Google translation:

Marjolein (31) has lived for football from an early age. But finding a team where she feels welcome, and where her participation does not go against the rules of the KNVB, is not easy.

The alarm clock of Marjolein Schepers (31) goes off every morning, except on Sunday, at three o'clock. An hour later she is standing in the bakery where the facade still bears the boy's name she was given when she was born. Customers are now used to “the new Marjolein”. Or actually: the Marjolein she always was, but from whom she thought she had to hide it for a long time. Two years ago she went into transition and finally that coveted F came in her passport. In the store she handed out birth announcements.

That year she was also registered as a woman at the KNVB. It was the icing on the cake: football is everything for Marjolein. She has been on the field since she was a little girl. Preferably right of center, but being able to play at all is already wonderful. The sport keeps her going, she says herself. But finding a team where she feels welcome and where her participation does not go against the rules of the KNVB is not easy.

'Last spring I had the best time of my life', she recalls. After a difficult time at the club in her hometown of Westerbork, she found a connection with a girls' team in Lisse, 200 kilometers away. The fact that she was in the car for up to five hours to train for an hour and a half was no problem. “I was finally accepted by my teammates. I joined in.' In Lisse, for the first time, she didn't have to change in a separate room, but was welcome in the ladies' dressing room: 'The best gift I could get.'

But now Marjolein has not played football for sixteen weeks. Not only because she has a lot of pain in her hips - possibly a result of the administration of female hormones - but mainly because the KNVB does not allow her to play in a team that otherwise only consists of girls younger than 20. I'm 31 years old, but I don't feel that way. I'm full of hormones and I feel like a fifteen year old girl. The KNVB is afraid that I am too strong to play with and against young girls. That's not the case, and you can't judge that from a chair in Zeist either.'

And so Marjolein invited the football association in a letter to come and have a look at a training session. 'You will see that the happiest girl in the world is playing a nice game of football with her team.'

'Of course I should have come out with this much sooner, but if you live in a village in Drenthe, that's the last thing you do' In that same letter, she wrote to understand that it can be confusing to an outsider that the age on her passport is different from the age she identifies with. 'I am unlucky to have been born that way. And of course I should have come out with this much sooner, but take it from me: if you live in a village in Drenthe, that's the last thing you do.'

Playing in Lisse's only women's team is not an option for Marjolein for the time being, for fear of not feeling out of place there. 'Just the thought creates a lot of tension. I'm just not that far yet. I have not gone through my natural development as it happens with cis women. I need time to develop further as a woman.'

Football is survival She experiences not playing football as torture. The psychologist who supervises her during her transition said recently that she is 'on the edge of a burn out'. Sport can be an important outlet for people in transition from male to female or vice versa. Sports organization NOC*NSF, in collaboration with Transgender Network Netherlands, drew up a guideline for Gender and sex-diverse people in sports. The core of this guideline is that every person should be able to enjoy the benefits that sport has to offer.

The John Blankenstein Foundation* also emphasizes that having fun in sport should come first. Chairman Karin Blankenstein: 'For Marjolein, football is a bit of survival. She has been fighting a battle in her body for years, and now she also has to fight this battle to be able to carry out her great hobby.'

Diversity Checkmark Because this is not about the Premier League. "I'm not a good player," she says. All the more surprising was the surprise when a foreign transfer beckoned last year. Until recently, Marjolein drove an SRV vehicle through Westerbork every Saturday to sell freshly baked croissants and other products. One of those mornings in the moving supermarket, she got a call. 'If I wanted to come and play in Italy! But I don't speak English at all, I've never been outside the Netherlands. For a girl like me, going to Lisse is already quite an undertaking. And I have the bakery. So I didn't do it. And somehow I think they only called me to check their diversity checkbox.'

'If I wanted to come and play in Italy! But I don't speak English at all, I've never been outside the Netherlands' It is the first time that the KNVB has experienced a case like that of Marjolein. Karin Blankenstein says she understands somewhere that the association does not want Marjolein to play with girls who are much younger on the basis of her age. 'I understand that they don't have an immediate solution. But let's sit down together and see what can be done. Maybe there is something that she can at least train with. This is the first case for the KNVB, but similar cases will follow.'