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Player Micky van de Ven
- Thread starter The Swellhead Spur
- Start date
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It's a beautiful thing. I really thought this wouldn't be possible this season.
i was excited by the midfield cos we knew madders biss and sarr were players, along with bentancur it was going to be exciting to watch. the defence and keeper have been massive surprises tho. VDV, doggie and vic have been 10/10 signings!
Who’s the 1 player to dribble past him? That’s who we should sign up for our attack!!
He is a wet dream
Was thinking it was Rashford when he nutmegged him?
Never going to happen, but Diaz would be pretty epic in the left wing spot of this team…
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he's starring for the Premier League title challengers
inews.co.uk
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
BIG READFour years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he’s starring for the Premier League title challengers
By Oliver Young-Myles
Sports Journalist
October 23, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 6:01 am)
Ruben Jongkind vividly remembers when he and his colleagues first encountered Micky van de Ven’s potential.
It was in the spring of 2019 after former Netherlands international Wim Jonk and his backroom staff, including Jongkind, had agreed to join FC Volendam, a small club from a fishing village 20km or so from Amsterdam that was struggling towards the foot of the Dutch second division. In other words, not the type of place you would ordinarily expect to uncover a future star.
“We went to watch the U19s just to have an idea of the youth and there we saw him for the first time,” Jongkind, who was once head of talent development at Ajax, tells i. “It was my colleagues Jasper [van Leeuwen] and Wim who saw him first and they were like ‘holy s***, what is this?'”
The arrival of a new coaching team with a fresh perspective and progressive way of thinking about the game based around the “Cruyff Plan” – a strategy to develop young talent using the late Johan Cruyff’s Total Football principles – was extremely timely for Van de Ven; his career, though still in its infancy was at a major crossroads.
Volendam are now in the Eredivisie, but when Jonk took charge they were in “dire straits”, on course to finish 16th out of 20 clubs in the 2018-19 Eerste Divisie campaign. “There was no audience [supporters] left, they were bottom of the table in the second league, no money, no players coming through…” recalls Jongkind. “Really, it was a disaster.”
They were tough conditions to throw a young player into, but even so, Van de Ven, then 18, was being overlooked. Had the overhaul in personnel not taken place the likelihood is he would have left the club without playing a senior game; a frightening prospect for a young player looking to make their way in the game.
When Jongkind and other members of Jonk’s team asked Volendam’s pre-existing staff about the lanky defender who had caught their eye, they were told: “He’s our fifth [choice] centre-back so he can look for another club.” Van de Ven had been a striker, they explained, before retreating into defence.
Van de Ven had evidently shown enough promise as a young boy at the amateur club WSV’30 to attract Volendam’s attention in the first place, joining the club in 2013 at the age of 12.
WSV’30 “won most of the local championships in various age categories,” coach Piet Pas tells i, with Van de Ven playing a “significant part in this success”.
However, there was evidently a point at which Van de Ven’s early progress stalled. Volendam’s coaches were not the only ones unconvinced by his potential. “Ajax didn’t see it and they are around the corner, AZ are around the corner,” says Jongkind.
“Of course [he was] a player with many deficits, but we look more at the strengths and the weapons and the potential of a player instead of his weaknesses,” he adds.
“So when we got in charge the first thing we did is give him a contract because he didn’t have one and we moved him to the U23s straight away. After two months he was already way too good for the U23s so we promoted him to the first team and he never came back out.
“He needed some people like Wim Jonk and ourselves to believe in him.”
Van de Ven has ascended rapidly up football’s food chain ever since. Two years in Volendam’s first-team were followed by another two at Wolfsburg before he joined Tottenham in August. During the international break he earned his first senior caps for the Netherlands.
It is difficult to imagine Van de Ven going unnoticed to such an extent, given how seamlessly he has slotted into Spurs’ back four and how quickly he has taken to Premier League football, but it’s clear that he was a rough diamond in need of a thorough polish.
Although Volendam’s new staff were enthused about Van de Ven’s capacity to evolve, he needed plenty of nurturing to get there. When Jongkind reels off a list of areas he needed to improve on, you wonder how they saw anything in him at all: “technique, defensive positioning, timing when to dribble with the ball, agility in one vs ones, his right foot, heading, strength…”.
