Eddy de Neve

Eddy de Neve (1905)

Eduard Karel Alexander de Neve (born January 2, 1885 in Batavia (today: Jakarta ), † August 30, 1943 ) was a Dutch football player . De Neve was part of the national football team that played for the first international match in the history of Dutch football on April 30, 1905 in Antwerp . In total, he played three international matches between 1905 and 1906, scoring six goals.

De Neve was born in the Dutch East Indies colony of Eduard Karel Alexander de Neve, a major in the Royal Dutch Indian Army , and Johanna Christina Fokker . His father died when Eddy de Neve was ten years old.

After returning to the Netherlands with his mother, he began his short football career with the military sports club Velocitas Breda . From there he moved to HBS Den Haag in 1905 . In the very first season in The Hague , he and the team won the Dutch championship .

De Neve went down in the annals of Dutch football as the first center forward of the national team. For the first international match that the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) had agreed, he was appointed to the squad by team leader Kees van Hasselt . On April 30, 1905 the Netherlands met in Antwerp at the stadium Beerschot on Belgium . In front of 800 spectators, De Neve scored 0-1 in the 80th minute. After six minutes later through an own goal by Ben Stom had fallen the compensation, the match went into extra time. Here De Neve became the hero of the game. He scored all three goals to make it 4-1. After the final whistle, the audience's enthusiasm for his performance knew no bounds and they carried him across the field in their arms.

Also in the return leg two weeks later, on May 14, 1905 in Rotterdam , De Neve was one of the driving forces behind the game and with his two goals made a decisive contribution to the 4-0 victory for the Netherlands. The center forward played his third and last international match on May 13, 1906, when the Netherlands lost 3-2 to Belgium.

An injury-prone knee and being called up for military service in the Dutch East Indies ensured that De Neve ended his career as a footballer at the age of 22.

His military career was less glamorous. On July 27, 1909, he was appointed first lieutenant and two months later he was honorably retired from the army. In the same year he lost his brother Gilles when he was eaten by cannibals in western Sumba .

During the following years De Neve worked for various Dutch companies or on plantations . In contrast to his team-mates from the national team, who mostly reached high positions, he hardly managed to advance professionally.

Only privately he seemed lucky at first. On February 1, 1913, he became engaged to Daisy Maud Green, a sister of the famous British dancer Lilly Green , on board the steamship Vondel in the port of Genoa . A year and a half later, on August 14, 1914, they were married in Lubuk Sinapeng . Gilles junior, their only child, was born. After twelve years, however, the marriage fell apart. Daisy Maud moved with their son to live with their mother in The Hague. Eddy de Neve stayed in the Dutch East Indies.

On the occasion of the qualification of the national soccer team of the Dutch East Indies for the soccer world championship in France in 1938 he published in Bandung under the title Koning Voetbal (Eng .: King Soccer) memories of his successes as soccer player and advice to local soccer players.

In 1941, De Neve received news that his son had been killed in service with the Royal Air Force when his Spitfire crashed over Kent . Two years later, on August 30, 1943, De Neve died in a Japanese camp at the age of 58 .