Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
Dutch association football player (born 1983)
Dirk Jan Klaas Huntelaar (born 12 August 1983), known professionally as Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Dutch pronunciation: [ˌklaːˈɕjɑn ˈɦʏntəlaːr] ), is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a striker.
Huntelaar played for PSV, De Graafschap, AGOVV Apeldoorn, Heerenveen, Ajax, Real Madrid and AC Milan, before joining Schalke 04 in August 2010, for whom he was the top goalscorer in the 2011–12 Bundesliga with 29 league goals. Huntelaar is also Schalke's second highest goalscorer of all time, behind Klaus Fischer.
Huntelaar was named Dutch Football Talent of the Year and Ajax "Player of the Year" in 2006, and was a part of the Dutch side that won the 2006 UEFA U-21 Championship where he became the tournament's leading goalscorer and received the player of the tournament award. He was also named as one of two strikers in the UEFA Team of the Tournament. He is the all-time top scorer of the Netherlands U-21 national team with 18 goals in 23 appearances.
Early life
Huntelaar was born in Voor-Drempt, a village in the Achterhoek region of Netherlands, but moved to Hummelo when he was six weeks old. He lived with parents Dirk-Jan and Maud Huntelaar, and his two brothers Niek and Jelle. At the age of five, Huntelaar, along with his two brothers, joined the local football team VV H. en K., where he played for the next six years. He was scouted as a youth talent during this period by Go Ahead Eagles but the distance required to travel to the team's base in Deventer prevented him from joining the club.
The public source identifies “Klaas-Jan Huntelaar” as dutch association football player (born 1983). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Klaas-Jan, Huntelaar and Dutch.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q26069. VIAF identifies the subject as 286890172. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 2010, 2011 and 2006.
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This entry incorporates text from “Klaas-Jan Huntelaar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.