If you talk to Manchester United fans about Memphis Depay, they will generally either laugh, cry, or both.
The Dutchman was signed, much to the chagrin of fellow suitors Arsenal, by United in May 2015, in deal worth £25m from PSV. The players who had made that move before him? Jaap Stam, Park Ji-sung and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Needless to say, expectations were high. At no point did he live up to them.
Having scored 22 league goals in his last season at PSV, he scored just two for Manchester United under Louis van Gaal. When he was replaced by Jose Mourinho, Depay was out on in the cold, and started just once under the Portuguese manager.
The Dutch though never lost faith in him as he remained part of the Oranje line-up. That said, they didn’t have much choice with their national team crumbling. Missing out on the 2018 World Cup was a major blow and the likes of Depay, who was now tearing up Ligue 1 for Lyon, was part of the rebuild. He needed a manager and a system that made him believe. He got it.
“You look at him and you have the perception that he is ‘a difficult one’ but he isn’t. He loves his football, he wants to play it in a certain way,” said Dutch former striker and BBC pundit Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink said ahead of the clash with Austria, knowing what Frank de Boer clearly believes too.
Within 25 minutes of their Group C match against Austria, that “certain way” was obvious to anyone playing close enough attention.
The system, unlike the rigid ones of Van Gaal or Mourinho, is fluid and is also built around him. In a 3-5-1-1, he plays off the striker Wout Weghorst, but to suggest he plays any set position undersells what he adds to the Dutch attack.
“I now have the freedom to be myself everywhere,” he said in an interview back in December. He was talking about his rapping (he is a successful hip-hop artist who released his debut album Heavy Stepper in November). He is primarily though a footballer, and the freedom he has been given by De Boer is evident on the pitch too. Gini Wijnaldum, Frenkie de Jong and Marten de Roon do enough hard yards in the middle for him to truly express himself further forward.
Within the first 25 minutes, he had shown a different side to himself virtually every time he had the ball: running off the target man Weghorst, drifting into the left-hand channel to run at a defender, dropping deep into midfield to allow wing-back Patrick van Aanholt to overlap before hitting the killer pass, going to the byline himself to make a cross and running in behind a centre-back on the right for a ball in behind.
“There’s lots of pressure on him because he is the one who has to carry the Dutch national team,” Hasselbaink added.
In the Johan Cruyff ArenA, with 16,000 Dutch fans in to watch them, Depay had the chance to give them something to shout about from the spot. He had missed his last competitive penalty for the Netherlands, albeit thanks to a fine save from Ugurcan Cakir, but this was under far more pressure. Rather than rush to get it over with, Depay stood for what felt like minutes after the whistle blew, before running up and slamming the ball home, low and left, beating the keeper for pace and placement.
It was not a note-perfect rendition of “Roy of the Rovers (Amsterdam remix)”; Depay had the chance to double his tally before then break when the ball was squared to him seven yards out with the keeper stranded. It was awkwardly bouncing but he should, he knew, have scored. It was a blemish, but over his portfolio of work in the tournament thus far, it has been the anomaly rather than the trend.
Depay will think long and hard about his options this summer.
“Barcelona has shown interest in me,” Depay told French newspaper L’Equipe before Euro 2020.
“But they are not the only ones who have been interested. At the moment, nothing has been done with any team.”
You would forgive him for being wary of moving to a big club after being stung at United. The flux of European football’s big clubs at present, none more so than Barcelona, is such that he may be better sticking with what he knows for another season.
However, he has rarely shied away from discussing his desire to be back at the top level. “I want to go to a club like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain or Bayern Munich,” he unashamedly told a Dutch magazine last year. Now Ronald Koeman, one of those who stuck by him as Netherlands boss, is in charge of Barcelona, they surely have become front-runners to sign him. Koeman says the deal is almost done to take Depay back to one of the best clubs in Europe.
On the basis of his showing at Euro 2020 so far, he is almost ready.
More from i on Euro 2020
- The football nomad who became a hero for his role in saving Eriksen’s life
- How Ronaldo’s Coca-Cola stunt could change the face of football sponsorship
- In praise of Emma Hayes, the best pundit at Euro 2020 so far
- Eriksen collapse has thrown a spotlight on football’s relentless thirst for more
- How to watch every Euro 2020 match on TV and online in the UK
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/35zVXm8
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