Our champion and cup-winning men's football team signed 23-year-old Dutch defender Mats Knoester on Thursday! Our newest player comes from the Netherlands, Heracles Almelo. Below we introduce the centre-back, who has also been playing for the youth national team!

Biography

Mats Knoester was born on 19 November 1998 in Alphen aan den Rijn, a Dutch town of 110,000 inhabitants. He started playing football for the local club as a young boy, but joined former European Champion Clubs' Cup winners Feyenoord's youth team in the summer of 2005. He grew up with the Rotterdam club and was part of the U17 championship-winning side in 2014. He was then promoted to the U19s in 2015 and two years later, in 2017, to the senior side.

Finally, he did not make his debut for Feyenoord's first team, who reached this year's Conference League final, and played 66 games for the U19 and U21 youth teams between 2017 and 2019. From there he left for Heracles Almelo in January 2019.

Knoester only got a chance to play in three top-flight matches in his first six months with Heracles, but from the next campaign in 2019/2020 he became a regular for the club, which he served in 92 matches in total. In the 2021/2022 season, he was counted on to captain the team on several occasions in his previous position.

In parallel to his club career, Mats Knoester also toured the Dutch national teams, playing for every junior team from U15 to U20.

Interestingly for Knoester, two of his brothers are also involved in football: Casper Knoester is a midfielder for lower division club ARC (Mats Knoester's hometown club) and Jop Knoester is a player agent.