The Kitchen Champion Division has been a breeding ground for national and international talents for decades and this season there are again many footballers with potential at the second level. Football zone, the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division, highlights one of these talents every week, this time focusing on Mats Wieffer, Excelsior’s surprise midfield.
By Chris Meijer
Ronald Graafland shuffles into Excelsior’s improvised office space. “So”, the goalkeeper coach mutters when he sees Wieffer. “An interview? With the Twentse Courant, right? ” Wieffer does not blind or blush and continues with his story after a nod. After more than six months at Excelsior, the 21-year-old midfielder has gotten a thick skin when it comes to silly jokes about his roots. “They still really like my accent, then they repeat me all the time.” Elsewhere in the room the corners of the mouth shoot up in recognition. “It is no different, that does not change from one day to the next. Sometimes they pretend you speak another language. ”
For the time being Wieffer played 23 official games for Excelsior.
When Graafland briefly interrupted him, Wieffer was in the middle of a story about Schalke 04. The German superpower was one of the three clubs with interest in him last summer, although it was the intention that he played in the Under-23 in Gelsenkirchen. team would come to play. Wieffer could have been active in the Eredivisie this season at FC Emmen. “FC Emmen is now playing against relegation. I’m not really a fighting footballer, you need that. I didn’t know if I was going to play and I just wanted to make minutes ”, Wieffer reasons. With Schalke his objection was that trainer Gerald Asamoah had never seen him play. “I didn’t trust that completely and that weighed heavily, because it is then easy to push myself aside. Schalke is a name, even if they are not doing very well now. That is tempting. A lot of people said, “You should do that right away!” But to me it mattered that I could play. I am 21 years old and I have to show it now, you have to be there once. It doesn’t make any sense if at 23 you are still playing somewhere in the second or sitting on the couch. ”
So Wieffer chose Excelsior, the club that, in his opinion, gave him the best opportunity to play as much as possible. For that, it had to step out of his comfort zone. Wiefffer exchanged his parental home in Borne, a village wedged between Almelo and Enschede, a stone’s throw from the German border, for an apartment in Dordrecht. “I actually wanted to live in the area. But Dordrecht is easily accessible and a lot cheaper than Rotterdam. There is not much to do because of corona, which is a shame. So I sit at home a bit, friends don’t come to visit that easily now. I don’t get bored that easily, then I read or watch Netflix. When we train, I don’t get home until four or five anyway. After the training we sometimes sit down to play cards, which is nice. And if something happens, I’ll be back in Borne within two hours. ”
He is not (yet) Borne’s best-known football product. “Wout Weghorst is indeed also from Borne, although he no longer lives there. He’s doing fine, yes. You would think it would have to end some day? But every time it performs even better. Very clever ”, Wieffer nods. Like his famous fellow villager, he started his career at NEO Borne. Unlike Weghorst, Wieffer was discovered at a young age by FC Twente in the backyard of the club. From the age of ten he went through the youth academy of FC Twente and two years ago it seemed that he was going to break through in the first team.
Wieffer left FC Twente behind him last summer with two duels.
At that time, Wieffer had been part of the first selection of FC Twente for a whole year, which returned to the Eredivisie as champion of the Kitchen Champion Division after a year of absence. After that season, in which he played two official matches, the FC Twente supporters’ association chose him as talent of the year. “Mats loves to play football, he radiates pleasure and – but that is a dangerous statement – he reminds us of Frenkie de Jong of Ajax”, Lucas Fransen, chairman of the supporters’ association, even said at the time. Borne fascinates. Wieffer smiles modestly when he is confronted with that statement almost two years later. “I like dribbling, Frenkie has that too. And rest on the ball. I can handle pressure well, I don’t get nervous about the ball that quickly. But of course I don’t want to make such a comparison myself. I may understand the thought somewhere. It was also beautiful. ”
“That prize was an honor, especially because it came from the supporters. Partly because of this, I also saw the potential that I would play at the first and would definitely join them ”, Wieffer continues. Partly because Gonzalo García replaced García Marino Pusic, things turned out differently for the ‘Frenkie van Borne’. “I think we would be called a day before the first training session to see which youth players would be there. I had the idea that I would be there, because I had trained all year. Eventually I was told that I was not there, but that it could still change. After that there was no further communication. ” García García apparently did not see it in Wieffer, who therefore spent a whole year in Jong FC Twente. Not ideal for his development, he agrees.
Wieffer tries to intercept a ball in the 4-2 cup match against Noordwijk in October 2018.
