The Kitchen Champion Division has been 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 Cas Dijkstra, who is experiencing the season of his definitive breakthrough in professional football at Telstar.
By Chris Meijer
Cas Dijkstra’s gaze slides towards the synthetic turf field of the BUKO Stadium. The twenty-year-old midfielder tells what he thinks he can still improve on: his defensive qualities. Playing duels, making slides. But yes, sliding on the sometimes somewhat stiff artificial turf of Telstar? “No, that’s no fun. When I scored against Helmond Sport, I slipped on my knees here in the corner,” Dijkstra says with a laugh, pointing to the corner of the stadium. “I don’t do that anymore, my knees were all red and covered in blood.” Fortunately for Dijkstra and his knees, slidings are normally not what he needs as a midfielder.
“A number ten or maybe even a bit how Thomas Müller plays”, that is how Dijkstra describes the role in which he performs best in his eyes. “Less on the ball, but continuously with depth and being in front of the goal at the right time. I can also work well in small spaces. We play with the point back, so that on paper we have two attacking midfielders. I always try to be on time for the goal from the right side. I don’t know if you’ve seen some goals?” Dijkstra pauses and nods affirmatively when he hears the correct answer. “Often it is a well-played attack of which I am the end station. If you play for a team that attacks a lot and puts constant pressure, you’re a lot more in front of goal and maybe I’d score more. Telstar is of course sometimes pushed back into its own half. But this also makes me more complete as a midfielder.”
Dijkstra will experience his definitive breakthrough in professional football this season. Something he might not have expected a few years ago. As a thirteen-year-old Dijkstra was sent away from FC Volendam. Out of necessity he took the step back to the amateurs of Hollandia from Hoorn. “I kind of lost the fun in football. For such a young boy, something like that is quite tough,” admits Dijkstra. As a result, after his return to Hollandia, he initially even ended up on the reserve bench. “At some point I started scoring goals again and then it becomes fun again. Yes, I don’t know. Suddenly it started to work again at Hollandia, I got my pleasure back and eventually I ended up here. I had hoped, but not expected. Then it can go fast.”
After a training with Hollandia Under 19 in the spring of 2019, he was called in by his trainer. Dijkstra was given the opportunity to train at NEC. He was considered good enough there, but he did not yet see himself alone in Nijmegen when he was seventeen. Through agent Ronnie van Es, an option with Telstar presented itself closer to hometown Wieringen. “I played a match against each other and after that I was called pretty quickly that I could join. Telstar was still looking for a new trainer and then Andries came along. Yes, then it is absolutely perfect. It is of course great that the trainer has worked with many young boys, and also at top clubs such as Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Barcelona. He knows how it works at the top. He motivated and helped me to where I am today. I think he’s been a big factor in me being a starting player here.”
Dijkstra is consulting with Jonker.
Andries Jonker – trainer and technical director at Telstar – has had to sharpen Dijkstra quite a bit in recent years. “I came from Hollandia, so I really had to get used to the content. That was a huge step when I was seventeen, physically and conditionally. Every time after I’ve been here I was completely devastated. I hadn’t even made the step to senior football, let alone professional football. In the first six months I was not yet in the competition selection and I trained hard on Friday with the assistant coaches.” The fact that Dijkstra has taken giant steps physically in recent years is partly due to his father. Dijkstra senior – who took him to Telstar until he got his driver’s license at the age of eighteen, incidentally, also alternately brought him to Telstar with his grandfather – works for the Royal Netherlands Navy in Den Helder and helps his son with strength training.
“He’s not a drill sergeant. No, he’s not very strict,” Dijkstra laughs. “We discuss together what I should do to improve certain things. I have a gym at home with my father. Do I want to become more explosive? Well, okay, then we’ll do plyometrics. Then I jump on a welded bench. We are always challenging each other on how to get better, trying to get the best out of my career. Not that I’ll think: well, I could have gone further if I had trained harder. That would be a shame, I try to give everything besides football. If we’ve had a hard training session, I don’t immediately start training again at home. In that regard, I’ll take my rest. But if we train once a day, I try to hit the gym in the afternoon.”
For the time being, Dijkstra has played 24 games this season, of which 20 as a starting player and in which he was good for 4 goals and 2 assists.
