Immanuel Pherai left the youth academy of AZ in 2017 for that of Borussia Dortmund. After a rental period at PEC Zwolle, the twenty-year-old attacking midfielder annex winger is waiting for his breakthrough in the first team of the German top club. In an interview with Goal and Spox the Dutch youth international discusses his time at AZ, his season in the Eredivisie is discussed and he discusses his relationship with Erling Braut Haaland.
At a young age, Pherai was already in the picture at Ajax. “When I was eight years old, I did an internship at Ajax. It was ultimately between me and another player. I was not chosen and went to AFC,” says the talent, who ended up at AZ in 2013. “A good friend of mine had gone there a year earlier. Their scouts continued to watch our matches and because I had a good season, I was invited for a practice internship and after that I was allowed to come. After my first season at AZ, Ajax wanted me, but I preferred to stay in Alkmaar.”
Pherai made a good impression in the youth of AZ and was allowed to play with talents older than him almost every week. “I often played one, sometimes two teams higher. I remember when I was fourteen I came home from school and I was approached by the Under 19 coach. I had to join them on the same day. I came in and scored right away. When I was in Under 17, I sometimes played two or three games in a weekend,” said Pherai, who played with Myron Boadu in youth. Although he was seen as a great talent, it did not come to a breakthrough. He was supposed to join the main squad in the 2017/18 season, but things turned out differently and he left for Borussia Dortmund.
“I had trained with the selection a few times. But my last season was unfortunate: already in the second week I got into a fight with a teammate,” says Pherai, explaining what exactly happened: “He kept fouling and kicking me during training. At one point I had had enough and gave him a shove. Then he hit me in front of everyone else. That created a big problem, because the trainer let him get away with it. We confronted him with my parents, but in the end nothing was done about it.” That incident did not immediately lead to the departure from AZ. “As time went on, things calmed down a bit. The club informed me that they wanted to extend my contract. But I’ve never seen a contract on the table. Then at a certain point I started looking at offers from other clubs.”
At the age of sixteen, he became the youngest AZ player ever to go abroad. “At that time I had offers from Ajax and Manchester United, but then Dortmund came”, Pherai explains his choice for the German top club. “I had enough confidence to make the move abroad. I quickly decided not to go to United, even though the interest was concrete and I was invited there. After speaking to Dortmund the first time, it was an easy decision to make. They showed a concrete plan and I felt good about that.”
After three years in the youth of Dortmund, Pherai made the move to PEC Zwolle on a rental basis, where he made 27 appearances in the Eredivisie in the 2020/21 season, 15 of which as a basic player. “I wanted to gain experience at a high level. PEC Zwolle had been interested in me for a while, so that was a nice solution. It was my plan to further develop myself there, so that I would become a better option at BVB,” says Pherai. “I would have liked to have played a lot more, but I gained a very valuable experience there. I might not have experienced all that in Dortmund. For the first time in my career I sat on the couch a few times. Sportingly, things didn’t go well and another trainer came. Going through all of that has moved me forward because things were different from what I was used to.”
“I experienced things in a few matches that I had not experienced before and that probably only happen in professional football,” he looks back on his time at PEC Zwolle. “We often had a lot of ball possession and played good games, but we didn’t score. Opponents often took the lead from a simple standard situation and we lost. That was sometimes difficult to explain. We ended up in a negative spiral and in the end the trainer was fired after a defeat against the last team,” said Pherai, referring to the dismissal of John Stegeman in February of this year after the 3-2 loss against FC Emmen.
During his rental period at PEC Zwolle, Pherai did not have much contact with Dortmund. “When I scored my first goal, I received messages from Otto Addo (then assistant coach, ed.), Giovanni Reyna and Erling Haaland. But there was no direct contact, most of it went through my agent,” continues Mino Raiola’s client, who also happens to be Haaland’s agent. The Norwegian striker is only nine months older than Pherai. “I’ve known Erling for a while because of Mino. I remember thinking at the beginning: he’s not much more talented than me,” said Pherai with a laugh. “But I soon realized that, compared to him, I was still a child at nineteen. Erling already seems to feel thirty in his head.”
“When you see how he aligns everything with football… He is a true professional, in all areas,” Pherai says of Haaland. “He does things I didn’t even know about. For example, every day an hour before going to sleep, he puts on special glasses that filter the blue light from the mobile phone or television to improve sleep. When I heard about it, I immediately ordered the glasses,” said Pherai, who is finishing his matches this season with the promises of Dortmund. His contract with the number two in the Bundesliga expires after this season.