Player Profile

Liverpool needed a tall striker up front and when Houllier was trying to build his own team, Meijer seemed a sensible acquisition on a free transfer on 1 July 1999. Meijer started ten games and came on as a substitute in 17 in his season and a half at Liverpool. His only goals for the club came in the League Cup in the less than luxurious surroundings of Boothferry Park, Hull. Meijer may have had limited abilities as a footballer but he had a never-say-die attitude that inspired better performances from others around him. Once big Emile Heskey arrived in March 2000 the end was nigh for Meijer. He had already been on the books of seven different clubs in Holland, Belgium and Germany before joining Liverpool so it wasn't a surprise that he decided to return to mainland Europe and join Hamburg after being released by Liverpool. After a moderately successful spell at Hamburg, 11 goals from 58 league matches, Meijer moved to Aachen, a town on the German/Dutch border close to the Limburg area of southern Holland where he had been born. His goals helped Alemannia Aachen to reach the German cup final in 2004, when despite defeat to Werder Bremen, his club was entered into the UEFA Cup because Werder had already qualified for Europe as German champions that season. Meijer was also a key player as Aachen returned to the top division of German football for the first time in 36 years. After that promotion, Meijer retired as an active player shortly before his thirty-seventh birthday. In 2008 he was asked to become a patron of the newly-formed AFC Liverpool club, a position he immediately accepted. A year later he was named Alemannia Aachen's Director of Sport.

Meijer became a bit of a 'cult hero' amongst Liverpool supporters despite his time on Merseyside being only brief. Whilst a Hamburger player, he travelled to Dortmund for Liverpool's UEFA Cup final in 2001, where he was seen partying with many Reds before the match. LFChistory.net met up with him to refresh his memory of that party. "I went over with some friends and they were all wearing a Liverpool shirt with my name and number on it. Some Liverpool fans were asking where they got that shirt. I had my jacket over my shirt. They answered: 'Well, because Erik is here' and then the catastrophe started. I had to sing some songs for the boys. It was a great afternoon. One of my best times as a supporter, being on the big square and singing songs." Asked tongue-in-cheek to explain his rather less than stellar goalscoring ratio for Liverpool of two goals in 27 games he replied: "Correct, that's one goal every ten games... [laughs]. It was a great start. The Hull game was the first game I started and I scored two goals and Liverpool won. It was a very good start, but it was just a start." Jamie Carragher certainly approved of Meijer. "He was just a great fella to have around the place and a great fella to have on the pitch when he did play, a real team player who'd really put himself about. He was just unfortunate at the time that we had so many good strikers and he was probably number four choice before he got the chance to move on. Mad Erik, I think he's definitely a cult-hero."