Between sloping lawns, meadows full of yellow rapeseed and brown fields are two empty, faded green football fields next to a row of poplars and an empty house. There is a man-sized, elongated white barn that serves as a canteen. A urinal has been hammered against an outside wall, De Zwaluw Vechmaal is written on a white board in black letters. Only the wind sounds.
The contrast with a swirling Kuip in the raw South Rotterdam or a hostile atmosphere in Berlin, Belgrade, Prague or Marseille is enormous. Yet this is the place where Cyriel Dessers grew up, the Belgian striker who became the figurehead of Feyenoord’s successful European campaign. The final of the Conference League against AS Roma is in Tirana on Wednesday. It is precisely under pressure that Dessers is at his best, he has proven countless times this season.
How did the special career of the public favorite whose qualities are always and eternally doubted? So in Vechmaal, a sleepy farming village in vast Belgian Limburg, just below Tongeren, 30 kilometers west of Maastricht. Dessers lived there from the age of 5 to 16, kicked endlessly against a wall of the parental home and played football all Saturday at a sports park that goes by the name ‘The Horror’, but which is anything but terrifying.
†Shotten Cyriel liked to do that’, says Guy Vanlangenaker, his first trainer, walking across the higher main field where Dessers, in purple and white uniform, played football twenty years ago. Vanlangenaker and Dessers got along well despite the age difference of more than forty years. ‘Both football animals,’ Vanlangenaker murmurs. He’s wearing a Manchester City track jacket, bright red cap, track pants and football boots, although no one else is around on this Tuesday afternoon.
He has just stopped giving training to his great regret. “I woke up a month ago with a speech impediment. They couldn’t find anything else. But this is what it is.’
Goal cannon
Fortunately, there are still memories, including of the best player who ever played for Vechmaal and yet went unnoticed for a long time. Until he was 12, Dessers played in the eight hundred souls village. Then the goal cannon went to the top amateur club KSK Tongeren, located 10 kilometers away, with a trip to professional club Sint-Truiden, then back to Tongeren.
Dessers went to study law in Leuven. He joined the local professional club OHL, but did not break through. He considered playing lower and putting everything into his law studies, but then Lokeren picked him up. He was not undisputed there either, but the lifebuoy came from the Netherlands. He became popular with NAC, FC Utrecht and Heracles. But it was only at Feyenoord that he became the public’s favorite. He has already scored ten times in the Conference League tournament, often starting on the bench.
There is no Cyriel Dessers mania in Vechmaal, even though the Dessers family lived next to the meeting center. ‘Young people are moving away from here more and more, we only have two senior teams and no youth teams’, says Vanlangenaker.
He walks to two spots on the sidelines. ‘Cyriel scored here, he played on a quarter or a half field with different youth teams. He always wanted to have the ball. He had to make actions for me, because later you are often banned. He scored 90 percent of the goals. The others thought it was fine. Cyriel was a sweet, sociable, gentle kid off the field. But very passionate about it, he also received technical training at a football school in Liège.’
Every pupil at De Zwaluw received a ball. ‘Cyriel’s was completely worn out after six months, the others lasted three years in no time.’ He was regularly allowed to try out at professional clubs in the area such as KRC Genk, Standard Liège and MVV, but never stay. In addition to De Zwaluw trainer, VanLangenaker was a scout for Roda JC for a long time. “But I never gave his name. I don’t really know why. I thought it better for him to stay around here.’
The Dessers team was the pride of the club. ‘We usually played at the lowest of the lowest level’, says Hendrik Swerten, the local baker and youth trainer. ‘But not Cyriel’s squad. They rarely lost to teams that played at national level. Mainly because of Cyriel, she shot them one after the other.’
That sometimes caused resentment among opponents. Dessers, whose mother has Nigerian roots, was sometimes called ‘blackie’. Swerten: ‘He could handle that, knew that they wanted to take him out of his game. He was smart, hey, won a regional dictation competition, picked up Latin in high school. He had a beautiful smile, believed in himself in a pleasant way. Yes, that boy had everything. You could never be mad at him. He worked hard, never skipped a workout.’
