X & 3K

L'Équipe Éxcentrique was founded in 2014 in Amsterdam. In the beginning, it was a small group of IBM colleagues playing via Footy Amsterdam. Back then, Footy had pitches all over the city, so every week felt a bit different. You'd show up, play a league match, grab a beer, and go home. That phase lasted about one season. After that first season, the team slowly became a proper friends team. The group expanded with friends from high school in Friesland, Groningen and a few familiar IBM faces.

Many of us also played weekend football at WV-HEDW. We were all around 25–26 years old. Still competitive, but mainly looking for fun. Weeknight football was perfect. That's when L'Équipe Excentrique really became our team. The real founding generation, the guys of the first hour, were: Farshin, Marcel Wielinga, Hylke Haanstra, Jelmer, Raoul, Dolf Noordman, Amin, Pierre Lequin, Thomas Van Pelt. These were the core players who showed upfrom the start, shaped the team, and set the tone — both on and off the pitch.

A lot of the early squad had studied in Groningen and played for The Knickerbockers Team 16, a student football team. That background defined the vibe: relaxed, social, slightly chaotic, but with decent football skills. We often played in black kits, mainly because one of the guys worked at Jack & Jones, which made it easy. No sponsors, no nonsense — just black shirts and go.

Why the name L'Équipe Excentrique ? The name comes from a student football tournament in Maastricht. The Groningen student team once signed up under the name L'Équipe Excentrique, simply because it sounded funny, dramatic, and unnecessarily French. Explaining the name to French teams was half the joke. Legendary team parties If the football was student-style, the team parties definitely were too. Our nights out followed a fairly consistent pattern: a lot of beer, usually ending up deep in the city, often involving strip clubs !

One of the more legendary stories was "2CB-oating ". Together with Farsh — also one of the guys from the early days — we once rented a small boat and went cruising through Amsterdam while fully committing to the concept: boat, substances, chaos. We were never an elite team, and that was never the goal. We played to win, sure — but always with fun first. Still, we had our moments. Over the years, we won the league a few times and had seasons where everything just worked out.