football
Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
manager and a former player, who played for a number of clubs, both home and abroad.
Nijholt began his career in the early 1980s with
Haarlem
Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English) is a city and municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Holland. Haarlem is situated at the northern edge of the Randstad, one of the most populated metropoli ...
, spending six years with the club. Nijholt was a member of the famous Haarlem team that competed in the
UEFA Cup
A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store Solid, solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, porcela ...
in the 1982–83 season, for the first time in the club's history. However this campaign was to be overshadowed by the
Luzhniki disaster
The Luzhniki disaster was a deadly human crush that took place at the Grand Sports Arena of the Central Lenin Stadium (russian: Большая спортивная арена Центрального стадиона им. В. И. Ленина ...
Utrecht
Utrecht ( , , ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city and a List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, pro ...
and Swiss side
Old Boys
The terms Old Boys and Old Girls are the usual expressions in use in the United Kingdom for former pupils of primary and secondary schools.''Oxford English Dictionary'' While these are traditionally associated with independent schools, they are ...
. In 1990, Nijholt moved to Scottish side
Motherwell
Motherwell ( sco, Mitherwall, gd, Tobar na Màthar) is a town and former burgh in North Lanarkshire, Scotland, United Kingdom, south east of Glasgow. It has a population of around 32,120. Historically in the parish of Dalziel and part of Lanarks ...
and helped them win the
Scottish Cup
The Scottish Football Association Challenge Cup,Swindon Town F.C., Swindon Town for a fee of £175,000, spending two years with ''The Robins''. He joined them after they won promotion to the
FA Premier League
The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
, but couldn't prevent from being relegated after just one reason with a mere five wins and a defence that leaked 100 goals in the league. However, he did score his only goal for Swindon on 19 March 1994 in a surprise 2–2 home draw against that season's
double
A double is a look-alike or doppelgänger; one person or being that resembles another.
Double, The Double or Dubble may also refer to:
Film and television
* Double (filmmaking), someone who substitutes for the credited actor of a character
* Th ...
winners Manchester United. A year later he was part of the side which reached the
Football League Cup
The EFL Cup (referred to historically, and colloquially, as the League Cup), currently known as the Carabao Cup for sponsorship reasons, is an annual knockout competition and major trophy in men's domestic football in England. Organised by the ...
semi finals but suffered a second successive relegation.
After leaving Swindon in 1995, Nijholt joined Volendam and spent three years with them before retiring in 1998.
Nijholt became manager of Stormvogels Telstar in 2005 and has since declared his interest in managing former clubs Swindon and Motherwell, although neither application was successful.
He was the assistant coach of
FC Red Bull Salzburg
FC Red Bull Salzburg is an Austrian professional football club based in Wals-Siezenheim, that competes in the Austrian Bundesliga, the top flight of Austrian Football. Their home ground is the Red Bull Arena. Due to sponsorship restrictions, ...
(Austria) during 2008–09 season. In 2010, he reunited with
Co Adriaanse
Co Adriaanse (born 21 July 1947) is a Dutch football manager and former player who played as a centre-back.
Playing career
As a professional player, Adriaanse played for six seasons with (now dissolved) De Volewijckers (from 1964 until 1970) and ...
to be part of his coaching staff with the Qatar national team.
In 1984 his then 21 year old girlfriend Sandra van Raalte was murdered in the clothing store where she worked. The case is known as the ‘paskamermoord’. The changing room murder.