Excelsior v Twente is a meeting of opposite transfer business models

Key takeaways

• Excelsior and Twente reach the same division by different routes: one assembles squads cheaply and short-term, the other develops and sells.
• In the Netherlands, transfer business is shaped as much by the KNVB's financial licensing system as by fees.
• Loans, free transfers and sell-on clauses do the work for smaller Dutch clubs that large fees do for richer ones.
• FIFA's limits on international loans have made loan-reliant squad building harder for clubs of Excelsior's type.

The fixture is best read as a contrast in squad-building models

Google search data from the Netherlands shows interest in Excelsior against Twente, with people searching under both club names and both orders of the fixture. This article has no access to results, line-ups or form. It does not deal with any particular match. It deals with what the fixture shows about how Dutch clubs put squads together.

The argument is this. Excelsior and Twente show two ways of surviving in a league where most clubs export players rather than import them. Excelsior is a small Rotterdam club. It cannot pay large fees or high wages, so it relies on mechanisms that cost little up front: loans, free agents and players released by bigger academies. Twente, from Enschede, is a bigger club. It has generally tried to buy or develop players, raise their value and sell them on. Its transfer income then helps fund the next squad.

Neither model is better in the abstract. They answer different constraints. When the two clubs meet, the useful question is not who has the better players. It is which system of acquiring and keeping players produces a stable squad over time. The sections below set out the evidence for treating the fixture this way, the best objection to it, and what would change the conclusion.

Evidence one: Dutch licensing makes the budget the real constraint

Dutch clubs operate under the KNVB's financial licensing system. Clubs must show the federation that they can meet their obligations for the season ahead. Those that look financially weak face restrictions. This one fact explains a lot about transfer behaviour in the country. A Dutch club usually cannot borrow heavily against future success to fund signings. It has to show that its spending is covered.

For a club with a small commercial base, like Excelsior, this pushes strongly towards low-commitment signings. A loaned player's wages may be partly or fully paid by the parent club, depending on the agreement. A free agent costs no fee, although there may be a signing-on payment and wages. Both reduce the risk the licensing system is designed to police. A long contract and a large fee for one player would tie up a big share of a small budget. If the player failed to settle, the club would carry that cost for years.

Twente faces the same licensing system from a different position. It has a larger stadium, a wider regional fanbase and more commercial income, so it can commit to multi-year contracts and occasional fees. Its financial model, though, depends on selling players at the right moment. If sales fall short, the licensing system feels the gap quickly. Twente's own history includes a period of financial difficulty and restructuring under the federation's oversight. That episode is public record. It shows that a selling-club model carries its own risk when income does not arrive as planned.

So the two clubs answer one regulatory question in different ways. How do you build a competitive squad without breaching what the licensing system will tolerate? Excelsior lowers its commitments. Twente takes on commitments and relies on resale value.

Evidence two: loans and partnerships do the work of transfer fees for small clubs

Excelsior has long cooperated with Feyenoord, the bigger club in the same city. Under arrangements of this kind, young players who are not yet ready for the larger club's first team can play senior football down the road. The parent club gets competitive minutes for its prospects. The smaller club gets players it could never have afforded to buy. This article cannot confirm the exact terms or current status of the arrangement.

How a loan works matters here. The player stays registered to the parent club under his permanent contract. He is temporarily registered with the borrowing club for an agreed period. The loan agreement can set wage contributions and loan fees, and it can include an option or obligation to buy. Some agreements also say whether the player may appear against his parent club. For the borrowing club, a loan is in effect a squad place leased for a season.

The weakness is continuity. A squad built heavily on loans can change a great deal every summer, because the players go back to their parent clubs. The coach rebuilds understanding between players again and again. The club also gains nothing financially if a loaned player develops well, unless the agreement includes a purchase option that the club can afford to use.

FIFA has added a further constraint. Its loan regulations now cap the number of international loans a club can make in and out in a season, and limit loans between the same pair of clubs. These rules are meant to stop large clubs from stockpiling players and lending them out in bulk. One side effect is that smaller clubs have fewer cheap squad places to draw on. For Excelsior-type clubs, this pushes even more of the work onto domestic partnerships and the free-agent market.