How good is Dessers now?
Nevertheless, it is still disputed at the analysis tables whether Feyenoord should transfer 4 million to Genk to definitively engage the mercenary. Dessers has learned to live with the doubts. His parents always insisted on the positive. That an internship at a professional club ended in nothing was not a bad thing, because he had learned something again, hadn’t he? They drove him everywhere, including his six-year younger brother Emile. Cyriel must have realized, they thought, that time was put into him, effort had been made. So don’t sulk too long if things don’t go well.
At that time, parents made more and more effort to get their child into professional football as soon as possible if they suspected that there was talent in it. How different was the Dessers family. His father Herwig sometimes gave a tip (for example to train extra on his left leg), but otherwise his parents always left him free in his choices. They also did not interfere with umpires or trainers. If there was a complaint about Cyriel’s temper on the field, they just said, “Leave that boy.”
The sparing comments about his skin color answered their son himself in his own way. He cheered a bit more exuberantly right in front of his verbal attackers after a goal, another time his teammates jumped in the breach for him.
Cyriel was consciously made a member of a youth movement. Get away from performing, have some fun, mess around with paint, scout, celebrate carnival, laugh out loud.
Cyriel continued to believe in a career as a pro, despite all the rejections. Not fast enough, not strong enough, not refined enough, was always the comment. His goals were often dismissed as luck or due to opponents mistakes. “Already then he scored goals like last against Marseille when he punished a back pass that was too short,” says former teammate at Tongeren, Lennert Vandecaetsbeek. “He smells it when a defender is going to make a mistake, then he’s there. That is also a quality.’
At the youth complex of KSK Tongeren at Het Kleinveldje, where Dessers settled at the age of 12, the many warning signs to keep everything tidy are particularly striking. ‘Get your football boots back to like new here… a clean locker room for you and a lot less mud wrestling for our cleaning crew’, reads a sign next to a drawn brown monster.
“We didn’t have to point out Cyriel,” says Jef Byloos, sporting manager of KSK Tongeren. “He was good.” Byloos does not understand that Belgian professional clubs had so little confidence in Dessers. ‘We got him at the first when he was 16. He stood his ground there too.’ Tongeren is now working with Anderlecht’s youth academy, another sign states. Byloos: ‘Anderlecht might have appreciated his talent. But that collaboration has only happened in recent years.’
Student life
Dessers still benefits from his study time in Leuven, where he started living in rooms as a 16-year-old. He enjoyed student life, made long trips and many friends, learned the value of money. In one of his first months he called home in panic. He had bought a bowl of crab salad and now his monthly money was almost gone.
He developed his sense of responsibility there, although he later also spoke with a mental coach. Under pressure in packed stadiums you often see the best Dessers. An important penalty just before time, like last against PSV? Give the ball to Dessers. He was also at his best at NAC, FC Utrecht and KRC Genk when the pressure was highest.
Dessers is a public player pur sang, who even calls the boss of a Feyenoord supporter to ask for time off so that that supporter can go to the semi-finals in Marseille. That was all filmed by the media department of Feyenoord. Dessers already had it as a boy, that social aspect, say former youth trainers Vanlangenaker and Swerten. Swerten still receives a message within five minutes when he congratulates Dessers on a goal or victory.
The Zwaluw director Patrick Bons says that the Dessers family was always present on the so-called ‘dinner day’ of Cyriel’s first club. ‘Then we ate spaghetti together that everyone paid for. The proceeds went to the club.’
Vechmaal is empty. Young people are leaving. There is no brasserie, no café, no butcher, no baker anymore. The football club is in danger of being swallowed up by a merger. Board member Bons and former youth trainer Vanlangenaker hope that Dessers will visit again. But they will not impose themselves, that is not in the nature of Vechmaal. Even watching the Conference League final together on a big screen won’t happen. VanLangenaker: ‘We are proud inside here.’