How Frenkie de Jong made dismantling Real Madrid look so delightfully easy

Before Ajax’s destruction of Real Madrid at the Bernabeu, the BT Sport commentator Ian Darke set the conditions of the game: No Champions League team had ever come back after losing 1-2 in the first leg at home. Real Madrid had beaten Ajax seven times in a row, and the last time that Ajax had beaten Real Madrid was in the mid-1990s.

But Real Madrid, Darke noted, were vulnerable, having lost to Barcelona three times in a row in the last week, and four straight at home. The camera panned to Frenkie de Jong, and Darke said: “De Jong at the Bernabeu. Next time he visits, it will be in the colors of Barcelona. This is the sort of night when we will find out how good he is, in the company and on the turf of Luka Modric, Casemiro, and others.”

Time will tell how good De Jong will be. Greatness in sports is often situational. But De Jong is good enough to be signed by Barcelona for 75 million euros, with 11 million in potential add-ons. And against Real Madrid, he was good enough to help his team do the unthinkable and overcome the history that indicated that Ajax’s comeback was impossible.

As I watched De Jong, I had to stop and check his height. He has the gait of the stereotypically tall, slow, and consequently heavy-footed footballer.

He’s obviously not heavy-footed. Like a lot of great players, De Jong is technically superior. He’s able to do things faster because his first touch quickly sets him up for the next move, whereas an inferior player might waste time trying to get the ball under their control. De Jong makes the one-touch and unseen passes that others can’t. He does everything so casually, that sometimes his mastery goes unnoticed.

I tweeted during the game that when he touches the ball, the ball looks at him with heart eyes. One of my favorite touches from the match was this backheel pass when he and two teammates had Luka Modric stuck in a triangle:

De Jong simply moves around slowly. He looks lackadaisical. But whether he’s actually slow or not is a question of situation.

When he’s without the ball and tracking back, De Jong runs with his head down, grimacing hard, as if he’s trying to force his body to move faster than it possibly can. He saunters a lot, and he often stands around when the ball is not near him. And because he hardly got forward against Real Madrid, there were few chances to actually see him at a full sprint. Attackers often get by him easily, though when he’s determined to win the ball, he can effectively put his bigger body between the attacker.

He showed off this ability to use his body in one instance in the first half. Vinicius was dribbling toward Ajax’s goal, and De Jong stepped in front of him at the top of the box. Vinicius cut to the inside and De Jong immediately jumped the route and bodied the young Brazilian off the ball. Then De Jong showed why it doesn’t matter if he’s fast in any traditional sense.

As soon as he won the ball back, De Jong paid homage to Andres Iniesta by using the Barcelona legend’s signature move, la croqueta, to get past a sliding Modric. Then he drove forward on his own. Near the halfway line, two Real Madrid defenders converged on him, and somehow De Jong recognized that one of his teammates was making a run beneath him on his left. Before the two defenders collided into him, De Jong poked the ball ahead so that his teammate could run onto it. Darke called it a magnificent run. It happened so quickly that it seemed to stun Real Madrid.

De Jong may take advantage of his physicality when he can, but the most noticeable thing about his play is that defenders can’t trap him. He’s brave, always looking forward for passes. He’s fantastic at breaking lines and putting the ball where it needs to be with the perfect weight. But most of all, he is always in control.

The best moment of his performance came toward the end of the first half, when he was passing back and forth on the right side of the field with Noussair Mazraoui after Mazraoui won the ball from Vinicius.

In an effort to win the ball back, Vinicius ran hard at Mazraoui. Mazraoui passed back to De Jong, and as Vinicius followed the ball, Modric came over the top to help close down De Jong. It looked as if De Jong was cornered.

De Jong didn’t panic. With both players surging toward him, he stepped on the ball with his right foot, then shifted his hips slightly to make it seem as if he was going to turn and pass the ball down to Matthijs de Ligt or the goalkeeper. As Vinicius ran past him to cut off the hypothetical pass, De Jong then faked like he was going to dribble up, toward Mazraoui and the touchline, and got Modric to jump in the same direction.

De Jong then turned inside and dribble forward, after beating both players without even moving the ball, and started another attack.

It’s hard to watch De Jong casually escape Real Madrid defenders, play incisive passes, and control the game and think that he might not succeed at Barcelona. He has all the talent and intelligence necessary to be a great player in the future.

But let’s ignore the future for now. What is certain is that De Jong helped orchestrate one of the most embarrassing episodes in Real Madrid history. We all saw it happen, and how he did it all while looking like he was out for a Sunday morning stroll.