Mitchell Dijks on Weight Struggles and Career Reflections
Mitchell Dijks leans back in his chair on ESPN’s Transfer Deadline Show and says the kind of thing most players only admit years after retirement.
“I weighed 104 kilos.”
No dodging, no spin. Just a 33-year-old free agent laying out, in brutal detail, how his stint at Nam Dinh FC in Vietnam went off the rails.
“When I'm fit, I normally weigh 92 kilos,” Dijks explains. “There were quite a few kilos on me.”
The studio falls somewhere between disbelief and laughter. Presenter Milan van Dongen initially thinks he’s being played. A joke, surely. A wind-up for deadline day.
“No, it's serious. I really was quite chubby,” Dijks insists, smiling at his own expense but not hiding from the reality. This is the same left-back who once bombed up and down the flank for Ajax, Vitesse and Fortuna Sittard, now openly talking about losing his edge in a league far from home.
Vietnam, low intensity and “good pasta”
Hans Kraay junior, eyebrows raised, pushes the conversation towards the obvious question: what exactly happened in Vietnam?
“The intensity there is all a bit lower,” Dijks says. The line hangs in the air. Lower training load, slower tempo, a different football culture. For some players, that sounds like a gentle final chapter. For Dijks, it became a trap.
“But you just eat good pasta there. And then during matches you only run seven kilometres.”
It’s a throwaway remark with a sting. Seven kilometres. For a modern wing-back, that’s a light jog, not a shift. Add “good pasta” and a relaxed environment, and the picture sharpens quickly: a professional who let the margins slide, and then watched those margins show up on the scales.
He doesn’t blame anyone. He doesn’t dress it up. He just owns it.
Social media backlash: honesty or own goal?
The reaction online is swift and unforgiving. The clip circulates, and the tone hardens.
“Hilarious, man, a player throwing away his own career,” one user writes on X, summing up a wider sentiment that sees Dijks’ confession less as refreshing honesty and more as a damning self-indictment.
De Telegraaf reporter Jeroen Kapteijns adds a more measured doubt. “It's honest and sincere,” he notes, “but whether this is the wisest interview when you're looking for a club now?”
That’s the crux. In an industry obsessed with marginal gains, GPS data and body fat percentages, Dijks has just told every sporting director in Europe and Asia that he ballooned to 104 kilos and cruised through low-intensity football while eating well and running less.
It is rare transparency. It is also risky.
A defender without a club, still looking East
Dijks is currently without a club. No contract, no pre-season base, no guarantees. Just a candid TV appearance and a reputation built over years in the Eredivisie and beyond.
At 33, some players quietly fade away. Dijks is not talking like a man ready to stop. He is talking like someone who wants one more proper run, even if the last chapter did not go to plan.
He makes one thing clear: a return to the Netherlands is not a necessity. His eyes are still on Asia. Another adventure, another league, another chance to show that the player who once flew down the left flank has not disappeared under those “quite a few kilos.”
The question now is simple and ruthless: will a club out there see brutal honesty as a red flag—or as the first sign that Mitchell Dijks has already started to put things right?
