Heerenveen start 20-year-old Bernd Klaverboer, an academy graduate and Netherlands U21 keeper who took the No.1 shirt in September 2025 — with 203cm Andries Noppert (32), the Netherlands' first-choice keeper at the 2022 World Cup, sitting behind him on the bench.
- Twente's bench includes a former Heerenveen player in Sam Lammers (29). The 189cm left-footed striker came through the PSV academy and has played for Atalanta, Eintracht Frankfurt and Rangers before rebuilding his form with 11 goals on loan at FC Utrecht and joining Twente in 2024. Morocco's Younes Taha (23), another left-footed winger who cuts in from the right, is also held in reserve.