Frenkie de Jong had few opportunities at Willem II under trainer Jurgen Streppel, but his talent was clearly visible on the training field for his fellow players. In The Golden Boys Podcast Dico Koppers looks back on his acquaintance with the midfielder. Koppers played in Tilburg between 2015 and 2017; in the first half of the 2015/16 season, De Jong was loaned out by Ajax to Willem II.
The team from Amsterdam had taken over De Jong from Willem II in the summer of 2015, after having played one match in the Eredivisie, and had the idea to let him mature through a rental period at his old club. On a rental basis, however, he again came to only one game for Willem II. He was supposed to be rented out for the entire season, but was already taken back by Ajax due to the lack of playing time in the winter. He did train regularly with the first team, Koppers remembers.
“Frenkie trained quite often with us,” says the 29-year-old left back, who no longer plays as a professional football player and now plays for the amateurs of Ajax. “I didn’t know what I saw. In training we played eleven against eleven. Frenkie played during the substitutions, everyone dribbled past and scored. But Streppel occasionally went completely crazy towards Frenkie. “Frenkie, the opponent doesn’t play like that either. ?’, he shouted. Frenkie really didn’t care at all. He was only playing football and having fun.”
De Jong was only just eighteen years old, but was not easily impressed by his trainer’s criticism. “He really had his own character. He didn’t care at all. I don’t mean that in a negative way at all. He just played football the way he wanted and it always went well,” said Koppers. “He knew very well what he could and could not do. Every now and then he also looked at Streppel, like: Yes, what are you talking about? I thought that was so beautiful. As a seventeen-year-old boy he just shit, despite Streppel very can look angry.”
In the dressing room, people sometimes expressed surprise about the fact that De Jong had few opportunities. “Certainly, yes. At that time we were around fifteenth, sixteenth place. If we had been a sub-topper and played good football, Frenkie would have played one hundred percent. But in the situation the club was in, Streppel just didn’t dare I myself had always lined up Frenkie.” In the end, the talented midfielder formally moved to Ajax for one euro. “The biggest scar in five years Willem II,” Berry van Gool once qualified the transfer in an interview with the Brabants Dagblad.
The then general manager was clearly disappointed that the now 36-time international of the Dutch got so little playing time: “But it did not click between him and Streppel,” he said. According to Streppel, the fact that De Jong made few minutes was ‘not purely’ to do with his age. “Also with the situation Willem II was in. Other things were asked than De Jong could bring,” Streppel told a few years ago. Football zone. Streppel and De Jong regularly had conversations about the position of the talent.
The coach saw him as a controlling midfielder, while De Jong had a more attacking role in mind for himself. “He was not a difficult boy, but he was someone who knew very well what he wanted,” says Streppel. “In his last year at Willem II, you noticed that he was becoming a bit more impatient. In the end he also broke through in Tilburg, but you do not go from Willem II to the international top. Frenkie is also really a typical Ajax player, someone who works with bravado. plays.”