But there was one obvious “weapon” that Van de Ven possessed: pace.
“His athletic ability and speed, I’ve never seen that for a centre-back or defender,” Jongkind says, chuckling as he recalls the time that Van de Ven recorded a time of seven seconds flat in a 60m sprint straight after training.
“At a young age his remarkable speed on the field and powerful shot didn’t go unnoticed,” says Pas.
Van de Ven was physically gifted: tall, quick and strong. But he was too slight for a defender and prone to injuries.
Jongkind and the team devised a precise plan to make him gain weight and become more durable while maintaining his key attribute. “He was so fast and the engine was so big but the wheels needed to also be strong.”
Once he had filled out, everything else began to click into place. Van de Ven rounded off his turnaround at Volendam by captaining the team in his second season at just 19.
It wasn’t long before more wealthy clubs began circling with Wolfsburg eventually acquiring him for a Dutch second division record £3.15m after a legal wrangle involving the late Mino Raiola.
The infamous super-agent took Volendam to court in an attempt to have Van de Ven’s contract terminated after the club had rejected lowball offers from Wolfsburg and Marseille. The court ruled in Volendam’s favour, enabling them to sell him for more money and crucially, insert a sell-on clause into any future deal.
“This is world-class potential so don’t come with €1.5m when [Alessandro] Bastoni [Inter’s left-footed centre-back who Spurs targeted last year] who probably has less talent already went for €31m,” explains Jongkind about Volendam’s position at the time.
In Germany, Van de Ven went up another level, starting all but one of Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga games last season as they narrowly missed out on a Europa League spot by one point.
Wolfsburg pocketed a healthy profit from his £43m (£34.5m up front) transfer to Spurs, but Volendam were also rewarded for their foresight, receiving 15 per cent of the fee thanks to the aforementioned clause. A “lifeline” for a club of their size.
“We have the smallest player budget and the youngest team in the Eredivisie,” says Jongkind. “And we invest that money in the academy to help nurture the new Micky.”
It’s early days at Spurs, but Van de Ven is showing signs of becoming one of the best defenders in the Premier League. The Dutchman’s partnership with Cristian Romero has been integral to Tottenham’s transformation from one of the worst defensive sides in the league last season to one of the best so far this season.
A match-winner against Luton before the international break, his first goal for the club, helped maintain the club’s positive start under Ange Postecoglou and ensured that Spurs led the Premier League table during the international break.
That Van de Ven is seemingly rising to each new challenge in front of him is of no surprise to those who coached him.
“He has explained many times that he felt like s*** in the academy, it was really bad. But still, he hung on,” Jongkind says. “He has a very strong mental ability and will to win, to persevere and to keep on going.”
“What sets him apart is his ability to adapt to a higher level of competition,” Pas explains. “You are a true super talent when you can continually reinvent yourself and become better.”
In the space of just four years, Van de Ven has gone from being fifth-choice centre back at Volendam to starring in the Premier League. Nobody is questioning his ability anymore.
Last edited:
Oooo 'title challengers'!The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he's starring for the Premier League title challengers
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
BIG READ
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he’s starring for the Premier League title challengers
Van de Ven has made an instant impact at Spurs since joining from Wolfsburg (Photo: Reuters)
By Oliver Young-Myles
Sports Journalist
October 23, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 6:01 am)
Ruben Jongkind vividly remembers when he and his colleagues first encountered Micky van de Ven’s potential.
It was in the spring of 2019 after former Netherlands international Wim Jonk and his backroom staff, including Jongkind, had agreed to join FC Volendam, a small club from a fishing village 20km or so from Amsterdam that was struggling towards the foot of the Dutch second division. In other words, not the type of place you would ordinarily expect to uncover a future star.
“We went to watch the U19s just to have an idea of the youth and there we saw him for the first time,” Jongkind, who was once head of talent development at Ajax, tells i. “It was my colleagues Jasper [van Leeuwen] and Wim who saw him first and they were like ‘holy s***, what is this?'”
