“We wanted a manager who knows what it means to work under pressure,” Joop Munsterman, the chairman of FC Twente, said as he introduced the club’s new manager to the media. So Steve McClaren is perfectly qualified, then.

The stresses and showers of Wembley last November seemed far away this morning as the former head coach met about 30 Dutch – and a couple of English – journalists at a hotel near Twente’s stadium. In warm sunshine, the mood was relaxed, the questions, gentle. The light glinted off those white teeth, but there was a new steel behind the smile, a gravitas behind the grin as he pledged to learn from this experience, just as he learnt from life with England.

There is a rebuilding job going on at the Grolsch Veste stadium (named after the local brewery) – expanding the capacity from 13,000 to 24,000 for the new season. And there is reconstruction work needed on McClaren’s career, eight months after he was sacked as England head coach.

Twente, it seems, are one of the few top-flight European clubs who wanted McClaren’s services. Despite the 47-year-old’s experience as coach and manager, the appointment feels like a gamble given the dismal failure of his England reign. Going Dutch, though, seems a shrewd move, especially at this club from Enschende, a small and unremarkable university town two hours by train east of Amsterdam, near the border with Germany.

The local media and fans, while sceptical, are open-minded. Their main concern is that McClaren plays attractive football, and of course, today he said he would. Twente are a club on the up, having finished fourth in the Dutch league last season, defeating Ajax in a play-off to secure a place in the Champions League qualifying round.

It is likely that Twente will face tough opponents in those games, but McClaren’s first competitive matches could define how his season is viewed come next summer. Make the Champions League proper and he is an instant hero. Fail? No big deal. This is little Twente, no one expects miracles at a club with the budget of a middling Coca-Cola Championship side.

Most pressure will come from within, because McClaren knows that to rehabilitate his reputation and progress back up the path towards what he really wants, a top-flight job in England, he must impress here. Yesterday was a decent start.