Thijmen Nijhuis seeks promotion with Waldhof Mannheim in Germany

While tram 6 rushes past the Carl‑Benz‑Stadium, the 28‑year‑old Thijmen Nijhuis explains how, after a season with HJK Helsinki, he continues his career at SV Waldhof Mannheim in Germany, aiming to achieve promotion to the 2. Bundesliga this year.

His personal ambition is clear: “That is also my personal ambition. I would like to keep at the second level. I can handle that level.” Nijhuis emphasizes that he wants to prove himself in the 2. Bundesliga and sees the move to Germany as crucial for his development.

Waldhof Mannheim: a Traditionsverein in the 3. Liga

SV Waldhof Mannheim, a Traditionsverein from Baden‑Württemberg, regularly played in the Bundesliga in the 1980s. Since the 1990s the blue‑black team has been shuttling between the 2. Bundesliga and the Oberliga, and since 2019 it has finished between fifth and sixteenth place in the 3. Liga. In the first season with Nijhuis the club finished in tenth place.

The 3. Liga is characterized by small differences in strength; one week you win with a narrow 3‑2 against a relegation candidate, the next week you defeat a club from the lower half with a comfortable margin. Clubs such as Hansa Rostock, Alemannia Aachen, MSV Duisburg and Rot‑Weiss Essen attract more than twenty thousand spectators, while Waldhof averages more than twelve thousand visitors. This season, among others, Fortuna Düsseldorf and Preussen Münster, big clubs with many fans, have joined the competition.

Nijhuis points to the intensity: “The 3. Liga is very competitive. The game is extremely physical and features a murderous high tempo.” He made one hundred twenty saves last season, finishing second on the keepers’ ranking; the top performer on the list recorded one hundred thirty saves.

Life in Germany: language, training and home

For Nijhuis, the realization that “Germany is the land of the keepers” was a decisive reason to move to Waldhof in the summer of 2025. He compares the Dutch focus on football‑playing keepers with the German emphasis on stopping balls. At Waldhof he first received a German goalkeeper coach, later a Portuguese one, and notes that the training now includes more one‑on‑one blocks.

The club this season has a Portuguese head coach, Rui Mota, while last year a Luxembourgish coach, Luc Holtz, was in charge. In the dressing room German used to be spoken; now English dominates, which according to Nijhuis facilitates the integration of foreign players. He now understands eighty to ninety percent of the German language, although he still struggles with detailed explanations.

Nijhuis is the only Dutchman in the squad; he has even been able to exchange a few Dutch sentences with the new German player from Roda JC, Joey Müller. With the help of the club he quickly found an apartment with two bedrooms in the centre of Mannheim, a city of more than three hundred thousand inhabitants, which he finds less lively than Helsinki, where he lived and played for a year.