The arrival of a new coaching team with a fresh perspective and progressive way of thinking about the game based around the “Cruyff Plan” – a strategy to develop young talent using the late Johan Cruyff’s Total Football principles – was extremely timely for Van de Ven; his career, though still in its infancy was at a major crossroads.
Volendam are now in the Eredivisie, but when Jonk took charge they were in “dire straits”, on course to finish 16th out of 20 clubs in the 2018-19 Eerste Divisie campaign. “There was no audience [supporters] left, they were bottom of the table in the second league, no money, no players coming through…” recalls Jongkind. “Really, it was a disaster.”
They were tough conditions to throw a young player into, but even so, Van de Ven, then 18, was being overlooked. Had the overhaul in personnel not taken place the likelihood is he would have left the club without playing a senior game; a frightening prospect for a young player looking to make their way in the game.
When Jongkind and other members of Jonk’s team asked Volendam’s pre-existing staff about the lanky defender who had caught their eye, they were told: “He’s our fifth [choice] centre-back so he can look for another club.” Van de Ven had been a striker, they explained, before retreating into defence.
Van de Ven had evidently shown enough promise as a young boy at the amateur club WSV’30 to attract Volendam’s attention in the first place, joining the club in 2013 at the age of 12.
WSV’30 “won most of the local championships in various age categories,” coach Piet Pas tells i, with Van de Ven playing a “significant part in this success”.
However, there was evidently a point at which Van de Ven’s early progress stalled. Volendam’s coaches were not the only ones unconvinced by his potential. “Ajax didn’t see it and they are around the corner, AZ are around the corner,” says Jongkind.
Van de Ven (second from left, top) during his time at WSV’30 (Photo: WSV’30)
“Of course [he was] a player with many deficits, but we look more at the strengths and the weapons and the potential of a player instead of his weaknesses,” he adds.
“So when we got in charge the first thing we did is give him a contract because he didn’t have one and we moved him to the U23s straight away. After two months he was already way too good for the U23s so we promoted him to the first team and he never came back out.
“He needed some people like Wim Jonk and ourselves to believe in him.”
Van de Ven has ascended rapidly up football’s food chain ever since. Two years in Volendam’s first-team were followed by another two at Wolfsburg before he joined Tottenham in August. During the international break he earned his first senior caps for the Netherlands.
It is difficult to imagine Van de Ven going unnoticed to such an extent, given how seamlessly he has slotted into Spurs’ back four and how quickly he has taken to Premier League football, but it’s clear that he was a rough diamond in need of a thorough polish.
Although Volendam’s new staff were enthused about Van de Ven’s capacity to evolve, he needed plenty of nurturing to get there. When Jongkind reels off a list of areas he needed to improve on, you wonder how they saw anything in him at all: “technique, defensive positioning, timing when to dribble with the ball, agility in one vs ones, his right foot, heading, strength…”.
But there was one obvious “weapon” that Van de Ven possessed: pace.
“His athletic ability and speed, I’ve never seen that for a centre-back or defender,” Jongkind says, chuckling as he recalls the time that Van de Ven recorded a time of seven seconds flat in a 60m sprint straight after training.
“At a young age his remarkable speed on the field and powerful shot didn’t go unnoticed,” says Pas.
Van de Ven was physically gifted: tall, quick and strong. But he was too slight for a defender and prone to injuries.
Jongkind and the team devised a precise plan to make him gain weight and become more durable while maintaining his key attribute. “He was so fast and the engine was so big but the wheels needed to also be strong.”
Once he had filled out, everything else began to click into place. Van de Ven rounded off his turnaround at Volendam by captaining the team in his second season at just 19.
It wasn’t long before more wealthy clubs began circling with Wolfsburg eventually acquiring him for a Dutch second division record £3.15m after a legal wrangle involving the late Mino Raiola.
The infamous super-agent took Volendam to court in an attempt to have Van de Ven’s contract terminated after the club had rejected lowball offers from Wolfsburg and Marseille. The court ruled in Volendam’s favour, enabling them to sell him for more money and crucially, insert a sell-on clause into any future deal.
