Mitchell Dijks Discusses Weight Struggles on ESPN

Mitchell Dijks doesn’t bother with the usual football clichés. Live on ESPN’s Transfer Deadline Show, the former Ajax left-back simply lays it all out.

“I weighed 104 kilos,” he says, almost casually. “When I'm fit, I normally weigh 92 kilos. There were quite a few kilos on me.”

The studio freezes for a second. Presenter Milan van Dongen stares at him, half expecting a punchline. It never comes.

“No, it's serious,” Dijks insists. “I really was quite chubby.”

This is a 33-year-old defender who has played for Ajax, Vitesse and Fortuna Sittard, now without a club and talking openly about losing control of his fitness during his spell at Nam Dinh FC in Vietnam. Not many players would say it. He does.

Life in Vietnam – and 12 extra kilos

Hans Kraay junior leans in, as baffled as the viewers. What on earth was Dijks doing in Vietnam?

“The intensity there is all a bit lower,” Dijks explains. “But you just eat good pasta there. And then during matches you only run seven kilometres.”

It is a brutal assessment of his own standards as much as the league’s. Training less, eating well, running less. The result: a defender, once known for his power and engine down the flank, suddenly tipping the scales at 104 kilos.

Dijks describes it as “testing” his fitness. The test, by his own admission, “didn't quite go well.”

Social media disbelief

The honesty lands like a grenade online. Clips from the show bounce around social media within minutes. Some laugh. Others wince.

“Hilarious, man, a player throwing away his own career,” one user posts on X, summing up the harsher verdicts.

There is admiration for the candour, but also a sense of disbelief that a free agent would be this open while trying to earn his next contract.

De Telegraaf reporter Jeroen Kapteijns captures that tension neatly: “It's honest and sincere, but whether this is the wisest interview when you're looking for a club now?”

It is the central question hanging over Dijks’ appearance. Clubs want transparency, but they also want reassurance. Admitting you ballooned 12 kilos abroad is not the usual sales pitch.

Looking East again

Dijks, though, does not sound like a man desperate to rush back to the Eredivisie to repair his image. At 33, he is still eyeing another adventure, preferably in Asia. A return to the Netherlands is not a necessity.

He has laid his story bare on live television: the weight gain, the low-intensity football, the good pasta, the seven-kilometre games. No excuses. No spin.

Now the question moves from the studio couches to the directors’ boxes: which club is willing to bet that a lean, fit Mitchell Dijks can still be found beneath those 104 kilos?