Cont.
Erik ten Hag has made an encouraging star as United manager but the success of his planned rebuild will depend as much on who he brings in as his innovation on the training ground and, in that regard, fans will hope history does not repeat itself as he treads what for now appears a similar path to Van Gaal.
Effectively forced out at Real Madrid, only three months after being named man-of-the-match in their Champions League final triumph over Atletico Madrid in May 2014, Di Maria never really gave the impression of wanting to move to United and, within less than a year, he was gone.
United may well end up signing Frenkie de Jong and, unlike the personality clash between Van Gaal and Di Maria, the Holland midfielder at least has the experience of working successfully under Ten Hag at Ajax.
Yet the reality is that De Jong is being ousted against his will at Barcelona and has shown little genuine appetite to leave Spain for Manchester. Perhaps that will change once he has experienced United’s warm embrace but it seems a risky starting base for a club who have made a big deal privately about only wanting players who are eager to come.
Di Maria, equally, never got to the grips with the Premier League and, while Ten Hag is convinced De Jong would be a success and is precisely what he needs, United observers will hope he fares a whole lot better than the last Dutch midfielder they brought to the club.
Donny van de Beek has endured a miserable last two years at Old Trafford since his £35 million move from Ajax in 2020 but he is the latest in a long line of players plucked straight from the Dutch Eredivisie who have found the pace, physicality and intensity of the Premier League too much to handle.
Donny van de Beek has failed to live up to expectations at Old Trafford CREDIT: EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK
It was the same with Blind and Depay, signed from Ajax and PSV Eindhoven respectively by Van Gaal in the same summer as Di Maria, but it has not stopped United, at Ten Hag’s insistence, from going down the same route this summer. Tyrell Malacia, the Holland left-back, has been signed from Feyenoord for £14.6m and the Argentina defender Lisandro Martiez will complete a £46m move from Ajax once he has undergone a medical and obtained a visa. United are also pursuing another of Ten Hag’s former Ajax players, Brazil forward Antony.
The moves, of course, could be handsomely vindicated and Ten Hag certainly knows those players better than anyone, but it has the look of a club putting all their eggs in one basket when it is hard to believe the recruitment lists United’s scouting department were originally compiling over the past 12 months were laden with players from the Dutch top flight.
Only two players who have moved directly from the Eredivisie to the Premier League over the past decade have been stand-out successes: Georgino Wijnaldum, who left PSV for Newcastle in 2015 before joining Liverpool a year later, and Christian Eriksen. The last time it worked out for United was 2005, when Park Ji Sung arrived from PSV.
Virgil van Dijk is the most successful Dutch player currently playing in the Premier League but even the formidable Liverpool centre-half did not arrive directly from Holland, instead plying his trade with Celtic in Scotland before joining Southampton and then making the leap to the top end of Europe’s most demanding league. Toby Alderweireld, similarly, had the experience of a year in Spain with Atletico Madrid and a season on loan at Southampton before the former Ajax defender transferred to Tottenham in 2015.
Christian Eriksen played for Ajax earlier on in his career CREDIT: PA
Eriksen, who joined Tottenham from Ajax in 2013 and spent seven years in North London before a move to Inter Milan, has of course now completed a free transfer to United and is another signing with a heavy Dutch influence.
His recovery from the cardiac arrest he suffered playing for Denmark at the European Championships last summer has been remarkable and his form in the final few months of last season from Brentford offered a reminder of his vision, creativity and intelligence on the ball, qualities Ten Hag is desperate to add.
There are numerous other players with promise who moved from the Eredivisie to England who have been decent, such as Dusan Tadic, Nacer Chadli, Davinson Sanchez, Hakim Ziyech, Maya Yoshida, Steven Bergwijn, Erik Pieters, Leroy Fer, Daryl Janmaat and Davy Propper, even if not all lasted the course and none are household names.
But it is arguably easier to list the many players who could not handle the difficult, direct transition, including Davy Klaasen, Siem de Jong, Jordy Clasie, Ron Vlaar and Marko van Ginkel among many others.
The reality is that the Netherlands has simply not provided the same fertile hunting ground for Premier League clubs in recent years as fellow European countries like Portugal and France, two faster, more physical leagues with a deeper pool of players given the success and greater ease with which they have more generally drawn talents from South America and Africa respectively.
Maybe Ten Hag will buck the trend and the Dutch influence at Old Trafford will underpin a transformation, but it will need to be a lot more successful than it was under Van Gaal.
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