“This is world-class potential so don’t come with €1.5m when [Alessandro] Bastoni [Inter’s left-footed centre-back who Spurs targeted last year] who probably has less talent already went for €31m,” explains Jongkind about Volendam’s position at the time.
In Germany, Van de Ven went up another level, starting all but one of Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga games last season as they narrowly missed out on a Europa League spot by one point.
Wolfsburg pocketed a healthy profit from his £43m (£34.5m up front) transfer to Spurs, but Volendam were also rewarded for their foresight, receiving 15 per cent of the fee thanks to the aforementioned clause. A “lifeline” for a club of their size.
“We have the smallest player budget and the youngest team in the Eredivisie,” says Jongkind. “And we invest that money in the academy to help nurture the new Micky.”
Van de Ven developed under the guidance of former Netherlands midfielder Wim Jonk at FC Volendam (Photo: Getty)
It’s early days at Spurs, but Van de Ven is showing signs of becoming one of the best defenders in the Premier League. The Dutchman’s partnership with Cristian Romero has been integral to Tottenham’s transformation from one of the worst defensive sides in the league last season to one of the best so far this season.
A match-winner against Luton before the international break, his first goal for the club, helped maintain the club’s positive start under Ange Postecoglou and ensured that Spurs led the Premier League table during the international break.
That Van de Ven is seemingly rising to each new challenge in front of him is of no surprise to those who coached him.
“He has explained many times that he felt like s*** in the academy, it was really bad. But still, he hung on,” Jongkind says. “He has a very strong mental ability and will to win, to persevere and to keep on going.”
“What sets him apart is his ability to adapt to a higher level of competition,” Pas explains. “You are a true super talent when you can continually reinvent yourself and become better.”
In the space of just four years, Van de Ven has gone from being fifth-choice centre back at Volendam to starring in the Premier League. Nobody is questioning his ability anymore.
Just got a little erect!
Didn't know about his powerful shot. Wouldn't mind seeing take a free kick.The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he's starring for the Premier League title challengers
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
BIG READ
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he’s starring for the Premier League title challengers
Van de Ven has made an instant impact at Spurs since joining from Wolfsburg (Photo: Reuters)
By Oliver Young-Myles
Sports Journalist
October 23, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 6:01 am)
Ruben Jongkind vividly remembers when he and his colleagues first encountered Micky van de Ven’s potential.
It was in the spring of 2019 after former Netherlands international Wim Jonk and his backroom staff, including Jongkind, had agreed to join FC Volendam, a small club from a fishing village 20km or so from Amsterdam that was struggling towards the foot of the Dutch second division. In other words, not the type of place you would ordinarily expect to uncover a future star.
“We went to watch the U19s just to have an idea of the youth and there we saw him for the first time,” Jongkind, who was once head of talent development at Ajax, tells i. “It was my colleagues Jasper [van Leeuwen] and Wim who saw him first and they were like ‘holy s***, what is this?'”
The arrival of a new coaching team with a fresh perspective and progressive way of thinking about the game based around the “Cruyff Plan” – a strategy to develop young talent using the late Johan Cruyff’s Total Football principles – was extremely timely for Van de Ven; his career, though still in its infancy was at a major crossroads.
Volendam are now in the Eredivisie, but when Jonk took charge they were in “dire straits”, on course to finish 16th out of 20 clubs in the 2018-19 Eerste Divisie campaign. “There was no audience [supporters] left, they were bottom of the table in the second league, no money, no players coming through…” recalls Jongkind. “Really, it was a disaster.”
They were tough conditions to throw a young player into, but even so, Van de Ven, then 18, was being overlooked. Had the overhaul in personnel not taken place the likelihood is he would have left the club without playing a senior game; a frightening prospect for a young player looking to make their way in the game.
When Jongkind and other members of Jonk’s team asked Volendam’s pre-existing staff about the lanky defender who had caught their eye, they were told: “He’s our fifth [choice] centre-back so he can look for another club.” Van de Ven had been a striker, they explained, before retreating into defence.
Van de Ven had evidently shown enough promise as a young boy at the amateur club WSV’30 to attract Volendam’s attention in the first place, joining the club in 2013 at the age of 12.
