About Go Ahead Eagles

Go Ahead Eagles is a football club from Deventer, the Netherlands, currently playing in the Jupiler League, which is the second highest professional football league in the Netherlands. The club's home base is called De Adelaarshorst (literally translated the Eagles Nest). This stadium was opened in 1920. To date, the club has won no major trophies in professional football, although they have produced several international players over the years, such as Marc Overmars, Paul Bosvelt, Jan Kromkamp, Victor Sikora and Demy de Zeeuw, whilst providing Henk Ten Cate with his first taste of management. Also Go Ahead managed to play in the European Cup Winners tournament once (against Celtic Glasgow in 1965) as runner-up of the previous dutch cupfinal (won by Feyenoord Rotterdam). GA Eagles also played several times in the Intertoto Cup torunament.

A brief club history

The footballclub Go Ahead Eagles was founded in Deventer in 1902 initially as Be Quick. However, soon they had to change name (orders from the Dutch Football Association), and Go Ahead was chosen as the new clubname. As an amateur footballclub Go Ahead reached the national top. Apart from a lot of regional (Eastern) championships Go Ahead became national champion in the Netherlands four times, in the years 1917, 1922, 1930 and 1933.

Go Ahead started playing professional football in the lowest of the lowest : the Second Division (which doesn't exist anymore nowadays, however as of next season 2010/2011 a semi-professional league caleld "Topklasse" will be introduced, meaning that for the first time in years professional clubs can relegate from the Jupiler League at the end of the current season 2009/2010). In 1956/1957 Go Ahead finished as 13th in the 2nd Division A and left just two other clubs behind: Zwartemeer and Enschedese Boys. After this difficult first professional season things would only go better and better, resulting in promotion to the First Division at the end of the third season. Goalscorers in those days: Mos, Butter Groninger and Van Brussel.

Succes also followed whilst playing in the First Division and after four seasons and 235 goals promotion to the Premier League was realized.(1963).

The succes-story continued initially at Premier League level. But what one didn't know by then was that one had reached the top performance (up till and including now) after 5 seasons with a 3rd place in the final table ranking of the 1967-1968 season..In 1965 Go Ahead was allowed to play European Cup football, for the first and so far last time, after losing the Cupfinal to champions Feyenoord Rotterdam.They played Celtic Glasgow on the 29th of September 1965. At home they lost 0-6 and in Glasgow the green-whites won by 1-0.

Since the 1st of July 1971 Go Ahead got the extension "Eagles" (an idea of coach Barry Hughes).Go Ahead Eagles (from now on separated from the amateur section) chose to play in purple-white ( like Anderlecht). In the 80s the footballers in Deventer returned to their well-known yellow-red outfit.

In 1973 an "away"-WC qualification match against Iceland was played in Deventer, in the stadium of the Eagles, final result: 1-8 for Holland, goals:Cruyff, Brokamp (both two),Schneider, Van Hanegem and Rene van de Kerkhof. The glory days of Go Ahead Eagles were already over by then. After 1973 the Eagles never reached the top ten in the Netherlands (except for 1979). As a result of the ever growing amount of money pumped in nowadays professional football Go Ahead has slipped down the rankings and after a couple of "near"-relegations they finally did relegate to the first Division after 24 consecutive years Premier League football.

This time the Eagles weren't so succesfull in the First Division. And still they succeeded in promoting back to the Premier League in 1992 with an 11th place in the final First Division ranking, after a lost "promotion-competition"-final and in the end a win over FC The Hague (16th in the final Premier League ranking that season). In Deventer the Eagles beat The Hague by 3-0 and in the Residence they won again by 0-1. A recently published YouTube movie of this decisive goal by Alphons Arts seen on a big screen in the stadium in Deventer gives a nice impression of this glorious day for Go Ahead Eagles fans.

Again the way up was turned over in the way down, leading to the second relegation to the First Division after a disappointing last place in the final Premier Leaugue ranking last season (1995-1996). Still, GA Eagles has not managed to get back in the dutch Premier League. How long the Eagles' First Division stay will take this time? Que sera sera....

But you can check it out with the current First Division table at this website or on Dutch Teletext !

There is a huge statistics section available at this website, if you need any assistance on this feel fere to contact us by email.

About the stadium "De Adelaarshorst"

In the season 1920-1921 Go Ahead started playing football on the ground where it still plays nowadays, later on it would be called the "Eagles-nest".

At first the stadium was reached through an entrance at the "Veenweg", but in the "30s de main entrance was moved to the "Vetkampstraat". In 1924 the first tribune-with-a-roof was built, followed by the headtrbune in 1934 (which was a great art of stadiumbuilding in those days). After the introduction of professional football the stadium finally had only tribunes-with-roof and no open tribunes anymore.