If I remember the first day I saw

Frenkie de Jong

?

Yes, and very well also.

That blond-haired boy was the smallest of all ... But he was also a football animal ».

Jos Bogers

, who attends EL MUNDO satisfied, began training the now Barcelona player at the age of 13. At the time, at the Willem II academy in Tilburg, no one could yet imagine the real projection that this lightweight boy Bogers made play ten might have. "He always had an advantage over the rest because he saw and interpreted spaces like nobody else." This fragile-looking, upright student boy made the three-quarter-hour bus ride between his hometown of Arkel and Tilburg every day. It was not a sacrifice. “The only thing he wanted was to play soccer. His greatest pleasure was going to train. And get better".

He's been doing it his whole life.

In his 10 years of training at Willem II.

In the Ajax lab.

In a Barcelona in which he discovered too many difficulties in his first season.

"A fantastic and very professional boy"

"We knew of his potential, but the first year was very difficult for him", admit in the offices of the Ciutat Esportiva Joan Gamper.

And they find a determining aspect in their final fit.

«De Jong is already the footballer we all expected.

You have taken a big step forward.

The arrival of

Ronald Koeman

last summer was key for him. He knows him well - he has already protected him in the Dutch national team - and has known how to demand him according to his conditions, "admit the Barça club's technical sources. There have been multiple talks between Koeman and De Jong in which the coach demanded, even vehemently, that he be more courageous. Let him be noticed in all phases of the game. De Jong, "a fantastic and very professional boy" - according to Barcelona's assurance - needed a peak moment. He found it in the last Cup final.

It was in La Cartuja, a stadium similar to a dilapidated exhibition fair pavilion. No audience. Without his family. Without his longtime girlfriend,

Mikky Kiemeney

, whom he met at the Koning Willem II Institute in Tilburg, a mile from the stadium where De Jong built his dreams. To Mikky, with whom he already shares the covers of trends in his country, he dedicated his goal from a distance, just as he had promised. De Jong completed his first period game with the Barcelona shirt and gave meaning to a wait that for himself became exasperating. "You just had to leave him free," they admit from the locker room. Although perhaps he also needed something more. That he himself had just believed that he can be the leader of the team's game this decade.

When Barcelona hired De Jong in exchange for 75 million euros and 11 more in variables, there was not a single reproach to former president Bartomeu. They say that the former general manager of the club,

Pep Segura,

burst into tears the day they managed to close the contract in Amsterdam.

De Jong had enough qualities for PSG and Manchester City to fight for him to the end.

A privileged head to understand the games, extreme ease of starting and driving, and a prodigious physique that allowed him to display his talent in a wide radius.

"And it is also that he was from Barça almost since he was born", proudly intervene from the Barça entity.

This time, sentimental propaganda does have its reason for being.

De Jong's grandparents were fed up with bringing him Barça shirts when they spent the summer on the Costa Brava.

The advice of Busquets

It was about time. But also to offer him command.

Ernesto Valverde

and

Quique Setién

, their previous coaches at Barcelona, ​​were always clear that De Jong was a special footballer. Although they failed to squeeze it out, largely because their ability to influence the game escapes the formalities of classic positions. Valverde saw him as the natural heir in the

Busquets

midfielder

, precisely one of the footballers who has advised the Dutchman the most. Setién tried to take advantage of his arrival from the inside, although an untimely injury curtailed his first great progression.

Koeman wasn't going to beat around the bush. He and De Jong were to be linked by an umbilical cord. The footballer has played every game in this league, starting 33 of the 34 games. Accumulate seven goals and eight assists in 48 of the 50 official matches played by the team this year. Koeman was going to give himself to him, as long as the footballer discarded any hint of shyness or melancholy regarding the beautiful and naive football of

Ten Hag's

Ajax

.

The former coach began thinking that De Jong could grow as Busquets' guard in a double pivot that did not finish flowing.

The coach also used him to lead a defense of three in the most sensitive moments of the season, convincing him that his skills at the start would limit almost any defensive deficiency.

Until he chose to fly it off.

De Jong is no longer that child who had to be smarter than anyone to survive in the face of more made bodies.

But he's still the football animal his childhood coach ran into the first time he saw him.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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