That mindset has changed since Telstar offered Dijkstra a new chance at a professional career, he admits. “Before I came to Telstar, I didn’t have that mindset at all. You lose that a little bit. But when I came here, I thought: it’s possible. People say it’s luck, but it’s also been a certain perseverance of mine. That I haven’t stopped.” Exactly against FC Volendam Dijkstra made his debut in professional football two years ago. After that, he had to be patient, because only this season can he generally count on a basic place. “When you just join, you try to hook up as quickly as possible. I was just expected to do something different. Andries has protected me against that and brought me slowly. That was nice. I trained hard all week and noticed that I was getting better step by step.”
“When you’re younger, you’ve just come out of puberty and you might be a little rebellious. But I thought: those guys have been through a lot more than I have and have been around in professional football for a long time, so I open up and just listen. You don’t necessarily have to accept everything, but you can listen and see what you can do with it,” continues Dijkstra. One of the people he’s been listening to closely over the past few years is Edgar Davids. The former midfielder of Ajax, AC Milan, Juventus, Barcelona and Internazionale, among others, worked at Telstar for six months last season as an assistant to Jonker. “Edgar Davids gave me a number of tips: ‘Keep looking around you, scanning continuously’. I listened to and looked at that, so I didn’t get into the duels anymore and I immediately played a good pot.”
Edgar Davids was briefly active at Telstar in the first half of last season as an assistant coach.
Dijkstra can immediately say which match it was. Excelsior out, he played for 75 minutes and provided an assist. “We won it in the last minute with a goal from Yaël (Liesdek, ed.)”, he recalls sharply. “Those are external factors that helped me. Davids wasn’t there long. But if he says something, of course you listen. I can do something with that. You don’t expect such a big name to be on the field at a small club like Telstar. It is the beauty of Telstar that it is possible. The trainer takes such people along, which broadens your horizon. People like that have gone through strange things. We train hard every day, so the training sessions sometimes feel heavier than competitions. That depends on the level of the players, it is often one or two hits. You always come into competition situations, you experience things that can also occur in competitions. As a result, I didn’t have to take an extra step once I got playing minutes.”
Gradually last season Dijkstra got more and more playing minutes and in this football season Jonker generally clears a base place for him. National coach Louis van Gaal also did that when he had Telstar under his wing for one match against Jong AZ at the end of November. “That was the highlight of the past six months for me. It was very special that Louis van Gaal came. A lot of media attention of course, that was cool. He was more there for the team, how we would play against Jong AZ. With pressure and pressure on the ball, as the Dutch does. Well, that’s how we played. It’s great that we still won, we did that as a collective.”
Louis van Gaal was in charge of Telstar this season around the match against Jong AZ (1-0 win), in the context of a lottery for the club and the Spieren voor Spieren foundation.
“I am building rhythm this season. If you play from the beginning, the match is different. The game image is often already determined around the seventieth or eightieth minute. I feel mature in my game, I am at the level where I should be. I feel like I’m playing more to my strength and have found my place offensively. Slowly but surely I am more and more in the box and I’m going to score goals.” With the total of four goals he scored in the first half of the season, Dijkstra just missed his self-imposed target. His total should have been five goals before the winter break. “I hope to score at least eight goals this season and give two or three more assists. That would be nice, then I double the number I have now. And I want to stay in the starting line all the time, of course.”
And after this season? His contract with Telstar expires, although the club has an option to extend that contract for another year. “I’m not really involved with other clubs. The focus is purely on developing myself. And if I have to stay at Telstar for another year, I’m happy to do that too. No problem. Can I take on a new challenge somewhere else, everything is arranged and Telstar agrees, can I develop myself at another club. I hope I can make the step after three years at Telstar, it is still my dream to play and score in the Eredivisie. But if not, I’ll stay with Telstar and try to have an even better year next season.” It remains to be seen where his ceiling is. “I hope later that I can say to myself that I did everything I could and that I was able to hit my ceiling.”
Name: Cas Dijkstra
Date of birth: September 12, 2001
Club: Telstar
Position: midfielder
Strengths: depth, insight, technique
Voetbalzone is the official media partner of the Kitchen Champion Division
Click here for exclusive interviews, talent scouts, current positions and the program on our Kitchen Champion Division page.