Cees van Hasselt

Cornelis Wilhelmus van Hasselt (5 October 1872 – 16 January 1951) was a Dutch footballer and manager, who coached the Netherlands national team from its first unofficial matches in 1901 until 1908.

Playing career
Van Hasselt played for his hometown club Sparta Rotterdam from 1893 to 1905. He was a part-time Sparta player and full-time Rotterdam tailor. Van Hasselt played six times for an early Dutch representative side, playing friendlies against European club teams in the late 19th century.

Unofficial matches (1901–04)
In 1901, the Antwerp football director Frédéric Vanden Abeele personally hired van Hasselt as a last resort attempt to assemble a Dutch team that could play against a Belgium squad for the Coupe Vanden Abeele. The ones who took the initiative to play this match against Belgium were Van Hasselt and his friend Jirris, the captain of Rotterdam club side Celeritas, a club from a third-level competition, and this squad was then strengthened by three players from another Rotterdam club, Olympia, which was also a third-level side. The Dutch unsurprisingly lost 0–8 to the much more superior Belgian team, but since only players from Rotterdam were part of the Netherlands national team, and since the match was not yet played under the auspices of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB), it is considered unofficial.

Van Hasselt then organized a further three unofficial friendly games against Belgium, but as a result of the games not being sanctioned by the KNVB, only players from the second division were available to Van Hasselt, so Belgium also won those three editions, although with more leveled scores (1–0, 2–1 and 6–4).

Official matches (1905–08)
In 1904, the KNVB became a founding member of FIFA. On 30 April 1905, the Netherlands played their first official international game, beating Belgium 4–1 in Antwerp, Belgium. Van Hasselt would manage the Netherlands national team for ten more games, winning five and losing five, including two heavy defeats at the hands of England amateurs, both in 1907, losing the latter 12–2, which still is the heaviest defeat in the history of the Netherlands national team. In his last match against France on 10 May 1908, the Netherlands won 4–1 in Rotterdam, just a few months before the London Olympics.

Ahead of the 1908 Olympic Games in London, the KNVB thought the time had come for an experienced English manager, so Van Hasselt was replaced by Edgar Chadwick. Incidentally, this is also regarded by a number of football experts as the first national coach, since they see Van Hasselt as more of a benevolent amateur than a real coach.

Later life
In addition to his activities in sports, Van Hasselt was also active in all kinds of other fields. After the First World War, he started the art dealership Huize van Hasselt together with his son Johannes Hendrikus. They organized the first exhibition of the progressive Rotterdam artist group De Branding and also paid a lot of attention to modern German art. In preparation for the 1937 World Jamboree in the Netherlands, Van Hasselt was responsible for renting out the spaces for shops and restaurants on the market square. Before the Second World War, Van Hasselt was also the organizer of the large flower exhibition Prima Vera, which took place in the Nenijto hall, and attracted thousands of visitors to Rotterdam. In 1938, the seventh edition of the flower exhibition was officially opened by Minister of Economic Affairs Max Steenberghe.

Cees van Hasselt died from the consequences of a stomach haemorrhage. He was buried in the Crooswijk General Cemetery. In 1999, a street in Rotterdam was named after him, the Kees van Hasseltstraat in the new housing estate in Terbregge.