The start of 2020 was a high point in Donny van de Beek’s career.
The midfielder scored for Ajax in back-to-back games against Sparta Rotterdam and FC Groningen in January before a disciplined display against PSV Eindhoven resulted in Erik ten Hag’s side eking out a valuable 1-0 win to keep their distance at the top of the Eredivisie table.
Two assists in mid-February against RKC Waalwijk continued his momentum, and he looked to build a head of steam into that summer’s European Championship.
Ajax had sold Frenkie de Jong and Matthijs de Ligt after their stunning run to the 2018-19 Champions League semi-finals — but Van de Beek and Ryan Gravenberch, then 23 and 17, looked to be the next academy talents to carry the burden. Both men looked like the multi-faceted midfielders Ajax prided themselves on for years.
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After the Eredivisie was suspended on March 12 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, momentum was halted for many players — and it was especially true for Van de Beek, who has yet to regain the form that led to him making the 30-player shortlist for the 2019 Ballon d’Or. Across four seasons at United from 2020 to 2024, Van de Beek has made just six Premier League starts.
A reunion with Ten Hag at the start of 2022-23 did little to improve his playing chances, with the manager detailing injury issues and physical conditioning for the player’s lack of involvement. Van de Beek’s 62 appearances, across all competitions, for the club have totalled 2,151 minutes. For comparison, Bruno Fernandes has played 3,745 minutes this season alone.
Van de Beek was reunited with Ten Hag at United after their time together at Ajax (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
In January, the Dutchman moved to Eintracht Frankfurt on a six-month loan — another attempt to restart his career — yet the move has been marked by more inertia. In February, he was left out of the club’s squad for a Europa Conference League tie against Union Saint-Gilloise.
“He’s only played a total of four games in the last two years, so it won’t happen overnight,” said Frankfurt head coach Dino Toppmoller. “But I have 100 per cent confidence in his quality, he’ll help us in the second half of the season.”
“I told Donny I was sorry (for not registering him in the Conference League squad) but also what I expected from him now.”
But Van de Beek, who turned 27 on Thursday, has struggled to break into the starting line-up. The departures of Frankfurt midfielders Fares Chaibi (Algeria) and Ellyes Skhiri (Tunisia) to the Africa Cup of Nations in January created a window of opportunity, but he lacked the match sharpness to play 90-minute games. Over his first three games in Germany, he played for over an hour against RB Leipzig and Darmstadt before being taken off at half-time against Mainz.
A 24-minute substitute cameo in a 3-0 defeat to Stuttgart on April 13 was his seventh appearance. He has appeared in Frankfurt’s matchday squads on 13 occasions, making just four starts and three more appearances off the bench.
According to sources with knowledge of the situation, who spoke anonymously to protect relationships, Frankfurt are not planning to exercise the €11million (£9.4m; $11.7m) option to make his loan deal permanent. Van de Beek has changed representatives (to Dutch organisation Players United Management) before a summer during which he will look for a deal away from United. His contract expires in June 2025.
However, identifying a club needing Van de Beek’s skill set in their starting XI is difficult. At Ajax, he gained plaudits for his clever link-up play in and around the penalty area. While Ten Hag occasionally used him as a midfield pivot alongside a more defensive player, Van de Beek was best used as a No 10, making third-man runs into the right half-space or beyond the striker. He was not a playmaker in the traditional sense but more of a ‘shadow striker’, noteworthy for punctuating moves created by others. Twenty-nine of his 41 goals for the Dutch club were first-time finishes.
“Donny was one of the very best players I’ve seen at the ‘third man rule’, a special player at finishing in and around the box,” says Wim Jonk, head of Ajax’s academy between 2010-16. “He was very smart with spaces, but was not the most athletic guy. In larger spaces, he’s a bit limited. In smaller spaces, he’s the quickest thinker. A bit like Davy Klaassen.”
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A player who best works in a team that can dominate possession and sustain pressure in the final third has struggled for game time and consistency since leaving the Netherlands. Few top teams in Europe need a central midfielder whose major strength comes from how he finishes moves by others, especially someone who can cater to his reasonable, rather than remarkable, physical attributes.
At United, he lacked the passing creativity or physical availability to displace Fernandes as the No 1o, and his divergent playing style made him an awkward fit when he was rotated into the side or made substitute appearances.
“Looking back, it was the wrong connection also in terms of timing,” says Jasper van Leeuwen, head of youth recruitment at Ajax from 2012-16.
“In England, you have to be a little bit more athletic. Or you play for (Manchester) City, always dominating, where you can focus on being super smart in spaces. Thomas Muller, for example, at a dominant team in Bayern Munich is not the best player individually, but he’s probably the smartest guy in Europe in terms of positioning without the ball. So that’s his weapon and he’s in the right place to use it. If Donny had moved into a very dominant United, where he could be one of the No 10s and get into the box all the time, his confidence would grow.”
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A six-month loan to Everton in January 2022 did little to change matters in England. And last season, Ten Hag would turn to Marcel Sabitzer and Scott McTominay to perform the role Van de Beek was known for Ajax, with both offering more Premier League-ready physicality. Van de Beek’s willingness to play in a variety of positions to break into the first team at multiple clubs has helped but also hindered; what limited playing time has been afforded in recent years has often come in deeper areas, away from the spaces around the penalty area in which he thrives.
The Dutchman only started five games for Everton (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
“He also had injuries,” says Jonk of Van de Beek, who since 2020-21, has missed 60 club matches due to thigh, groin and knee issues, along with a bout of shingles. “And there’s the loss of confidence where you start to doubt yourself, ‘Am I good enough?’ Players are people too, they need this feeling of trust.
“In England, the Premier League is on a different level in terms of its physicality, intensity, tempo. Some players, among those we worked with and nurtured, are very well suited for the Premier League, and others are not.”
At Frankfurt, Toppmoller tends to use the Dutchman as a box-to-box midfielder, but he appears to have lost ground to 19-year-old Swedish midfielder Hugo Larsson.
Van de Beek is still capable of flashes of the one-touch progressive play that made him impressive at Ajax, but he has not completed back-to-back 90-minute appearances since February 2022 while playing for Everton. He last played 90 minutes for any club in March of the same year, playing for Frank Lampard’s Everton in a 1-0 defeat against Wolverhampton Wanderers.
It’s a gloomy picture for a 19-cap international whose last showing for the Netherlands was a 13-minute appearance against Gibraltar in March 2021. He is unlikely to make Ronald Koeman’s squad for Euro 2024.
Van de Beek’s career appears stuck in neutral, and it may take a while for things to resolve. Four years ago, Van de Beek was a young talent who surprised many with his clever interpretation of space. But injury, inconsistency, and an unusual skill set have meant he is still likely to spend the summer looking for a new environment where he might thrive again.
(Top photo: Matt McNulty/Getty Images)
