Eredivisie side Vitesse Arnhem have had their professional licence revoked, and it looks like curtains for the Netherlands’ second-oldest football club.
The Dutch side just have the tiniest of appeal chances left after having their licence rejected by the football association [KNVB] and the news met with tears but unsurprised resignation across the country.
Best known in England for housing many of Chelsea’s best youth team players during the 2010s, it only became clear last year via the leaked Cyprus Confidential files how former Blues owner Roman Abramovich was involved.
Floods of future Chelsea stars were loaned out to Vitesse, with regulars like Nemanja Matic and Mason Mount helping them into the Europa League.
Yet Vitesse will now be remembered as another footballing Icarus, flying too close to the sun only to pay the most deadly of consequences.
Explaining how we got here in 2025, Dutch author and columnist at leading outlet AD, Sjoerd Mossou, told talkSPORT: “In 2010, Vitesse was bought by a foreign owner, but behind them were Russian investors.
“With Abramovich as well, they denied it, but in the end, there was an Abramovich link as well.
“Vitesse got Russian owners, but there were no rules in Holland back then about ownership or foreign ownerships.
“About ten years ago they [the clubs and league] made new rules to get some control on the ownerships, to have a strict view on how reliable owners are.
“Vitesse in 2022, after the war between Ukraine and Russia, they got rid of the Russian owners.
“They cleared the debt, which was back to basics, like giving the club back to the former members, to the local members.”
The practice of members owning the club is actually standard in the Netherlands, much like in Germany’s Bundesliga, but Vitesse, a moderately sized mid-table club, didn’t want to go back to being normal.
With a taste of foreign investment as the first Dutch side to welcome it, fans and executives wanted another bite of the cherry to keep their European travails and dreams of challenging the likes of Ajax and PSV alive.
Along came American Colby Perry and his Common Group, with Mossou picking up the story from 2022.
“He was screened by the license panel of the KNVB and he seemed to be not reliable. But it took about two years to sort all those things out.
“They thought they had a new owner, but he wasn’t approved by the KNVB. So they had to find another owner, and another one, and another one.
“So they just didn’t have the time to find a reliable one after they gave the club to this Colby Perry guy and now there’s no solution left.
“I think the decision in 2022 was to desperately try to keep the club on a European football level. I think that was the wrong decision in every way.
“Vitesse is historically a mid-table club. A nice club, but just a regular Dutch club. And because of the Russian money, they performed really well. They got great players. They played on European level quite a few times. So they started to believe that they were a big club.
“And when they got the chance to get a new owner, they desperately looked for an owner who wanted to keep them on the same level.
“They could have started all over again with some local owners, spending a little bit less money, and then start all over again. But they chose otherwise with desperate results, terrible results. It seems that it’s the first major club in Holland that’s going to disappear.”
European clubs dissolving is certainly nothing new at all, and in Italy it’s now become commonplace with Parma and Palermo both back in Serie A as phoenix sides.
In the Netherlands, though, this is a first, and it’s not only untested ground, but ground without any foundations below it.
Mossou explained: “We don’t have an open football pyramid. We have two professional leagues, and below that’s amateur football. And you cannot get promoted or relegated in between.
“That’s crucial in this story, because Rangers, they started all over again in the Scottish fourth division and they got promoted in a few years and they were back in the Scottish Premiership. That’s impossible in Holland.
“You cannot get promoted from the amateur level to pro level. You need to apply for it, and it takes years.
“Vitesse will see the judge this week, then they need to start all over again on amateur level.
“We’re not sure on which level. Could be the lowest level, could be in between. But they need to get promoted a few times.
“When they’ve reached the highest amateur level, they need to apply for a new pro licence, which could take about two and a half years. It’s a bit comparable to AFC Wimbledon in a certain way.”
But what of Abramovich and Chelsea’s involvement? The highs were high, but this low couldn’t possibly be lower.
“It was very new back then. So in the first few years, it was not very clear,” Mossou reflected.
“After that, it was presented just as an agreement between two clubs to send some players on loan.
“The media investigated a lot in those years and a few things were made clear. The Russian connection was clear.
“There were always rumors about Abramovich, of course, but it was never proven, and it only got proven only a few years ago because of the leaks.”
Are there any positives? Well not really, aside from the fact that Vitesse can serve as a warning to the rest of the Netherlands, and perhaps even Europe and the world.
Fellow Dutch mid table side NAC Breda were the subject of a City Group takeover in 2022, but fans successfully protested it due to the fear of being another Vitesse.
The fear was based on facts too in Mossou’s eyes.
He explained: “The big difference between Holland and England is quite simple. You cannot make money with a Dutch football club. You’re always going to lose money as long as you’re outside of the top five.
“So with all clubs outside of the top five, it’s impossible to make money. We don’t have a Premier League. It’s impossible to reach the Champions League in Holland because Ajax and Feyenoord and PSV are way stronger. So you cannot make money with Dutch football clubs.
“We lost a few small clubs, really small clubs, but they were tiny. And Vitesse is a regular club, which makes it very sad. And it’s a sad day for Dutch football.
“Foreign owners don’t buy Dutch football clubs to make money out of them. They have different reasons. In my opinion, Dutch fans need to be very sceptical about that.
“Why should a foreign owner buy a Dutch football club? It’s only to look for… It’s dodgy beforehand because there’s no reason to do it. There’s no business reason to buy a Dutch football club.”
All of this comes during a season that should have been positive for Dutch football, with PSV and Feyenoord both making it through to the last 16 of the Champions League, boosting their UEFA rankings and hopes of leapfrogging France into the top five.
But, as is perhaps unsurprising, there’s another horror story taking place with ADO Den Haag who followed Vitesse in the foreign ownership route and are currently on a worrying downward spiral with coaches and executives leaving en masse after another failed promotion bid
There’s also another message too – the Premier League might be the biggest and best in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone, not least in the Netherlands.
“We have mostly local owners or local fans, they have much more feeling with clubs,” Mossou explained.
“That’s the general opinion – it’s more safe to keep it close to the region, to keep it close to the locals.
“That’s the opinion more and more now, and Vitesse are now the example of how it should not be done”