Read How Dirk Kuyt started his footballing career and how he landed up at liverpool
The Dutch never really rated Dirk Kuyt. His father thought he was pretty good. Good enough to at least give football a go before joining him at the wheel of a North Sea fishing trawler.
And there was one particular coach, a little later on, who ignored the advice of his colleagues and took a gamble on him.
But most of them thought he was distinctly average. A forward without any flair. A forward who might make it into the first team of a leading amateur club if he worked hard, but not much more than that. Nowhere near the kind of level that enables you to score in a Champions League final and win more than 50 international caps.
The day after celebrating two more goals for Holland in a World Cup qualifier against Macedonia, the Liverpool man reflects on the years of rejection and a period in his life when even he didn’t think he was up to that much.
‘When I was a kid I adored AC Milan,’ says Kuyt with a beaming smile. ‘They were winning everything with some great Dutch players. Gullit, Van Basten, Rijkaard. But I always knew I was never going to be like one of the greats. Look at a player like Van Persie. He’s maybe not as good as Cruyff but he’s a typical Dutch player. He has the skill and the talent. But that’s not me. I told my father I wanted to be like him, a fisherman. But when I was 11 he said I should stay on the land and try to become a footballer. He said I had a decision to make.
‘Even then, though, I knew I would have to work hard to get anywhere. I started playing for my local club in Katwijk aan Zee, a club called Quick Boys, and people always told me the best I could ever hope for was playing first team football for them. “You’re a good player,” they’d say. “But that’s the most you can hope to achieve.”’
When boys around him were being recruited by some of Holland’s leading professional clubs — Feyenoord were little more than 20 miles from his home — he failed to attract any interest.
‘In Holland, you start at the age of five at an amateur club and at that age I was doing fine,’ he says. ‘I was with Quick Boys and I was enjoying myself. But, by the time boys reach 14 or 15, the good ones go off to the academies of clubs like Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven and Ajax.
‘At that stage, though, nobody was showing an interest in me. Not at 15 or 16 either. By then I thought that, even if did eventually make it into the professional ranks, I was never going to play for one of the bigger clubs. I just had one dream. To play in the first team for my amateur club.’
At 17 he eventually did, and at 17 he received a sudden and unexpected invite to join a professional club. ‘Utrecht came in for me,’ he says. ‘After just six first-team games and six wins with Quick Boys.’
Mark Wotte, now of Southampton, was the Utrecht coach and even he appeared to think Kuyt could rise only so far. ‘He said I was capable of scoring a lot of goals for Utrecht in the Dutch league if I worked at it,’ he says. ‘And at the same time other people said, “OK, he’s now at Utrecht but he’ll never play for one of the big clubs.”’
He spent five years at Utrecht, scoring 51 goals in 160 appearances before his critics were again proved wrong. Feyenoord came calling with an offer of 1million euros. Bert van Marwijk, now coach of the Dutch national team, bought him. ‘The technical director at the club did not believe I was good enough but Van Marwijk had confidence in me and that gave me confidence,’ recalls Kuyt.
‘He was the one who thought I was capable of anything. He was the one who told me I would play every first-team game.
He spent five years at Utrecht, scoring 51 goals in 160 appearances before his critics were again proved wrong. Feyenoord came calling with an offer of 1million euros. Bert van Marwijk, now coach of the Dutch national team, bought him. ‘The technical director at the club did not believe I was good enough but Van Marwijk had confidence in me and that gave me confidence,’ recalls Kuyt.
‘He was the one who thought I was capable of anything. He was the one who told me I would play every first-team game.
‘It gives you a good feeling when you work hard for something and you achieve it, and that is the attitude I have always had when it comes to football. Scoring the most goals doesn’t worry me, because only if you work together, as a team, can you achieve anything.’
His wife, Gertrude, is the same. Kuyt had secured his lucrative move to Feyenoord but Gertrude still insisted on working as a nurse, only stopping when they had their second child.
‘We met when she was 16 and I was 17 and at a time when I was starting to establish myself as a professional footballer she went to university to train as a nurse,’ he says. ‘Even when I was at
Feyenoord she would be doing night shifts, working hard, and I am very proud of her for doing that. She didn’t need to work. But she wanted to help people.’
In forming the Dirk Kuyt Foundation with her husband, she continues to help people now, mainly disadvantaged children in Nepal and Brazil as well as closer to home. She also runs a family clothing business with Kuyt’s two sisters. More hard graft.
No wonder Rafa Benitez admires Kuyt, 28, as much as he does. No wonder Kuyt, who has just signed a two-year contract extension keeping him at Liverpool until 2012, has appeared in every one of their 30 Barclays Premier League games this season. He is a symbol of Benitez’s team.
A selfless, tireless forward who was signed as a £10million striker but now operates as one of the most effective right wingers in European football. He is a symbol of what Benitez believes in. Industry as well as a bit of invention.
‘Rafa first showed an interest in me when he was at Valencia and then he came for me once he had arrived at
Liverpool,’ he says. ‘He has also been very supportive, and even when I was having problems after my father died (of cancer two years ago) he told me he still believed in me. Everyone at the club was very supportive at that time. Everyone in the city too.’
They have always supported him and they have always admired him, not least when the sweat has saturated that flowing blond hair and he is chasing down another opponent or timing a run to perfection to score an important goal.
‘I’m proud to be part of a great team playing some great football,’ he says. ‘Some strikers might not like to see someone like Fernando Torres coming in and scoring so many goals.
‘But I’m proud to be playing alongside him, and proud to be playing with Stevie (Gerrard) too. If I do have qualities, one of them is my ability to play in different positions and I am happy with the contribution I am making. Coaches used to tell me not to run so much. That if I saved myself I would have more power to score goals.
‘But I want to win the game, and to win you have to work. I like to run and I like to play as much as I can. I remember when Frank Lampard had that run of games in the Premier League. I was enjoying a similar run in Holland. I think I played something like 250 league games in a row. The more I play, the stronger I feel.’
He says they all feel strong at Liverpool after that remarkable run of victories against Real Madrid, Manchester United and Aston Villa. In mind as well as body.
‘Before the Madrid games we were struggling with our form a bit,’ he says. ‘We were still winning games but we weren’t scoring goals in the first half.
‘Right now, though, everyone feels we are in good form and hopefully we can regain the momentum after the international break. We just have to focus on ourselves and if we can win at Fulham (tomorrow) we can put more pressure on United.’
And Chelsea in the Champions League next week? ‘It’s not that we are not confident that we can go through to the next round,’ he says. ‘But there was a feeling that we would have liked to have drawn a different team in a different country, having met them so many times in the past.
‘At the moment I guess it’s just the way it is. The top four in England are among the top eight in Europe. But if we keep the same form we’ve had for the last few weeks we are confident of getting a good result.
‘We have made progress this season. Last year we did OK in the league but we lost away to the big clubs. This season we have beaten United and Chelsea home and away and we also got a good result at the Emirates. In that respect we have changed and hopefully we can show as much in the Champions League too.’
There will be no lack of effort on Kuyt’s part.
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