Mitchell Dijks Opens Up About Weight Struggles on Transfer Deadline Show

Mitchell Dijks leans back in his chair on ESPN’s Transfer Deadline Show and drops the kind of line that makes a studio fall silent.

“I weighed 104 kilos.”

No spin. No excuses. Just a 33-year-old former Ajax left-back, out of contract and brutally honest about how his time at Nam Dinh FC in Vietnam went off the rails.

“When I’m fit, I normally weigh 92 kilos,” Dijks says. “There were quite a few kilos on me.”

The confession hangs in the air. Presenter Milan van Dongen stares at him, half convinced he’s being set up for a joke. This must be a wind-up, surely?

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

This is not the usual script for a free agent trying to sell himself to potential employers live on television. Yet Dijks leans into the story, not away from it.

Vietnam, low intensity and “good pasta”

The incredulity in the studio only grows when analyst Hans Kraay junior presses him on what actually happened 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.”

For a modern wing-back, seven kilometres is a luxury jog, not a shift. The picture he paints is simple: less intensity, more food, and a body that drifted far from peak condition.

It is the kind of admission that would usually be kept for a private chat with a fitness coach, not broadcast live on a deadline-day show.

Social media disbelief

The reaction online is instant and unforgiving.

“Hilarious, man, a player throwing away his own career,” one user writes on X, capturing the mix of amusement and disbelief that runs through much of the commentary.

De Telegraaf reporter Jeroen Kapteijns strikes a more measured tone, but his concern is clear. “It’s honest and sincere,” he notes, “but whether this is the wisest interview when you’re looking for a club now?”

That question lingers. Clubs demand commitment, conditioning and control. Dijks has offered honesty, self-deprecation and a confession of professional slippage. It makes for compelling television, but it may also make sporting directors shift uneasily in their seats.

A defender looking East again

What is clear is that Dijks is not finished with football. At 33, he is without a club but not without ambition. He is open about his next step: he wants another adventure in Asia.

A return to the Netherlands is not a necessity for him. The domestic safety net does not seem to be the priority. He is looking outward again, to a continent where he has already lived the highs and, by his own admission, the excesses.

The question now is simple and unforgiving: will a club in Asia – or anywhere – look past the “104 kilos” headline and see a veteran defender whose candour might signal a fresh start, not the end of the road?