World Soccer - UK (2019-11)

BIOGRAPHY

MAY 10, 2015

Makes Eredivisie

debut, as a sub for

Willem II at home

to ADO Den Haag.

AUG 22, 2015

Signs a four-year

deal with Ajax and

is loaned back to

Willem II a day later.

SEP 21, 2016

Makes his first-team

debut for Ajax,

against Willem II

in the KNVB Cup.

NOV 24, 2016

Plays in continental

club competition for

the first time, as a

sub, as Ajax beat

Panathinaikos 2-0

in the Europa

League.

FEB 12, 2017

Makes his league

debut for Ajax, as a

sub against Sparta

Rotterdam.

MAR 24, 2017

Makes his debut for

Holland under-21s,

against Finland.

selected. Frenkie was far from the player

he is today. I find it tremendous what he’s

doing now.”

Streppel would later declare in an

interview on NPO Radio: “Us coaches

have to make choices. I thought he

wasn’t quite ready. Sorry Frenkie, that

I didn’t let you play every minute.”

However, many other coaches and

decision-makers at Willem saw De Jong

through a completely different prism, that

of the brilliant boy wonder. Jos Bogers,

who had him under his wing with the

club’s under-15s still loves to wax lyrical

about the game awareness which the

youngster displayed back then. “It

seemed as if he saw things before

everyone else,” he recalls.

Ex-Willem managing director Berry

Van Gool, a one-time banker of no little

eloquence, remains particularly critical of

the part Streppel played in keeping the

youngster boxed in. “I was enormously

disappointed that Frenkie virtually played

no first-team games for us,” he claimed in

a piece in the Brabants Dagblad paper in

December 2017. “He’s the biggest talent

we’ve had here. I’m a football lover. You

want to see such players in the starting

line-up, on the pitch. Yet nothing clicked

between Jurgen Streppel and him.

However, I’m not the coach.”

One of Streppel’s former assistants at

Willem, Dirk Heesen, offers an interesting

take on the reasons for De Jong’s lack of

game time. He suggests that Frenkie was

too “frivolous” for

their liking, too

at the tender age of 16 and made his

first-team debut in May 2015, earning a

move to Dutch giants Ajax, who promptly

sent him back on loan to Willem for the

2015-16 campaign.

Then came the collision with harsh

reality as Streppel decided to park him

in the reserves. Little wonder De Jong

looked so frustrated at the time: being

sufficiently impressive to be drafted into

the Ajax fold, but only an afterthought

further down the food chain at Willem.

Something had to give, and in the end

the loan was aborted, the teen returning

to Amsterdam in December 2015.

To be fair to Streppel, the youth-

development business is not an exact

science and at that point the Willem boss

simply could not have imagined that De

Jong would emerge as one of Europe’s

most promising young schemers, become

of ever-increasing importance to the

national team and be the subject of a

€75million move to Barca.

From Streppel’s perspective all that

would have been science fiction.

“It’s simple,” Streppel explained to De

Telegraaf newspaper in self-justification

mode. “He was an awesome player. I had

him train with the first team around 15

times and you could see his wonderful

range of qualities.

“The problem was we were struggling

against relegation, so other players were

Early days...playing

for Willem II against

PEC Zwolle

Hard-nosed...

Jurgen Streppel

Disappointed...Berry Van Gool

“I thought he wasn’t quite ready.

Sorry Frenkie, that I didn’t let

you play every minute”

Former Willem II boss Jurgen Streppel

Timeline