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Sunday, April 12, 2020 at 21:27
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Frenkie de Jong is grateful to Willem II for the years he spent in the club’s youth academy. In the documentary In the footsteps of Frenkie & Virgil, which revolves around the football academy of Willem II and premiered on Sunday evening FOX Sports, De Jong looks back on his years as a youth player in Tilburg. He played for amateur club ASV Arkel until 2005, before De Jong switched to Willem II at the age of seven. The current midfielder of Barcelona then went through the youth academy of Willem II and made three appearances for the first team.
FOX Sports publishes a letter in the documentary that was sent to his parents on October 28, 2004, after De Jong had completed an internship. As a seven-year-old intern, De Jong was assessed on four components: his technique (speed of action and passing), tactics (sense of position and task awareness), physical (speed and motor skills) and personality (competition attitude, coaching and taking initiative). The highest possible rating per category was ‘excellent’; the least was “insufficient.” De Jong received a ‘good’ rating for all parts, except for his physics: that was a satisfactory / good. The club wanted to add De Jong to the youth academy, but also had competition from Feyenoord.
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The letter that was sent to the parents of Frenkie de Jong (source: FOX Sports).
De Jong also had an internship at Varkenoord and Rotterdam was easier to reach from Tilburg than his hometown of Arkel. “I had to choose between Feyenoord and Willem II”, De Jong looks back. “I then chose Willem II, because I felt that the youth academy did not differ that much in terms of level.” At the time, Willem II’s training did indeed have many talented players, including Virgil van Dijk. A lot was expected of players like Dani Koks and Jeroen Lumu, although their careers did not reach full maturity. For De Jong, not only the talent in the training counted, but also the feeling he got at the club. “When I went to Willem II, I was always looking forward to it, even though it was a short drive. When I came back, I was always happy and happy. That feeling was one of the reasons I chose Willem II.”
In addition, De Jong noticed that the club management had confidence in him. Despite the fact that his physique always remained a point of attention, he had the opportunity to develop. “I stayed really small, while the rest got much bigger,” De Jong remembers. “When I was 1 meter 50, the rest was 1 meter 65 or 1 meter 70. At a club like Ajax you naturally have a lot of good players. Maybe there is a chance that you play less often. But Willem II always has a lot of confidence they had something special in me. They kept giving me extra attention. I don’t think I would have gotten better if I had been in training with Ajax, PSV or anywhere else. “
However, De Jong’s plans have not all come true. He always had the ambition to succeed in the first team of Willem II, he says. In the end, however, he got no further than two raids in the Eredivisie and a raid in the TOTO KNVB Cup, before he switched to Ajax in 2016. “Because I felt good with Willem II and was treated well, I always had in my head to get to Willem II in the first, from there to the top of the Netherlands and then go abroad. I have the first one, but actually not. That is a shame. I would have liked to have played many more games in the first of Willem II. In the end it did not go that way, but it went quite well, “he laughs.
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