Alessandro Damen (born 17 May 1990) is a Dutch former professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby lea ...

who played as a

goalkeeper In many team sports that involve scoring goal (sport), goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or i ...

Club career

Damen joined

Excelsior Excelsior may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature and poetry * "Excelsior" (Longfellow), an 1841 poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow * "Excelsior", an 1877 picture book in verse by Bret Harte, published as an advertisement for the Sa ...

from amateur side

De Meern De Meern () is an urbanized village in the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is a part of the municipality of Utrecht, and is located at 6 km west of the inner city of this town. Before 2001 the villages De Meern, Vleuten and Haarzuilens formed a ...

in 2014, after being scouted by

Marinus Dijkhuizen Marinus Dijkhuizen (born 4 January 1972) is a Dutch professional football manager and former player who is head coach of club De Graafschap. As a player, Dijkhuizen had notable spells as a forward in his native Netherlands with Excelsior, Ca ...

. He had a terrible start to his stint at the club, and was ruled out for successive seasons after suffering serious injuries on both knees. After returning to the pitch in August 2017, he suffered another knee injury on 26 August 2017 in a game against

Heracles Almelo Heracles Almelo is a Dutch professional football club based in Almelo, founded in 1903. The club has won the Dutch national title twice, in 1927 and 1941. Heracles won the Eerste Divisie title during the 2004–05 season, gaining promotion to t ...

, ruling him out for the rest of the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

. On 4 August 2021, he signed with

for the 2021–22 season. On 31 January 2022, Damen was loaned to

ADO Den Haag Alles Door Oefening Den Haag (), commonly known by the abbreviated name ADO Den Haag (), is a Dutch association football club from the city of The Hague. They play in the Eerste Divisie, the second tier of Dutch football, following relegation ...

. On 2 June 2022, Damen signed with

Tweede Divisie Tweede Divisie (; ) is the highest amateur (and historically the lowest professional) football league in the Netherlands. It was established in 1956, together with the Eredivisie and the Eerste Divisie. Between 1956 and 1960 and between 1962 and 19 ...

club

Spakenburg Spakenburg is a Netherlands, Dutch village north of Bunschoten. Spakenburg is formally called Bunschoten-Spakenburg since its fusion with Bunschoten. The village lies south of the IJsselmeer in the municipality Bunschoten, Utrecht province, Utrec ...

. On 9 January 2024, Damen announced his retirement from football at the end of the 2023–24 season to focus on his civil career at Utrecht Performance Centre and his family life. He won the Tweede Divisie title with Spakenburg in his final season.

Honours

Spakenburg *

: 2023–24

References

External links

* *
Profile
- Voetbal International {{DEFAULTSORT:Damen, Alessandro 1990 births Living people Footballers from Nieuwegein Men's association football goalkeepers Dutch men's footballers Excelsior Rotterdam players Heracles Almelo players ADO Den Haag players SV Spakenburg players Eredivisie players Eerste Divisie players Tweede Divisie players 21st-century Dutch sportsmen