Not only was the competition schedule in the U21 league very irregular last season, the regular team of Jong FC Twente also had only three players. “So we trained with the Under-19. That was a big step back, because a year earlier I trained with the first. I learned a lot mentally, but playing football I should have trained at a higher level. During the games I was also sometimes left or right back, because often many midfielders came back from the first. Then there was one place left and I played there. ” Partly because of those experiences, Wieffer decided after the departure of García and technical director Ted van Leeuwen not to wait and see whether the new technical management of FC Twente – consisting of Ron Jans and Jan Streuer) would offer him a new contract. In retrospect, perhaps a decision that he can look back on with mixed feelings, because the new trainer Ron Jans regularly uses youth products such as Godfried Roemeratoe, Jesse Bosch, Jayden Oosterwolde, Ramiz Zerrouki and Thijs van Leeuwen this season.
Wieffer shrugs. Yes, he might have gotten a chance for a breakthrough in the first team of FC Twente this season. “That is of course the goal if you have been playing somewhere for ten years. I also had the feeling that I could handle the Eredivisie. But yes, on the other hand: it had also been difficult to become a basic player. Like it was at FC Emmen, since you don’t just play someone like Sergio Peña from the base. ” In that respect, Wieffer has made the right choice with Excelsior, because since October he is – if available – one of the first names to be noted on the match record by trainer Marinus Dijkhuizen. “Lately I have been playing everything and I feel that things are going well now, because in the beginning I still had some minor injuries. Each time I had something that made me unable to play for a while. ”
The fact that he struggled with some minor aches in the beginning may have several explanations, according to him. “It took some getting used to, at Jong Twente it was still a bit more youth football. Despite the fact that we played against teams that consisted of substitutes from Eredivisie clubs. For example, we also played against Feyenoord, so that was quite a good level. This is just a bit more men’s football, the Kitchen Champion Division is more about duel power. I don’t want to say that we train more, but it is different. Perhaps that has to do with the artificial turf, ”he explains. Slowly but surely, Wieffer’s name is also starting to sing around outside of Rotterdam. Is that due to his strong performance in the 0-1 lost quarter final of the TOTO KNVB Cup against Vitesse? Or his amazing first goal in professional football against FC Volendam?
What a solo by Mats Wieffer! He runs 75 meters with the ball and then finishes great ?? pic.twitter.com/R10BLQ0ndg
– ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) February 5, 2021
“It was of course a nice goal, there have been quite a few reactions”, Wieffer smiles modestly about the goal he scored after a solo from his own penalty area against FC Volendam. In that game, Wieffer was, by the way, as in the matches against Vitesse, Roda JC Kerkrade and MVV Maastricht, lined up as center-back in a three-man defense. “I prefer to be in midfield, but I also think center-back is fine. Although I do have to learn things, defensively and physically. How I should stand, for example. In midfield I still have too few goals and assists, it is an improvement to be involved in more goals. ” While teammate Alessandro Damen recently faced it Algemeen Dagblad said that he could imagine that Wieffer would be on scouting lists of Eredivisie clubs, he remains modest and above all self-critical.
If an Excelsior player is doing well these days, the comparison with Jerdy Schouten is never far away. Especially for Wieffer, who basically plays in the same position as the Bologna midfielder and shows similarities in his game. “You would like to see it like Schouten went to Bologna from here. But a lot still needs to be done for that. I’m not thinking: next year I want this or that. We’ll see what comes next. I still have a lot of things to improve, although I think I’m on the right track and starting to play better. I am now much further than in the first year that I was with the first in Twente. On the ball, physically: I learned that enormously. At the time I was still a thin little man, who was looking a bit at how things were going. When someone screamed, I thought, so … It’s all part of it. The more matches you play, the better you get. That’s what it’s about.”
“Personally, I am very satisfied with how things are getting better step by step, although the season is not going as smoothly as possible for the team”, Wieffer concludes. Prior to the season, he had secretly hoped that Excelsior would be able to compete as an outsider for the promotion spots. The Kralingers are currently somewhat disappointingly in tenth place in the Kitchen Champion Division, in a year in which the results may be even more volatile than the weather of the past weeks. “We are not constant, that is our problem. We often play football quite nicely, but we don’t always complete our options. We also conceded way too many goals, so we switched to five defenders. It is still hit and miss, there is not much to make of it. I would prefer to make the step to the Eredivisie with Excelsior. That is still possible this year, but we have not made it easy for ourselves. ”
Name: Mats Wieffer
Date of birth: November 16, 1999
Club: Excelsior
Position: midfielder
Strengths: insight, handling, dribble
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