The Kitchen Champion Division has been used as a nursery for national and international talents for decades and this season too, many football players with potential are walking around on the second level. Voetbalzone, the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division, highlights one of these talents every week, this time focusing on Marouan Azarkan, who hopes to prepare at Excelsior for a breakthrough in Feyenoord’s first team.
By Chris Meijer
Abdallah Aberkane and caretaker Mario Meijer jokingly walk past the catacombs of the Van Donge & De Roo Stadium, but that somewhat misses their subject. Busy finding a place for his visit, Marouan Azarkan walks out towards the edge of the field. “I actually don’t really know where to go here yet”, the nineteen-year-old wing attacker apologizes to himself, while he carefully steps into the main stand of Excelsior’s home port and finds a chair. It is not surprising in itself that Azarkan does not know the way outside the field and the catacombs like the back of his hand, because four days after his arrival to Excelsior he was in the starting eleven for the first time and did not disappear from it. “I definitely like it here. It’s nice to be in the neighbourhood, I already knew a number of players and I was well received. It’s nice when you’re going somewhere. I felt right at home and luckily I didn’t need time to find my place. There is a new, young group that really goes above and beyond for each other. I’m really glad I came here.”
“It’s better than expected,” Azarkan added after a short silence. He nods down towards the dug-out, where trainer Marinus Dijkhuizen is sitting. “Because it feels so familiar, because that also makes you play better. The trainer gives me a lot of confidence.” Azarkan does not have to go far for his second temporary departure from Feyenoord. As the crow flies, only a kilometer or three. “I could have gone to some other clubs, but then I would have had to move. Now I live on my own, but fifteen minutes from my mother. I can’t cook myself… My whole family can easily come and have a look, that feels better. Look, it’s also about a rental period. If I had to be sold, it was of course a different story.”
Azarkan – born and raised in Spangen – came to Varkenoord at the age of ten and made his debut in the first team seven years later, by coming in as a substitute in September 2019 in the 3-2 home game against ADO Den Hedge. “I was lucky that the fans were right behind me, that gave me confidence. When things go bad, they say: ‘It’s too small, too weak, can’t handle the level’. But show it, are you the Hazard or Messi of Feyenoord”, smiles Azarkan as his thoughts go back to the eighteen minutes he played in a full Kuip. “Back then it was nice to sit on the bench and travel to Europa League matches. But at a certain point I wanted to play, because sitting alone on the couch is not really fun either. The first season I still played with the Under-19, but last season I couldn’t play with the Under-21 at all because of corona. I only trained for half a season.”
Dick Advocaat instructs Azarkan for his substitute in last season’s match against Heracles Almelo, his second official match in Feyenoord’s first.
“Honestly, I learned a lot during the training sessions,” Azarkan continues. “I often went to work with Steven Berghuis after the training sessions. Like me, he’s a right winger who doesn’t like to shoot with the right. Occasionally I trained with Robin van Persie, who explained to me: ‘After your assumption, try to take two steps and then shoot’. As a winger, I do look at Van Persie, he also understood a bit when I gave strange balls or scored out of the blue. He said, ‘Great, do what you have to do and shit on the rest. You shouldn’t be nervous because you can do this’.” Jaap Stam allowed Azarkan to make his debut for Feyenoord, but under his successor Dick Advocaat he was not part of the match selection and he came in on one substitute in the following year and a half. “Lawyer always said I was good on the ball, but a real chance… He got me into it once, then Berghuis went to ten. But hey, he didn’t really dare to play with young players. At Feyenoord there is a certain pressure to perform.”
Partly because Azarkan hardly appeared in Advocaat’s plans, it was decided last season in the last week of the winter transfer window to rent him out. “’You are doing well and have to continue this trend, but you need game minutes’, I was told. At Feyenoord, Steven Berghuis played in my position and it wasn’t taken out very often, so I had to go and see where I could play. In the last week I went to have a quick look, but all the clubs actually already had their selections in order.” Azarkan had the choice of two clubs: FC Dordrecht or NAC Breda. The presence of his old trainer Edwin de Graaf – at the time still an assistant to Maurice Steijn – was the deciding factor in the choice to temporarily go to NAC. “I hadn’t really taken into account the trainer (Maurice Steijn, ed.), I had to act quickly. In general I did well in the training sessions, I don’t say that lightly. Only I didn’t play. So I asked what I had to do to play. Be patient, it will come naturally. Well, I had come there to play and not to sit on the couch. Because then I would have been better off staying at Feyenoord.”
Azarkan played a total of eleven official matches for NAC Breda.
