Mitchell Dijks leans back in his chair on ESPN’s Transfer Deadline Show and drops a line you rarely hear from an active professional.
“I weighed 104 kilos.”
No excuses. No softening the blow. Just a blunt confession from a 33-year-old left-back who has seen the top with Ajax and now finds himself without a club after a detour to Vietnam with Nam Dinh FC.
“When I’m fit, I normally weigh 92 kilos,” Dijks continues. “There were quite a few kilos on me.”
The studio freezes for a moment. Presenter Milan van Dongen stares at him, half laughing, half checking whether he’s being pranked. This has to be a joke, right?
“No, it’s serious. I really was quite chubby,” Dijks replies, deadpan. The kind of line that would make most players squirm. He just shrugs.
Vietnam, pasta and seven kilometres
Hans Kraay junior, never one to tiptoe around a subject, jumps straight in: what on earth was Dijks doing in Vietnam?
Dijks doesn’t dress it up. “The intensity there is all a bit lower. But you just eat good pasta there. And then during matches you only run seven kilometres.”
Seven kilometres. For a modern wing-back, that sounds like a pre-season jog, not a match load. The picture he paints is clear: fewer demands, more comfort, and a body that followed the lifestyle rather than the job description.
The honesty is disarming. It’s also brutal. A player openly describing how he drifted away from peak condition while still under contract is rare in a sport obsessed with marginal gains and image control.
Social media disbelief
The reaction online is instant and unforgiving. Clips of the interview circulate, and the tone is harsh.
“Hilarious, man, a player throwing away his own career,” one user writes on X, capturing the disbelief that a seasoned professional would speak so casually about letting himself go.
De Telegraaf reporter Jeroen Kapteijns weighs in with a more measured concern. He calls the interview “honest and sincere,” but questions the timing and the wisdom of such openness when Dijks is actively searching for a new employer. Clubs watch everything. They listen to everything. They judge everything.
Dijks, though, has already laid his cards on the table. No spin. No PR gloss. Just a clear admission: he lost control of his fitness in Vietnam and is now paying the price in the job market.
A career at a crossroads
This is not some journeyman who never made it. Dijks has worn the shirt of Ajax, Vitesse and Fortuna Sittard, and built a reputation as a powerful, attacking full-back. At his best weight, at his best rhythm, he was a serious presence on the flank.
Now he sits in a television studio as a free agent, explaining how his weight ballooned and how the demands in Vietnam never really forced him back into line. It’s a striking snapshot of how quickly a career can drift when the competitive edge dulls.
He is 33 now. Old enough to know exactly what these words might cost him. Old enough to understand that every scout and sporting director will replay this interview in their head when his name comes up.
And yet he doesn’t walk anything back. He doesn’t try to rewrite the story. He owns it.
Looking East, not home
What comes next is just as telling. Dijks is not begging for a lifeline in the Eredivisie. He makes it clear he does not necessarily have to return to the Netherlands.
He is aiming at Asia again.
Another adventure. Another move away from home, away from the familiar pitches and familiar scrutiny. This time, though, the context is different. Any club that calls will know exactly what they’re getting: a defender who has fallen out of top condition, but who is willing to sit on live television and say so.
For some, that level of transparency is a red flag. For others, it might be the start of a redemption story. The next contract will reveal which side football believes in more: the extra kilos in Vietnam, or the courage to admit them when the cameras are rolling.