WSV’30 “won most of the local championships in various age categories,” coach Piet Pas tells i, with Van de Ven playing a “significant part in this success”.
However, there was evidently a point at which Van de Ven’s early progress stalled. Volendam’s coaches were not the only ones unconvinced by his potential. “Ajax didn’t see it and they are around the corner, AZ are around the corner,” says Jongkind.
Van de Ven (second from left, top) during his time at WSV’30 (Photo: WSV’30)
“Of course [he was] a player with many deficits, but we look more at the strengths and the weapons and the potential of a player instead of his weaknesses,” he adds.
“So when we got in charge the first thing we did is give him a contract because he didn’t have one and we moved him to the U23s straight away. After two months he was already way too good for the U23s so we promoted him to the first team and he never came back out.
“He needed some people like Wim Jonk and ourselves to believe in him.”
Van de Ven has ascended rapidly up football’s food chain ever since. Two years in Volendam’s first-team were followed by another two at Wolfsburg before he joined Tottenham in August. During the international break he earned his first senior caps for the Netherlands.
It is difficult to imagine Van de Ven going unnoticed to such an extent, given how seamlessly he has slotted into Spurs’ back four and how quickly he has taken to Premier League football, but it’s clear that he was a rough diamond in need of a thorough polish.
Although Volendam’s new staff were enthused about Van de Ven’s capacity to evolve, he needed plenty of nurturing to get there. When Jongkind reels off a list of areas he needed to improve on, you wonder how they saw anything in him at all: “technique, defensive positioning, timing when to dribble with the ball, agility in one vs ones, his right foot, heading, strength…”.
But there was one obvious “weapon” that Van de Ven possessed: pace.
“His athletic ability and speed, I’ve never seen that for a centre-back or defender,” Jongkind says, chuckling as he recalls the time that Van de Ven recorded a time of seven seconds flat in a 60m sprint straight after training.
“At a young age his remarkable speed on the field and powerful shot didn’t go unnoticed,” says Pas.
Van de Ven was physically gifted: tall, quick and strong. But he was too slight for a defender and prone to injuries.
Jongkind and the team devised a precise plan to make him gain weight and become more durable while maintaining his key attribute. “He was so fast and the engine was so big but the wheels needed to also be strong.”
Once he had filled out, everything else began to click into place. Van de Ven rounded off his turnaround at Volendam by captaining the team in his second season at just 19.
It wasn’t long before more wealthy clubs began circling with Wolfsburg eventually acquiring him for a Dutch second division record £3.15m after a legal wrangle involving the late Mino Raiola.
The infamous super-agent took Volendam to court in an attempt to have Van de Ven’s contract terminated after the club had rejected lowball offers from Wolfsburg and Marseille. The court ruled in Volendam’s favour, enabling them to sell him for more money and crucially, insert a sell-on clause into any future deal.
“This is world-class potential so don’t come with €1.5m when [Alessandro] Bastoni [Inter’s left-footed centre-back who Spurs targeted last year] who probably has less talent already went for €31m,” explains Jongkind about Volendam’s position at the time.
In Germany, Van de Ven went up another level, starting all but one of Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga games last season as they narrowly missed out on a Europa League spot by one point.
Wolfsburg pocketed a healthy profit from his £43m (£34.5m up front) transfer to Spurs, but Volendam were also rewarded for their foresight, receiving 15 per cent of the fee thanks to the aforementioned clause. A “lifeline” for a club of their size.
“We have the smallest player budget and the youngest team in the Eredivisie,” says Jongkind. “And we invest that money in the academy to help nurture the new Micky.”
Van de Ven developed under the guidance of former Netherlands midfielder Wim Jonk at FC Volendam (Photo: Getty)
It’s early days at Spurs, but Van de Ven is showing signs of becoming one of the best defenders in the Premier League. The Dutchman’s partnership with Cristian Romero has been integral to Tottenham’s transformation from one of the worst defensive sides in the league last season to one of the best so far this season.
A match-winner against Luton before the international break, his first goal for the club, helped maintain the club’s positive start under Ange Postecoglou and ensured that Spurs led the Premier League table during the international break.
That Van de Ven is seemingly rising to each new challenge in front of him is of no surprise to those who coached him.
