Mitchell Dijks Opens Up About Weight Struggles in Vietnam
Mitchell Dijks doesn’t bother with the usual football clichés. Live on ESPN’s Transfer Deadline Show, the 33-year-old wing-back laid his career bare in a way you almost never hear from active players.
He admitted he had ballooned during his time at Nam Dinh FC in Vietnam.
"I was testing my fitness. But that didn't quite go well. I weighed 104 kilos. When I'm fit, I normally weigh 92 kilos. There were quite a few kilos on me," Dijks said, openly, almost casually, as if he were discussing a missed chance rather than a full stone and a half.
The studio needed a second to process it.
Presenter Milan van Dongen looked at him in disbelief, assuming Dijks was joking, playing up for the cameras. He wasn’t.
"No, it's serious. I really was quite chubby," replied the former left-back of Ajax, Vitesse and Fortuna Sittard, deadpan.
Vietnam, pasta and seven kilometres
Hans Kraay junior, equally stunned, pressed him on what exactly had gone on in Vietnam. Dijks didn’t hide behind excuses.
"The intensity there is all a bit lower. But you just eat good pasta there. And then during matches you only run seven kilometres."
It was the kind of line that lands with a thud in dressing rooms and boardrooms. A player openly describing a slower tempo, good food and limited running, while currently unemployed, is not the usual sales pitch to potential employers.
Social media reacted instantly. Clips of the interview did the rounds, his words replayed and dissected. One user on X summed up the mood from the harsher corner of the football crowd: "Hilarious, man, a player throwing away his own career."
De Telegraaf reporter Jeroen Kapteijns struck a more measured note, but the concern was clear. "It's honest and sincere, but whether this is the wisest interview when you're looking for a club now?"
Honest, heavy and hunting for a club
Dijks, once a powerful, marauding left-back in the Eredivisie, now finds himself at a crossroads. Clubless, candid, and carrying the recent memory of a body that tipped 104 kilos.
He is not, however, talking like a man desperate to run back to the Netherlands to repair his image. At 33, he is openly chasing another adventure in Asia. A return home is not a requirement, not even a priority.
The market will decide what to make of this version of Mitchell Dijks: brutally honest, a little heavier than he should have been, and still convinced there is one more chapter to write somewhere far from home.
