Excelsior RotterdamExcelsior Rotterdam has a claim that few clubs of its size can make: it was the leading club behind the introduction of professional football in the Netherlands. In the mid-1950s Excelsior drove the proposal that the KNVB accepted in August 1954, and the Dutch game became professional. Being the smallest professional club in Rotterdam, it had to be creative to survive, and the same spirit produced two further firsts. In 1958 Excelsior became the first Dutch club with covered stands, and in 1974 the first with advertising on its shirts.
The club was formed on 23 July 1902 in the Kralingen district in the east of Rotterdam, as the Rotterdamse Voetbal en Atletiek Vereniging Excelsior, which gave it the abbreviation SBV. Its players are known as the Kralingers, and the club also had the nickname of the old-paper club, because it long remained in the hands of owners involved in paper recycling, a link still recalled by a mural of the club's paper-recycling van. Kralingen is a leafy district near Erasmus University, and the club's identity has always been tied to it, in contrast with the rival Sparta Rotterdam, which comes from the Spangen district.
The sporting record is modest but has some memorable points. In 1929–30 the club reached the final of the KNVB Cup, its only final, and lost 1–0 to fellow Rotterdam club Feyenoord. Its first promotion to the Eerste Klasse, then the top flight, came in 1945–46, eight years before professional football began. Since then Excelsior has moved between the Eredivisie and the second division so often that it is described as a yo-yo club, winning the second-tier title in 1974, 1979 and 2006. It has never won a national championship or the cup. In 2010 it returned to the top flight by beating Sparta Rotterdam in the final of the promotion play-offs, was relegated in 2012 and returned in 2014. For many years it worked as a satellite club of Feyenoord, which supplied players on loan, a link that was cut in 2005, restored in 2009 and ended in 2015.
The club's home is the Stadion Woudestein, in Kralingen, which is the smallest ground in the Eredivisie, with about 4,500 places. Excelsior has played there since its foundation in 1902, with a few interruptions in the early years, and it became the permanent home in 1939, after a major renovation. The stadium reopened on 31 July 2000, after a rebuild, with a friendly against Feyenoord. Between 2017 and 2025 it carried the name of a sponsor, Van Donge & De Roo, but from July 2025 the club chose to return to the historic name, Woudestein, and did not sell the naming rights again.
The ground has also seen some of the biggest shocks of Dutch football. In the 2016–17 season Excelsior beat Feyenoord 3–0 at home, a result that surprised the country, and the club's players have included Eljero Elia, Khalid Boulahrouz and Daryl van Mieghem. In 2024 Excelsior was relegated, but it returned to the Eredivisie in 2025 after one year in the second division, and in 2025–26 it finished 13th with 38 points. For a club with a small stadium and a small budget, it remains an example of how a modest club can influence the whole system, from the introduction of professionalism to the first shirt sponsorship, and its identity is that of Rotterdam's third club that has always had to do things differently.