One of the nicest sides of watching top sport: following how young talents develop. Will they be as good as you expected after their promising debut? Can an apparently mediocre player work his way up to a top player? And who was ultimately right? The delusional supporter or the stubborn coach?
In Dutch tennis we now see the remarkable advance of two men who seemed too old to make it to the top: Botic van de Zandschulp (26) and Tallon groenpoor (25). They are approaching the top fifty of the world ranking, a position that was unimaginable for them a few years ago. Why did it take them so long to get there? Food for sports journalism.
Also an intriguing ‘case’, for other reasons, is Mohamed Ihattaren, who made an impressive debut at PSV as a 16-year-old and was regarded – also by me – as the greatest talent on the Dutch football fields. An attacker with a golden left leg that allows him to pass long distances and fire shots that the enthusiast will remember in his grave. Yes, that’s how it works! When I close my eyes, I see again how more than sixty years ago Faas Wilkes danced past his opponents in a Venloos football stadium in a way that I would only see again with Johan Cruijff.
There was an Ihattaren craze. The Netherlands and Morocco fought for him, national coach Ronald Koeman won – he visited Ihattaren and promised him a place in the Dutch national team in due course. We happy. But not long. It started when I noticed an annoying trait in him: he gave a shout out to a PSV fellow player in front of the audience, who had made a mistake. Ihattaren began to feel.
Things quickly went from bad to worse, especially after his father died. He became fatter and lazier, PSV coach Roger Schmidt couldn’t take it any longer and put him outside. Ihattaren (now 19) was glued by a money-hungry agent who brought him to Italy (Sampdoria, via Juventus) where he didn’t get to play. He sat lonely in hotel rooms and in taxis, nobody looked at him, the trainer didn’t even know he had a ‘left leg’.
Now he is back in the Netherlands where FC Utrecht and even Ajax would be interested in him. First he will have to get rid of ten kilos of slackness. Will he come back to the top?
At Ajax earlier than at FC Utrecht. Ihattaren needs players by his side to whom he is in awe. He has to learn to survive in the tough, erratic football world. That is heavy. Ask Davy Pröpper, a gifted footballer who retired at the age of 30 because he had had enough of ‘football culture’. I hope he will be tempted to do a big interview about this again.
See also Steven Bergwijn, sold by PSV to Tottenham Hotspur, where he was reviled by two trainers. This week he blazed in a late substitute with two decisive beautiful goals; in the Dutch national team he shone against Norway in a similar way. Prompt the trainer of ‘the Spurs’ stated that he would rather keep him. That would mean that Ajax, which would have liked to buy him, is wrong.
One advantage: Ajax then gets even more excited about Ihattaren.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 21, 2022
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