Tuesday, August 17, 2021 at 9:03 PM• Daniel Cabot Kerkdijk • Last update: 21:05

Mitchell van Bergen can exchange sc Heerenveen for Middlesbrough this month, the reports Leeuwarder Courant Tuesday evening. According to the regional newspaper, the Championship club sees the 21-year-old attacker as a welcome addition to the vanguard. Van Bergen’s contract with the northerners expires next summer.

Van Bergen came over from Vitesse three seasons ago and signed a four-year contract. Attempts by Heerenveen to extend the contractual cooperation came to nothing and this transfer period is therefore the penultimate opportunity for the Frisians to leave a transfer fee to the attacker.

Van Bergen has expressed his wish to leave several times in recent months, but for various reasons it has not yet come to a transfer. It is expected that a transfer to Middlesbrough will meet Van Bergen’s sporting expectations. Boro, with Neil Warnock as manager, has been playing in the Championship since mid-2017 and is one of the candidates for promotion to the Premier League. The Riverside Stadium has a capacity of nearly 35,000 spectators.

Middlesbrough were left with four points from their first two league games: a 1-1 draw at Fulham and a 2-1 win over Bristol City. In between, Blackpool was 3-0 too strong in the first round of the League Cup. Van Bergen already played 120 matches in the Eredivisie in his early career and he scored 17 goals.