Tijjani Reijnders Recounts Aldi Job at 19 in Zwolle

tijjani reijnders worked four hours a day as a cashier at Aldi in Zwolle when he was 19, even as his football career was still struggling to take off. He said the job came after his mother told him he needed to get work as an adult, and before he established himself at PEC Zwolle.

He biked to the store in the center of his hometown after school, carried jarred pickles from the storage room to the shelves and later scanned groceries when he returned the next day. The routine sat alongside an uncertain start in football, with his place at PEC Zwolle not yet settled.

Zwolle Store And Training Ground

Reijnders said his mother pushed him toward the job with a direct instruction at home: “Tijjani, you really need to get a job. You’re an adult now. Maybe you could deliver newspapers?” She filled out the Aldi application form and made him hand it to the store manager, who called him back the next day.

That same period brought frustration on the pitch. He said he had signed for PEC Zwolle, but he was on the bench for the first three games for the U19 team, and after his father watched a training session he was not even in the squad for the next match. Reijnders said he cried on his bike on the way to school after learning that decision.

Mother And Father At Home

The response at home was blunt. After his father said, “I wouldn’t pick you either. If you keep training like this, you can play for my team in the fourth division,” his mother later backed the point at dinner with, “Tijjani …….. he’s right.”

That family pressure came from a football household. Reijnders said he grew up in Zwolle with parents involved in the game, and he also described an earlier stage when Twente signed him and his brother when he was about 10 and 12, then sent a taxi every morning at 6 a.m. because the training ground was an hour away.

Reijnders And PEC Zwolle

The Aldi shift and the youth-team setback sit in the same timeline for a reason. One showed how ordinary the day-to-day was at 19; the other showed how narrow the football path still was before he settled at PEC Zwolle.

For a player now talking openly about that stretch, the detail that stands out is not the job alone. It is how quickly he moved from scanning groceries in Zwolle to trying again the next day in football, with the margin between rejection and progress measured in one squad selection.