“He has explained many times that he felt like s*** in the academy, it was really bad. But still, he hung on,” Jongkind says. “He has a very strong mental ability and will to win, to persevere and to keep on going.”
“What sets him apart is his ability to adapt to a higher level of competition,” Pas explains. “You are a true super talent when you can continually reinvent yourself and become better.”
In the space of just four years, Van de Ven has gone from being fifth-choice centre back at Volendam to starring in the Premier League. Nobody is questioning his ability anymore.
Former striker. Pretty handy background for a CB in this system
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he's starring for the Premier League title challengers
The making of Micky van de Ven: The Dutch reserve who became a Spurs fan favourite
BIG READ
Four years ago Van de Ven was on the verge of leaving a Dutch second division team without playing a game. Now he’s starring for the Premier League title challengers
Van de Ven has made an instant impact at Spurs since joining from Wolfsburg (Photo: Reuters)
By Oliver Young-Myles
Sports Journalist
October 23, 2023 6:00 am(Updated 6:01 am)
Ruben Jongkind vividly remembers when he and his colleagues first encountered Micky van de Ven’s potential.
It was in the spring of 2019 after former Netherlands international Wim Jonk and his backroom staff, including Jongkind, had agreed to join FC Volendam, a small club from a fishing village 20km or so from Amsterdam that was struggling towards the foot of the Dutch second division. In other words, not the type of place you would ordinarily expect to uncover a future star.
“We went to watch the U19s just to have an idea of the youth and there we saw him for the first time,” Jongkind, who was once head of talent development at Ajax, tells i. “It was my colleagues Jasper [van Leeuwen] and Wim who saw him first and they were like ‘holy s***, what is this?'”
The arrival of a new coaching team with a fresh perspective and progressive way of thinking about the game based around the “Cruyff Plan” – a strategy to develop young talent using the late Johan Cruyff’s Total Football principles – was extremely timely for Van de Ven; his career, though still in its infancy was at a major crossroads.
Volendam are now in the Eredivisie, but when Jonk took charge they were in “dire straits”, on course to finish 16th out of 20 clubs in the 2018-19 Eerste Divisie campaign. “There was no audience [supporters] left, they were bottom of the table in the second league, no money, no players coming through…” recalls Jongkind. “Really, it was a disaster.”
They were tough conditions to throw a young player into, but even so, Van de Ven, then 18, was being overlooked. Had the overhaul in personnel not taken place the likelihood is he would have left the club without playing a senior game; a frightening prospect for a young player looking to make their way in the game.
When Jongkind and other members of Jonk’s team asked Volendam’s pre-existing staff about the lanky defender who had caught their eye, they were told: “He’s our fifth [choice] centre-back so he can look for another club.” Van de Ven had been a striker, they explained, before retreating into defence.
Van de Ven had evidently shown enough promise as a young boy at the amateur club WSV’30 to attract Volendam’s attention in the first place, joining the club in 2013 at the age of 12.
WSV’30 “won most of the local championships in various age categories,” coach Piet Pas tells i, with Van de Ven playing a “significant part in this success”.
However, there was evidently a point at which Van de Ven’s early progress stalled. Volendam’s coaches were not the only ones unconvinced by his potential. “Ajax didn’t see it and they are around the corner, AZ are around the corner,” says Jongkind.
Van de Ven (second from left, top) during his time at WSV’30 (Photo: WSV’30)
“Of course [he was] a player with many deficits, but we look more at the strengths and the weapons and the potential of a player instead of his weaknesses,” he adds.
“So when we got in charge the first thing we did is give him a contract because he didn’t have one and we moved him to the U23s straight away. After two months he was already way too good for the U23s so we promoted him to the first team and he never came back out.
“He needed some people like Wim Jonk and ourselves to believe in him.”
Van de Ven has ascended rapidly up football’s food chain ever since. Two years in Volendam’s first-team were followed by another two at Wolfsburg before he joined Tottenham in August. During the international break he earned his first senior caps for the Netherlands.
It is difficult to imagine Van de Ven going unnoticed to such an extent, given how seamlessly he has slotted into Spurs’ back four and how quickly he has taken to Premier League football, but it’s clear that he was a rough diamond in need of a thorough polish.
