Dutch professional footballers can be found in all corners of the world, from the spotlights of the major European leagues to the more adventurous employments on other continents. In the section About the Border speaks Football zone weekly with a player who is active abroad. This time attention is paid to Daan Klomp, who is experiencing his first foreign adventure at the Canadian Cavalry FC.
By Chris Meijer
Photo: Cavalry FC Media
When the statue approaches, Daan Klomp appears smiling. Behind him, the morning sun – it is at that point a quarter past eight in the morning in Canada, eight hours earlier than in the Netherlands – shines into his apartment in Spruce Meadows. “The weather is fine today. But that’s even worse than in the Netherlands, it can change in fifteen minutes ”, laughs Klomp, after looking back to check the weather. “Summers seem to be very beautiful, you have a lot of hours of sunshine here. Only the winters are impossible, that is why the competition is organized like that. We normally start in May and play until mid-November, so you don’t have to play in the winter. ” Normally, not during a corona pandemic. Klomp has been in Canada for over a month now and only knows when the 2021 season will start.
The Canadian Premier League decided last week that it is planned to kick off the season in mid-June or early July. In one place, in a so-called bubble. Without fans. But with the ambition to return to a normal situation during the ‘normal’ 28-game season with home and away games in filled stadiums. “Many teams are not yet training. Four or so, beware. We have been busy for a while, because our state of Alberta has declared us free. Then we would have an unfair lead over the rest, so it remains to be seen how things will go ”, Klomp explains. Cavalry can continue to train, despite a new lockdown recently announced in Alberta. “The terraces and shops were open, but that is now closed. As soon as only a few infections are added, it is chaos. They are also allowed to determine what they do per state. Toronto and Ontario have been in lockdown for some time. ”
Klomp experienced first-hand that the approach to the corona virus in Canada is fairly strict when he left Burgh-Haamstede in Zeeland with Calgary as his destination. “The whole journey here was a long one,” says Klomp with a slight sense of understatement. He boarded a plane at Schiphol at the beginning of March with his English teammate and now roommate Tom Field. “To get here we first had to stay in Turkey for two weeks, because Canada and America do not allow direct flights from Europe. Europe is a red zone and Turkey is Asia in that regard. So we flew from Amsterdam to Istanbul, then from Istanbul to Antalya. We were quarantined there for two weeks. Then we could go back to Istanbul, from Istanbul to Chicago, from Chicago to Denver and then from Denver to Calgary. Once in Canada, we also had to quarantine here for another two weeks. ”
Klomp on the ball on behalf of Helmond Sport, for whom he played twenty games last season.
But four weeks after he left Zeeland, Klomp was on the training field at Cavalry for the first time. “I like it, it is nice to be busy again and to be part of a group. That alone gives satisfaction ”, smiles Klomp. The 22-year-old center-back played for vv De Bevelanders and JVOZ, before he ended up in the youth academy of NAC Breda. After ten games in the main squad – nine of which in the Eredivisie – and rental periods at TOP Oss and Helmond Sport, his contract expired last summer. Then six to seven months passed in which Klomp was without a club. “Of course you know the situation, the clubs have less to spend. But I did expect it to go faster, although I am glad I had patience. That doesn’t mean I didn’t doubt myself. I also started looking seriously at other things. Finding an amateur club and continuing my business studies, for example. It was not the easiest period. ”
Klomp continued to train for himself with a personal trainer so that he would be fit as soon as a club came to him and held talks with clubs from Finland and Norway. “They spoke a little bit of English, which made it less good to go abroad. In itself I have heard good stories about Norway and Finland, they are of course good countries. But the click and the feeling I had with Cavalry was not really there. ” Klomp appeared on Cavalry’s radar through scouts / agents operating in Europe. “They are approached by the Canadian league to look for players in Europe. That’s how they ended up with me. They hand those players over to the league and Cavalry needed a center-back. In the end I let a Dutch agent do it. It all took a while, because I was approached in November and only signed in January. I thought it was over for a month. ”
How Atlético Madrid close the gap with Real Madrid and Barcelona worldwide
Voetbalzone wrote a story last year about Atlético Ottawa, the Canadian affiliate of Atlético Madrid.
“When I signed, I read myself thoroughly. Because when they approached me, I knew little about it. ” No, Klomp has to admit that a year ago he might not have thought he would play in Canada now. Between 1992 and 2019, Canada actually didn’t even have a professional football league. But football has recently been catching up in Canada. The national team is performing better and better and has an absolute star player with Alphonso Davies. “You notice that in the youth they are still a bit behind on European football. But the sport is very popular among the young, so I think it can grow very quickly. Ice hockey is of course number one, but I hear that soccer is the fastest growing sport. All facilities and possibilities are there to grow. They are very busy with it, you will notice that on social media. Corona does throw a spanner in the works, but there is a lot of publicity for the competition. Within a few years there could be a nice competition here. ”
As a result, people in Canada also want to know everything about the experiences of Klomp in the Eredivisie. For example, in the 2018/19 season, he was on the field twice against Ajax that reached the semi-finals of the Champions League at the time. “You do get the questions about what it was like to play against Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt. They want to know what the level is, what pressure you feel. That is only fun. I am only 22 years old, the big recognition has yet to come. It was nice to play against those boys and to be able to smell them ”, he answers modestly. “We have an English trainer (Tommy Wheeldon, ed.), So European football is starting to come in a bit here. I have watched quite a lot of images from last season, but it remains difficult to estimate the level. I can handle this reasonably well, training is going well. ”
Clog during a training at Cavalry. (Photo: Cavalry FC Media)
In addition to the rapidly growing competition, the quality of life and adventure in Canada were a motivation for choosing Klomp. For example, in his first weeks he visited Banff, a national park in the Rocky Mountains. “Things like that appeal to me. We are already at a height of one kilometer and we almost have a view of the mountains. The first weeks were tough in that regard. When I came home after training, I had a headache. During the training you have the feeling that you cannot catch your breath. Your lungs are burning. It is therefore nice that we were allowed to train a bit in the quarantine. Going for a run, for example. As a result, we did not start training completely without condition. “
Klomp cannot wait for the season in the Canadian Premier League to start. “You have six different time zones in Canada, so it’s something to keep in mind when the competition starts. On the schedule from two years ago, I saw that they had three games in six or seven days, two of them out. Then you also have a time difference, so it is quite tough. It is then only recovery and on to the game. It’s also cool to experience, to visit so many different places, ”he says. If it is up to Klomp, the necessary places in North America will have to be added in the coming years. In any case, he has signed with Cavalry for at least three years. And after that? “They have good connections here with the MLS and the USL, so that will shorten the step to the United States. I hope to be able to develop myself here, and then make the step to the MLS. ”