Manchester United are edging ever closer to completing the £73m signing of Frenkie de Jong in a deal that will make the 25-year-old midfielder the most expensive Dutch footballer of all time, taking in accumulated transfer fees. Not bad going for a player sold by Willem II to Ajax for just €1 only seven years ago.
The Eredivisie club, who also allowed Virgil van Dijk to slip through their net, did manage to negotiate a sell-on clause in that deal entitling them to a sizeable sum when De Jong moved from Ajax to Barcelona for £65m in 2019. Still, De Jong’s marked development since must have caught some at his former club by surprise.
So eager were Barca to secure De Jong’s signature ahead of their European rivals that they struck an agreement with Ajax in January of that year, before Erik ten Hag‘s fearless young team had even eliminated Real Madrid and Juventus in successive Champions League knockout rounds and lifted a first Eredivisie title in half a decade.
De Jong had already caught the eye and captured the imagination of Ajax observers by playing in an inventive role under Ten Hag, the new Manchester United boss who, like so many associated with that great Ajax side, enjoyed a significant reputational boost by the end of that particular season.
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In the second half of 2017-18, after Ten Hag’s appointment in December 2017, De Jong became increasingly prominent, often playing as a left-sided centre back. Unusually for a defender, De Jong completed 2.5 successful dribbles per game from defence which put him in the top 20 most efficient ball carriers in the Dutch top-flight.
In total, he completed 54 of his 58 attempted dribbles; as though the ball was connected to his right foot by an invisible string. Like Liverpool’s Thiago Alcantara, De Jong is a master at using the outside of his boot to manoeuvre his way into space.
Having a defensive playmaker able to step into midfield with the ball and deliver penetrative passes into the final third is a hallmark of the Ajax way and De Jong thrived in that role. So much so that he provided the third-most assists in their squad that season with seven, behind attackers Dusan Tadic and David Neres.
Daley Blind’s arrival from Manchester United the following summer resulted in Ten Hag shifting De Jong up the pitch into central midfield where some of his other qualities came to the fore.
During Ajax’s run to the last four of the Champions League, for instance, De Jong was integral to their “counter-press” a strategy that is geared towards winning the ball back as quickly as it has been lost. De Jong ranked joint-sixth for interceptions and seventh for tackles in the competition.
Owing to his varied skill-set and bravery on the ball, De Jong appeared to be a natural fit for Barcelona but the move didn’t quite pan out as all might have hoped. In De Jong’s defence, the club he joined is a different proposition entirely from the one he will leave behind. There aren’t too many to have flourished amidst the dysfunction at the Nou Camp over the past few years. A rotating cast of managers is also unlikely to have helped his cause.
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Transforming United’s midfield overnight will be no easy feat either. Too often during United’s descent into the doldrums, the midfield has been static and one-paced. In theory, De Jong should be the perfect antidote to that, but then so too should have Donny van de Beek, his former midfield partner in Amsterdam, who has managed a combined nine Premier League starts – five of which were at Everton – across two painfully unfulfilling seasons.
But having emerged as one of the most promising and coveted midfield players in Europe during his first stint working under Ten Hag, the hope will be that De Jong can not only rediscover that form but surpass it, and drag United along with him. Ten Hag is clearly eager to surround himself with players that share his ideology: Christian Eriksen, another summer target, trained with Ten Hag’s squad before joining Brentford and was schooled in the Ajax system prior to joining Tottenham.
United, now entering their sixth marriage since bidding a tearful farewell to Sir Alex Ferguson, can ill afford for this relationship to fail to spark. But by reuniting Ten Hag with De Jong, they are at least making a public show of commitment to their latest managerial experiment.
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