Joëlle Smits (born 7 February 2000) is a Dutch 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 le ...

who plays as a striker for

Eredivisie The Eredivisie (; ''"Honour Division"'' or ''"Premier Division"'') is the highest level of professional football in the Netherlands. The league was founded in 1956, two years after the start of professional football in the Netherlands. It is c ...

club PSV and the Netherlands national team.

Club career

Smits started her youth career with

OJC Rosmalen Ontspanning Door Inspanning Juliana Combinatie Rosmalen, known as OJC Rosmalen is a football club from Rosmalen, Netherlands. OJC Rosmalen is the biggest amateur football club in the Netherlands. OJC Rosmalen was founded in 1947 when two clubs m ...

at the age of six. She spent eight years there playing alongside boys before moving to Brabant United. In 2015, she moved to CTO Eindhoven. In May 2017, Smits signed her first professional contract with

club

Twente Twente ( nl, Twente , Tweants dialect: ''Tweante'') is a region in the eastern Netherlands. It encompasses the most urbanised and easternmost part of the province of Overijssel. Twente is most likely named after the Tuihanti or Tvihanti, a Germ ...

. She made her debut on 1 September in a 3–0 league win against

Zwolle Zwolle () is a city and municipality in the Northeastern Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Overijssel and the province's second-largest municipality after Enschede with a population of 130,592 as of 1 December 2021. Zwolle is o ...

. She scored in 58th minute of the game before being replaced by Bente Jansen. She scored 25 goals from 21 league matches during the 2018–19 season to help her club win the league title. In February 2019, it was confirmed that Smits would join PSV prior to the 2019–20 season. She was the league top scorer when football leagues across Netherlands were suspended by Dutch government in March 2020 due to

COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands The COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. The virus reached the Netherlands on 27 February 2020, when its first COVID-19 case was confirmed in Tilburg. It involved a 56-year-old Dutchman ...

. On 15 September 2020, German

Frauen-Bundesliga The Frauen-Bundesliga (German for ''Women's Federal League''), currently known as the FLYERALARM Frauen-Bundesliga for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of league competition for women's association football in Germany. In 1990 the German Foo ...

club

VfL Wolfsburg Verein für Leibesübungen Wolfsburg e. V., commonly known as VfL Wolfsburg () or Wolfsburg, is a German professional sports club based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. The club grew out of a multi-sports club for Volkswagen workers in the city of W ...

announced that Smits has signed a three-year contract with the club which would be valid from 1 July 2021. On 5 June 2021, she played her last match for PSV in the cup final against

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 f ...

. She scored the only goal in the match to win PSV's first trophy in their history. With 52 goals from 45 matches, Smits left the club as PSV's all-time top scorer. During her only season with Wolfsburg, Smits won German league and domestic cup titles. On 3 June 2022, her contract with the club was terminated by mutual agreement. She returned to her former club PSV on the same day, where she signed a three-year contract until June 2025.

International career

Smits is a former Dutch youth international and has represented her nation with different age level teams. On 21 October 2016, she scored seven goals in her team's 11–0 win against

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

during 2017 UEFA Women's Under-17 Championship qualifiers. She was also part of Netherlands under-19 team which reached semi-finals of

UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship The UEFA European Women's Under-19 Championship or simply UEFA Women's Under-19 Championship, is a competition in women's football for European national teams of players under 19 years of age. National under-19 teams whose countries belong to the ...

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

and

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

. With 33 goals from 38 matches, she is all-time leading appearance maker and all-time top scorer of under-19 team. Smits made her senior team debut on 4 March 2020 in a friendly against

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. She came on as an 84th-minute substitute for

Vivianne Miedema Anna Margaretha Marina Astrid "Vivianne" Miedema (; born 15 July 1996) is a Dutch professional association football, footballer who plays as a Forward (association football), forward for FA Women's Super League (FA WSL) club Arsenal W.F.C., Arse ...

as the match ended in a goalless draw. On 16 June 2021, Smits was named as a stand-by player for

2020 Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the 1 ...

. On 20 July, she was added to the final squad as a replacement for injured

Sherida Spitse Sherida Spitse (; born 29 May 1990) is a Dutch footballer who plays as a midfielder for Ajax and the Netherlands national team. Club career Spitse started her career at VV Sneek before joining SC Heerenveen when the Dutch women's professional ...

Career statistics

Club

International

:''Scores and results list Netherlands' goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Smits goal.''

Honours

Club

Twente *

: 2018–19 PSV *

KNVB Women's Cup The KNVB Women's Cup ( nl, KNVB Beker voor Vrouwen) is the cup competition for women's football in the Netherlands. The competition was established in 1980, along with the KNVB Amateur Cup. From the 2007-08 season onwards, the first round of th ...

: 2020–21 VfL Wolfsburg *

: 2021–22 *

DFB-Pokal Frauen The DFB-Pokal Frauen is the main national women's football cup competition in Germany, thus the female counterpart to the DFB-Pokal. It was created in 1980, and since 1991 includes Eastern teams as well. The most recent champions are VfL Wolfsburg ...

: 2021–22

Individual

top scorer: 2018–19,

2020–21 The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...

Club career

International career

Career statistics

Club

International

Honours

Club

Individual

References

External links