The fact that Azarkan still came into the starting eleven three games before the end of the regular competition, he says indirectly due to Steijn’s business trip to Ibiza. De Graaf took over Steijn’s duties for a week and in the following away match against NEC (0-2 win), Azarkan had a base place, which he did not relinquish in the remainder of the season and the play-offs. “I always thought: match rhythm? Don’t whine and just play that game. But I’ve experienced it now, I noticed at NAC that it didn’t happen automatically. Only after two or three games did I start to feel a bit better. The matches at NAC have certainly benefited me, even though I didn’t play much in the beginning. You know how things go a little bit. Every now and then it is a bit of fighting football in the Kitchen Champion Division, wingers just have to walk back with their man. I did learn that.”
After his return to Feyenoord, Azarkan secretly hoped for a chance due to the departure of Berghuis. “In the beginning of the preparation, I worked very hard for that, to be able to stand. The fact that the trainer brought in an old acquaintance of his with Jahanbakhsh touched me. I soon saw that they were familiar with each other.” Azarkan still played in the first practice matches against AEK Athens and FC Zurich. Just before Feyenoord was to travel to Austria for a training camp, an ultrasound showed that Azarkan had suffered a tear in his thigh. “I felt myself getting fit, walking and stuff. It just went really well. Arne Slot likes runners, so I did. When I got injured, everything was gone and I had to start over to get my fitness going again. Because yes, competitions are the best training. I only played three of those, while those guys at training camp played three more games. I need competitions to be myself. If I have to come in out of nowhere, it feels weird.”
“If I could have played all the games at 100 percent without pain, I would have shown myself anyway,” Azarkan sighs. Once recovered, he still played in the friendly match against ADO Den Haag, after which he made the decision for himself to leave on a rental basis again. The moment Feyenoord officially announced that Azarkan would go to Excelsior on a rental basis, he himself knew nothing about it. “It was already ready. I don’t know how, but there was already a text by Frank Arnesen in it. I think they had already said internally that I might go to Excelsior, but at the time I didn’t know anything about it myself. It became chaos, I got all kinds of calls and I turned my phone off for a while.”
“They told me the next day when I came to the club that they thought Excelsior was the best club for me. Okay, I just wanted some time not to make another unfortunate choice. I did do that with NAC, then I ended up on the bench,” Azarkan explains. NAC and Roda JC Kerkrade also wanted him very much at that time. De Graaf is now head coach at NAC, while Jurgen Streppel sent daily messages to get him to Roda. “In the end I opted for certainty, I like that. The selection at Feyenoord is not that wide now. But yes, you only see that afterwards. The situation could have been different, I would have sat on the bench or had to play with the Under-21. I know from myself that I can be at my best if I play every game.”
“Arne Slot immediately knew how I played, he had already seen me play a number of times.”
Azarkan was thrown to the lions immediately after his arrival by Dijkhuizen in the 1-2 win against Roda. “I actually thought I would start on the couch for a while. That also gives me confidence, the trainer said: ‘Do your thing, feel free’. Then I feel at my best. I am still building it up and I notice that I can now continue to make actions, everything is much easier and the content is increasing. In the Under-21 at Feyenoord I just waited for the ball to make two or three moves. Then I scored a goal and it was good. Now I can switch back and attack again.” He nods towards the field of the Van Donge & De Roo Stadium. “Arne Slot knew immediately how I played, he had already seen me play a number of times. He knew I could be played between the lines and then turn away. But he did insist that I walk back. Walk, walk, walk. He can see here in the games that I can easily walk.”
“I just want to become the man at Excelsior”, that’s how Azarkan formulates his goal for next season in Kralingen. In his words, ‘Becoming the man at Excelsior’ means scoring more than ten goals and more than ten assists. With three goals and an assist in his first six games, the start is promising. “It is also a goal to put me in the spotlight at Jong Oranje.” Azarkan last belonged to the the Dutch Under-19 selection in October 2019. “I find it understandable that I was not part of the pre-selection of the Dutch Juniors, because I play in the Kitchen Champion Division for Excelsior. The boys who play weekly in the Eredivisie are selected for the Juniors. I have to score a lot of goals and then I’ll see if I’m selected for the Netherlands or Morocco. Every now and then I get messages from Morocco that they are watching me. But I’m not concerned with that yet. I want to play my matches at Feyenoord next year and then make a final choice.”
In a year, Azarkan hopes to be able to enforce a permanent place in the selection of Feyenoord. After a year with Excelsior, which started surprisingly well (‘nobody takes us into account, but look where we are’) he returns to South Rotterdam as a different player. “If I had played with Jong Feyenoord in the Kitchen Champion Division two years ago, it would have been much better and the step to the first would have been a lot less difficult. The step from the Under-19 to the first is sometimes too big. That’s why I already thought in the summer that I wanted to play 30 to 35 games this season, so that I come back to Feyenoord with a heavier backpack. Then I have to show it and there is no more excuse.”
Name: Marouan Azarkan
Date of birth: Dec 8, 2001
Club: Excelsior (loan from Feyenoord)
Position: right winger
Strengths: technique, speed, dribble
Voetbalzone is the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division
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