Twente uses loans too, but mostly for a different purpose. A development club might lend out young players who are not yet ready for its own first team, or borrow a specialist to fill a short-term gap. For Excelsior, loans can be central to how the squad is built. For Twente, they supplement it.

Evidence three: the selling-club model depends on clauses as much as fees

Twente's model rests on a chain of contract mechanisms that rarely make headlines. If a club buys a player cheaply, it can protect its upside by agreeing a long contract. Then, if the player develops, any buyer has to negotiate a fee rather than wait for the contract to run down. If a club sells a player it developed, it can often negotiate a sell-on clause. That gives it a percentage of a future fee if the player moves again.

On top of this sit FIFA's training compensation and solidarity mechanism. These channel a share of international transfer fees back to the clubs that trained a player in his formative years. For a Dutch club that develops players who later move abroad, these payments can matter. They reward long-term investment in youth even when the club no longer holds the player's registration.

The Bosman ruling sets the hard limit on all of this. Once a contract expires, a player moving within the European Union can join another club without a transfer fee. Training compensation may still apply in some circumstances. A selling club therefore has to sell before a player's contract enters its final phase, or offer a new deal. Otherwise it risks losing the asset for little or nothing. Managing contract length is the main discipline of the model.

Excelsior uses the same Bosman rule from the other side. The free-agent market is where clubs with small budgets can find experienced players without paying a fee. A selling club fears an expiring contract. For a recruiting club like Excelsior, it is a chance to sign a player.

The strongest case against: the models overlap more than they differ

The best objection is that this framing exaggerates the contrast. Almost every Eredivisie club outside the top few sells players when the price is right, uses loans and signs free agents. Excelsior will sell a player if a bigger club pays a fee. Twente will sign a free agent or borrow a player when that suits its needs. On this view, "loan-built club" and "selling club" are not two separate models. They are points on one spectrum, and every club moves along it from season to season depending on its finances, coach and sporting director.

A second objection is that squad-building models explain little about any single fixture. A match is decided by tactics, preparation and many small events. A club that recruited cheaply can beat one that spent more, and the reverse happens often too. Treating a fixture as a contest between business models risks drawing conclusions about structure from what is, in a single match, largely noise.

A third objection is that the comparison may be out of date. Clubs change ownership, restructure, sign new partnerships and change strategy. Without verified, current information on each club's finances and agreements, a description of Excelsior as loan-reliant or Twente as a developer could reflect a reputation rather than present reality. These objections are fair. They limit the argument to a structural reading of the two clubs, not a forecast of anything that happens on the pitch.

What evidence would change the conclusion

Several kinds of evidence would weaken or overturn the argument. Published club accounts showing that Excelsior's recent squads relied mainly on permanent signings with multi-year contracts would undermine the claim that it depends on loans. Accounts showing that Twente earned little from player sales over several seasons, and relied instead on commercial income or owner funding, would undermine the claim that it is a selling club.

Changes to the regulatory environment would also matter. A significant loosening or tightening of FIFA's loan limits, or a change to how the KNVB's licensing system treats wage commitments and transfer receivables, would change the incentives described here. Any formal change to the cooperation between Excelsior and Feyenoord, confirmed by the clubs, would change how Excelsior's recruitment should be read.

Finally, squad-registration data across several windows would test the argument directly. That means how many players joined each club on loan, on free transfers or for fees, and how many left in each way. That kind of evidence, not any single match, is what should settle whether these two clubs really represent different ways of building a squad.

Sources and further reading

• KNVB: published material on the Dutch federation's club licensing system and financial criteria.
• FIFA: Regulations on the Status and Transfer of Players, including the loan provisions, training compensation and the solidarity mechanism.
• Court of Justice of the European Union: the Bosman judgment and its effect on out-of-contract transfers.
• Google Trends (Netherlands): search interest data for the fixture and both club names.