Although Volendam’s new staff were enthused about Van de Ven’s capacity to evolve, he needed plenty of nurturing to get there. When Jongkind reels off a list of areas he needed to improve on, you wonder how they saw anything in him at all: “technique, defensive positioning, timing when to dribble with the ball, agility in one vs ones, his right foot, heading, strength…”.
But there was one obvious “weapon” that Van de Ven possessed: pace.
“His athletic ability and speed, I’ve never seen that for a centre-back or defender,” Jongkind says, chuckling as he recalls the time that Van de Ven recorded a time of seven seconds flat in a 60m sprint straight after training.
“At a young age his remarkable speed on the field and powerful shot didn’t go unnoticed,” says Pas.
Van de Ven was physically gifted: tall, quick and strong. But he was too slight for a defender and prone to injuries.
Jongkind and the team devised a precise plan to make him gain weight and become more durable while maintaining his key attribute. “He was so fast and the engine was so big but the wheels needed to also be strong.”
Once he had filled out, everything else began to click into place. Van de Ven rounded off his turnaround at Volendam by captaining the team in his second season at just 19.
It wasn’t long before more wealthy clubs began circling with Wolfsburg eventually acquiring him for a Dutch second division record £3.15m after a legal wrangle involving the late Mino Raiola.
The infamous super-agent took Volendam to court in an attempt to have Van de Ven’s contract terminated after the club had rejected lowball offers from Wolfsburg and Marseille. The court ruled in Volendam’s favour, enabling them to sell him for more money and crucially, insert a sell-on clause into any future deal.
“This is world-class potential so don’t come with €1.5m when [Alessandro] Bastoni [Inter’s left-footed centre-back who Spurs targeted last year] who probably has less talent already went for €31m,” explains Jongkind about Volendam’s position at the time.
In Germany, Van de Ven went up another level, starting all but one of Wolfsburg’s Bundesliga games last season as they narrowly missed out on a Europa League spot by one point.
Wolfsburg pocketed a healthy profit from his £43m (£34.5m up front) transfer to Spurs, but Volendam were also rewarded for their foresight, receiving 15 per cent of the fee thanks to the aforementioned clause. A “lifeline” for a club of their size.
“We have the smallest player budget and the youngest team in the Eredivisie,” says Jongkind. “And we invest that money in the academy to help nurture the new Micky.”
Van de Ven developed under the guidance of former Netherlands midfielder Wim Jonk at FC Volendam (Photo: Getty)
It’s early days at Spurs, but Van de Ven is showing signs of becoming one of the best defenders in the Premier League. The Dutchman’s partnership with Cristian Romero has been integral to Tottenham’s transformation from one of the worst defensive sides in the league last season to one of the best so far this season.
A match-winner against Luton before the international break, his first goal for the club, helped maintain the club’s positive start under Ange Postecoglou and ensured that Spurs led the Premier League table during the international break.
That Van de Ven is seemingly rising to each new challenge in front of him is of no surprise to those who coached him.
“He has explained many times that he felt like s*** in the academy, it was really bad. But still, he hung on,” Jongkind says. “He has a very strong mental ability and will to win, to persevere and to keep on going.”
“What sets him apart is his ability to adapt to a higher level of competition,” Pas explains. “You are a true super talent when you can continually reinvent yourself and become better.”
In the space of just four years, Van de Ven has gone from being fifth-choice centre back at Volendam to starring in the Premier League. Nobody is questioning his ability anymore.
It is so nice to read this about one of our players.
Goes to show you what a difference a manager and his staff can make. From fifth choice for one bum to a superstar in the making for a big club in the Premier League in a span of 3-4 years.
It's a great story, and shows what is possible.
Not the only tackle he's highly rated for either eh?
A little?
I've got World Heritage over here thinking I've nicked a Native American Totem Pole!
Don't wanna get too ahead of myself innit.
Gonna save some girth for the run in!
It's a muscle mate. The more you exercise it the bigger it gets!
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try flexing it right now.
My priest used to tell me the same thing when I was a choirboy.