Frenkie De Jong preserves what makes Barça great in the first place
By Ryan Baldi
The arrival of Dutch midfielder Frenkie De Jong might prove the most important signing of the summer for Barcelona.
Antoine Griezmann is finally through the door, and Neymar could soon follow. But the best signing Barcelona will make this summer was agreed way back in January; one that will aid the club in its quest for a first Champions League title since 2015, while also preventing it from completely sacrificing its identity to get there.
The $85m deal that has taken prodigious Dutch midfielder Frenkie de Jong to the Camp Nou from Ajax was arranged long before Barcelona’s Champions League collapse against Liverpool in May, and so exhibits none of the desperation that has since set in at the club.
Barça won La Liga last season by a comfortable margin, but that alone is no longer enough. Winning the Champions League was the club’s – and captain Lionel Messi’s – explicitly stated aim for 2017/18, but it fell short despite having taken what should have been an unassailable 3-0 lead into the second leg of the semi-final.
Adding to Barcelona’s desire for expedient and expensive upgrades is the fact Messi turned 32 last month. For all his trickery and evasiveness, the greatest player in the world cannot outrun Father Time. Messi was typically otherworldly last season, but Barça’s determination to surround him with prime-aged, world-class offensive talent this summer suggests an awareness of its resident genius’ mortality.
Griezmann, for whom Barça has paid $135m to sign from La Liga runner-up Atlético Madrid, will ease the creative and scoring burden Messi carries. Re-signing Neymar would be more expensive still, and his salary of almost $1 million per week would be heaped on to a wage budget already creaking under its own weight. But the 27-year-old promises ready-made rapport with Messi and Luis Suárez, reuniting soccer’s most-feared front three of the past decade.
Barcelona was willing to overlook how it was left red-faced when basketball fanatic Griezmann aped LeBron James with his ‘La Decisión’ video last year, a self-indulgent documentary teasing his decision to snub Barça’s interest in favor of staying with Atlético.
Barça appears ready to forgive and forget with Neymar, too. The gifted Brazilian unexpectedly left for Paris Saint-Germain two years ago to further his case to be recognized as the best player in the world. After two injury-prone seasons in France, it seems Neymar has decided Messi’s shadow isn’t such a bad place to be after all.
De Jong comes with no such baggage. At 21, he is already one of the finest midfielders in the world, and is fresh off the back of a breakout season on the European stage, having taken Ajax to the semi-finals of the Champions League. But the Dutch international playmaker’s unassuming manner and absence of ego is an antidote to the limelight-thirsty self-importance of Griezmann and Neymar.
Barcelona has spent $1.2bn on transfer fees in the last five years, more than any other team in world soccer. This increasing shift in recruitment strategy toward high-profile, high-cost stars has rendered the club’s famed La Masia youth academy an afterthought. A crop as rich as that which yielded Messi, Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué and Sergio Busquets within the space of a decade cannot be expected again, but that Sergi Roberto is the only academy graduate to emerge in the last seven years and hold down a regular first-team berth is indicative of a waning commitment to youth development.
De Jong is, of course, another expensive import, and does not remedy the widening disconnect between La Masia and the first team. His skill set and playing style, though, are perfectly in tune with the dogmas laid down long ago in the club’s youth system by compatriot Johan Cruyff. He may not have been reared in Catalonia, but De Jong is made for Barça.
The ideals held dear at the Camp Nou are linked intrinsically with those of Ajax, owing to a history which shares icons such as Cruyff, Rinus Michels and Vic Buckingham. De Jong is not a product of Ajax’s own revered academy, having been signed from Willem II as an 18-year-old, but he is the archetypal Ajax player: comfortable in multiple positions, precise and intelligent in his use of the ball, and brave in possession, dribbling through pressure and always seeking to play forward.
Seen by many as the heir to Busquets in the deepest midfield role at the Camp Nou, De Jong has the coolness under pressure, vision and dependability on the ball to succeed the World Cup winner, if that is indeed how Barça intends to deploy him. If allowed to operate slightly higher up the pitch, though, De Jong can control play and dictate tempo to a level absent from the Blaugrana since Xavi’s 2015 departure, or create openings in the final third with smooth dribbles and misdirection reminiscent of Iniesta.
The pragmatism of coach Ernesto Valvede has not been to the taste of many Barça fans – less easy on the eye than Pep Guardiola’s pass masters, less committed to attack than Luis Enrique’s treble winners. While the former Athletic Club manager’s approach has brought back-to-back La Liga titles at a time when Real Madrid was threatening to re-establish itself as Spain’s dominant force, his caution was a contributing factor in the Champions League capitulations against Liverpool last season and Roma the year before.
Griezmann and, if re-signed, Neymar add greater attacking intent, and mitigate against those rare occasions when an opponent is able to neutralize Messi. But there is something unpalatable about Barça’s desperate pursuit of superstars it has already been bruised by in the recent past.
De Jong, on the other hand, not only returns adventure and ingenuity to a midfield that has prized shape and solidity, he also preserves the soul Barça is selling for another shot at the Champions League