287: Luuk de Jong, Netherlands, Panini UEFA Euro 2020 Official Licensed Sticker Album, Tournament Edition

As 2022 comes to a close Richard Allinson takes a look back at the recent World Cup in Qatar. Those of you looking for further homage being paid to a particularly talented tax evader or musings on England’s future under Gareth Southgate may well be disappointed but even if the most recent edition of the global festival of football raised a lot of questions it at least provided a whole host of answers to those niggling “I wonder what happened to (insert name here)” enquiries. Over to Rich with your pub quiz answers for 2023.

Sometimes, deciding which footballer to write about for this blog can be tricky. This one, for example, was supposed to be about Mel Sterland, but then I watched Argentina v Holland in the 2022 World Cup quarter-final and noticed that Luuk de Jong was playing. 

There were numerous things that baffled me about the presence of Holland’s no.9 that night. For one, I thought he must be about 48 and long retired by now. But then I checked, saw he is only 32, and I felt old. Then I cast my mind back to his time at Newcastle United on loan from Borussia Mönchengladbach in 2014. He was my leftfield pick for Fantasy Football that year but he was complete crap and I dropped him way before his zero goals in twelve games spell was over. From then I just assumed that he faded away via unsuccessful spells at Vitesse Arnhem, FC Twente and Heerenveen before becoming an under-14s coach at some lower league Dutch side. I was wrong though, as his appearance in Qatar 2022 showed. 

After he emerged from the fog on the Tyne, de Jong went to PSV Eindhoven and scored 94 goals in 159 games. If only I’d been playing Dutch Fantasy Football… He then moved on to Sevilla and randomly had a spell on loan at Barcelona where he formed part of a lethal attacking line up alongside Memphis Depay and Martin Braithwaite. This, along with his attacking colleagues against Argentina e.g. Depay and “that big bloke that was shit at Burnley” brings me on to the main point of this blog: the number of players that struggled in English football but went on to feature in the 2022 World Cup. Most of them also appeared to have played for Southampton (twelve) and/or Reading (seven) at some point too. 

The tournament’s first match brought Enner “he was alright at West Ham United” Valencia to the fore for ECUADOR! (one for fans of Sash! there). Fast forward to the final match and I was surprised to see Steve Mandanda on the bench for France. He played ten games at Crystal Palace in 2016/17 and wasn’t very good. Maybe the French would have won the penalty shoot out against Argentina if they had brought him on in place of Hugo Lloris. But then again, maybe the might of ex-Reading and Oxford United man Emi Martinez would have still proved too much. 

The Dutch really were the key exponents of the selection criteria of “must have had an underwhelming spell in England” though. As well as the aforementioned Mr de Jong, they had Steven Berghuis (nine games at Watford), Davy Klaassen (seven games at Everton), Marten de Roon (34 games for Middlesbrough), Daley Blind (how the f**k is he only 32?), Vincent Janssen (two goals in three years at Tottenham Hotspur), Wout Weghorst (two goals in 20 at Burnley) and Memphis Depay in their squad. The fact that there was no room for Marco van Ginkel is beyond me. 

Since the end of the tournament I have been trying to work out how and why so many players whose careers didn’t take off in England subsequently ended up at football’s top table. Is it because the Premier League is so good that only the strongest survive? In short, no it isn’t. There is some complete crap still plying their trade in England’s top division. Is it because the constant clamour for instant success sees numerous players dumped before they ever really get going? Quite possibly. Look at Miguel Almirón at Newcastle. He could have easily been the new Luuk de Jong, but instead he has been given time to settle and has in turn made Jack Grealish look like a proper tit. The other option is that these players aren’t actually very good, and that is why their countries didn’t win the World Cup. That may well be the case to an extent, but speaking as someone that got dropped from his school side aged twelve, I don’t really think that I’m in a place to pass judgement. 

Good on Luuk de Jong though. His performance against Argentina didn’t really do much to make me think that I should have picked him for World Cup Fantasy Football, but he has played for Barcelona and gone to two European Championships and a World Cup. Not bad for the Dutch Paul Dalglish.