In collaboration with Goal, Voetbalzone regularly highlights young players who can go far in the future or who are already earning their spurs in (inter)national top football. This time the focus is on sixteen-year-old Julian Rijkhoff, whose transfer from Ajax to Borussia Dortmund in January 2021 caused quite a bit of controversy. On behalf of Dortmund Under 19, he managed to find the net no fewer than seventeen times in his first twenty matches.
When Ajax defeated Dortmund both at home and away in the group stage of the Champions League this season, it did not only affect whether or not they hibernate in the billion-dollar ball of two of the biggest clubs in Europe. It was also a confrontation between two clubs with a certain reputation. Ajax and Dortmund are both known for developing young talent. Some regard them as the two breeding grounds where top talents have the greatest chance of breaking through in the first team.
Ajax could justifiably be proud that it came out on top in both matches against Dortmund. With the wins, it also took a bit of revenge on a club they felt they had lost at the negotiating table earlier this year. In January 2021, Julian Rijkhoff celebrated his sixteenth birthday by leaving Ajax – a club where he had played for the past nine years – for Dortmund. It has been one of the more eye-catching transfers of a player of that age in the past year.
Rijkhoff was seen as one of the greatest talents within the famous Ajax youth academy. However, he declined the opportunity to sign a professional contract in the Johan Cruijff ArenA. He felt that he would probably have to wait a long time for a first team chance if he stayed in Amsterdam, especially after the arrival of Sébastien Haller, who came over from West Ham earlier that month for a record amount of 22.5 million euros. United.
Rijkhoff made his debut a year earlier on his fifteenth birthday with a goal at Ajax Under 17. After that, he was accurate ten times in six matches for this youth team. The striker gained fame when he scored six goals in three games for the Netherlands Under 15 during a tournament in Spain at the beginning of 2020. It also ensured that Dortmund became concrete. The German club was willing to pay 130,000 euros to bring him to the Signal Iduna Park. Marco van Basten denounced Rijkhoff’s choice to go to BVB and called it ‘poor management.’
Dick van Burik, Rijkhoff’s agent, wanted to emphasize why his client was so eager to leave. “We were very impressed with the talks,” said van Burik after the transfer was confirmed. “Dortmund knew all about him, their scouting department did a very good job. How good BVB already knew him, how he developed and how convinced they were of him, all this made a big impression on Julian and his parents.”
“Yes, there was quite a bit of noise”, Rijkhoff said in October in conversation with ELF Football. “It surprised me that it turned out this way, especially on social media. I soon got a lot of hate messages. That was sometimes difficult, but you learn to deal with it by not reading everything. From a young age I have been used to being commented on about my appearance. Especially when I still had long hair. I let it pass me by. Just like what was written in the media. The people close to me and myself know why I chose Borussia Dortmund.”
Due to the corona pandemic and a torn ankle ligament, Rijkhoff only made his first minutes in the Dortmund shirt at the start of the 2021/22 season. He immediately became an important part of the Under 19 of the German club. It was expected that Rijkhoff would start with the Under 17, but because of his qualities he was immediately able to join the team of trainer Mike Tullberg, where he forms a formidable attacking duo with eighteen-year-old Bradley Fink.
Dortmund U19s were the only German team to qualify for the UEFA Youth League group stage, impressing with a 1-5 win over Ajax’s peers. With the successful batch, Rijkhoff is the leader in the A-juniors Bundesliga and is in the semi-finals of the DFB-Pokal for juniors. In addition, the first prize of the season has already been won with the NRW-Liga-Cup. Rijkhoff personally decided the final against arch-rival Schalke 04 (0-2) by scoring twice.
In total, Rijkhoff scored seventeen goals and five assists during his first twenty appearances in the Dortmund shirt. It is not only his nose for the goal that Tullberg has noticed. “What’s quite impressive about him are his physical characteristics and the way he’s developed in that area since he’s been here,” Rijkhoff’s trainer told Goal and SPOX. “In our last race he ran almost twelve kilometers. You rarely see that with a striker, not even with the pros. There were also sprints of about three hundred, four hundred meters. With those numbers, he is one of the best players in our team. You can’t say he’s actually still an Under-17 player.”
The ball clearly shows why Rijkhoff was a target for a number of European top clubs before Dortmund made his move. With his excellent ball control and cold-blooded finish, he stands out among his peers. He counts Robert Lewandowski – with whom he is sometimes compared – and Erling Braut Haaland among those from whom he wants to learn. This becomes especially clear when in the half-spaces for the opposing team’s defense to play a part in Dortmund’s build-up.
The young striker has at times struggled with the intensity of German youth football at Dortmund compared to Ajax, where more emphasis is placed on the technical aspects of the game. “Overall, he had some normal highs and lows,” Tullberg says. “First he had to prove himself here. He sat on the bench a few times or was substituted at half-time, something he had never experienced in his football career. To keep his place in the team, he had to adapt to the intensity we can muster in training and competition, but he has risen to the challenge.”
9-1 win, 5 goals ?? pic.twitter.com/BSPyWGjy1j
— Julian Rijkhoff (@JulianRijkhoff) Nov 28, 2021
Rijkhoff reaped the benefits of his hard work in the last weeks before the winter break: his two goals in the cup final that he won against Schalke led to a run of four games in which he scored nine goals, including five against Fortuna Düsseldorf U19. told him, ‘You get your chances, so now you just have to take them,’” Tullberg recalled. “He looked at me very calmly and said, ‘Don’t worry, coach, goals are my specialty.’ I thought that was very impressive. He then scored nine goals in a short period of time. His greatest weapon is scoring goals.
What is the perspective for Rijkhoff now? He is one of the best strikers in the world in his class. However, there are currently some talented and prolific attackers in Dortmund. Haaland is of course the big eye-catcher in the first team, while seventeen-year-old Youssoufa Moukoko is waiting for more opportunities under trainer Marco Rose. In addition, Fink, who is two years older than Rijkhoff, has already been involved in 33 goals with the Under 19 in twenty matches this season. The Swiss youth international will therefore be keen to get promoted as soon as possible.
If Rijkhoff wants to compete with them in the coming year, he must continue to develop some aspects of his game. “He can think quickly, but he has to outsmart his opponents even more so that he can outdo them from 10 to 15 meters away,” explains Tullberg. “He also has to learn to use his body better in the duels. For example, if he has to control the ball with his back to the goal, and the opponent plays a bit more physically, you see that he is not always up to it. But that comes slowly. He is still young, but very eager to learn.” Ajax proved to be twice too strong for Dortmund in the Champions League matches this season, but in the long term the Germans may well become the big winner, if Rijkhoff fulfills his potential and helps the club to the necessary successes.”