She Kicks a Beat: Jinking Jackie Leaves ‘Em Spinning (Jackie Groenen interview)

Jackie Groenen was the fulcrum of a Dutch side that won all six games at their home European Championship, having had no senior caps before the previous year, and she plays with an ease her international record does not explain. Music, she says, is one of the bigger parts of her life: an old record player at home, a playlist that runs mostly to seventies and eighties, and Fleetwood Mac and Michael Jackson alongside the occasional country record. She sang in a school band, has never had professional training and is better than she admits. She wears the number fourteen for Johan Cruyff, studies law, speaks three languages, and learned English as a child by taking apart the lyric booklet of a Meat Loaf album her father gave her.