Frenkie de Jong feels at home in Spain. The midfielder has been playing for Barcelona for over two years now and is ‘well settled’, he says in the podcast 433: The Home of Football. De Jong lives with his girlfriend Mikky Kiemeney in the metropolis. The rest of the family was unable to visit at the start of the corona crisis, but that possibility is now available. Apart from his family and friends, there is not much that De Jong misses about the Netherlands.
“If there is one thing I miss about the Netherlands, it is my family and friends,” says the 24-year-old midfielder, who came over from Ajax in the summer of 2019 and has played 109 official matches since. “Luckily my girlfriend and my dog are here, that’s nice.” He is also happy that his family and friends can visit again. “That’s nice, because I sometimes miss them. I think that’s the only thing I really miss about living in the Netherlands.”
A few months ago, De Jong posted two different photos of himself and his girlfriend in the Parc de la Ciutadella: one from six years ago, when they were there as tourists, and a recent one, as residents of their ‘home city’. “My girlfriend and I are well settled in Barcelona,” he notes. “She helps me a lot, so I also have to give her some credits. Without her it would be a bit of a mess at home. She can cook better than me, for example. We like to make pancakes, they don’t eat them like that here in Spain.”
In the interview, De Jong is asked about what it means to him to be a Barcelona player. “I still have moments when I drive to the training center, see the blue sky and the sun, and suddenly realize: I am at Barcelona. That still makes me proud. I have to make the best of it,” he realizes. He accepts that a magnifying glass will always be aimed at players like De Jong. “People on social media are always overreacting, both positively and negatively.”
“If you play a good game, they say you’re one of the best players in the world. If you don’t play so well next week, you’re not even good enough to play at all, no matter what club,” he explains. from. The reactions on social media can also be positive. “People are shouting loudly because they want to be heard. The other side of social media is that you get a lot of support from supporters, if they love you. But I don’t actively look for comments under my social media posts. I don’t spend that much on it attention to.”