He has neither the kicking technique nor the height of Pierre van Hooijdonk. He lacks the brute strength of Dirk Kuijt, as well as the leading qualities of Peter Houtman. He doesn’t have the dribble of Harry Bild, the speed of Ove Kindvall and Cor van der Gijp, and the cool ball feeling of Robin van Persie either.
Few football experts will have added Cyriel Dessers to the short list of illustrious Feyenoord strikers, when the cheerful Belgian, who previously did not make it at FC Utrecht, came over last summer on a rental basis from KRC Genk. As former captain and trainer Rinus Israël describes it: ‘Then people would have said you were out of your mind’.
Yet on Thursday evening, Dessers again scored twice in the first game of the semifinal of the Conference League at home against Olympique Marseille: 3-2. They weren’t world-class goals. He owed the first goal to a phenomenal heel from Luis Sinisterra, who would score a little later. The second to a too short pass from Olympique defender Caleta-Car.
Top scorer
But Dessers was in the right place twice and acted competently twice. As he has done eight times before this Conference League season. Never has a Feyenoord player scored more in a single season in Europe than Dessers, who also leads the top scorer standings of the Conference League.
The mercenary is the protagonist of Feyenoord’s perhaps most special European trip. It started on June 22 and has already spanned seventeen games. The eighteenth is next Thursday in Marseille, the possible nineteenth on May 25 in the final city of Tirana (Albania). Remarkable: no goal by Dessers was scored in the preliminaries and his goals almost always influenced the result.
The one-time Nigeria international was unfit when he was hired at the 11th hour from KRC Genk, at least not by the standards of coach Arne Slot who long favored Bryan Linssen, a 31-year-old left winger who had had a difficult season. . Former Israel captain: ‘Being a striker at Feyenoord is extremely difficult. You don’t get a lot of balls and they expect you to pop them all in. It’s always been that way.’
The now 80-year-old European Cup I winner saw a lot pass by at Feyenoord. He often personally tested them in training. Israel: ‘Could they take a beating? You wanted to know. A Feyenoord striker must stand firm. Literally and figuratively.’
Very complete
What then is the strength of Dessers, the striker without one distinct specialty? “He has everything, is very complete,” says FC Groningen defender Bart van Hintum, who played against him twice this season. ‘He is in the right place at the right times, you can’t learn that. As a defender, with such a type around, you should never think: the ball won’t fall there.’
Sparta defender Bart Vriends: ‘You can’t see it, but he is fast and damn strong. You’re wrong about that.’
His technique is extremely functional, his Belgian father insisted that he was working on his two-leggedness. But Dessers also scored beautiful goals, for example visiting Slavia Prague in the group stage. And yet Israel can imagine that Olympique’s defenders have underestimated him. ‘It doesn’t scare you when you see him. He also smiles a lot after goals and in interviews.’
Reputation
Dessers only scored six goals in the Eredivisie, while he was on the field 256 minutes less than in the Conference League (582 minutes in total, so on average he scores one goal every 58 minutes). Van Hintum: ‘In the Netherlands he has built up quite a reputation, he was already top scorer at Heracles and we see all those European matches live here. Feyenoord is a top club in the Eredivisie, then you go into the duels a little harder, you are just a little sharper.’
Dessers likes to point out the power of De Kuip on European evenings. Where many a predecessor succumbed to the pressure of tens of thousands of longing looks and screaming throats, the fireworks, the banners and the techno music, that’s where he excels.
As a boy of seven, he already watched the Uefa Cup final Feyenoord – Borussia Dortmund on TV, he previously told NOS. During his holiday, he already visited the Stade Vélodrome, Olympique’s cauldron. “When you walk onto the field, that stadium, those fans. Such European evenings. Who would not want that?’
Dessers is still not from Feyenoord
Feyenoord has not yet exercised a purchase option on the Cyriel Dessers rented from the Belgian Genk. Dessers should cost 4 million euros. “If you look at his goals, he is getting cheaper and cheaper,” Slot said on Thursday evening. “But Feyenoord still has the same financial options,” the trainer pointed out last summer, when the club mainly made cutbacks.
Meanwhile, interest is growing. Dessers himself told ESPN: “If you score goals at European level, then that makes sense, I think. On the other hand, I think I’m in the right place here. It’s a dream of mine to play for such a big club and do well there. I think everyone can see from me that I am happy and enjoying myself here.”