Jan Paul van Hecke is the only defender to have started all three of Brighton & Hove Albion’s group matches in the Europa League. He has also started four of their 11 games in the 2023-24 Premier League — already overtaking the three full appearances he made in the top flight across the whole of last season.
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Both of these facts are indications of the 23-year-old Dutch centre-half’s development into a player Roberto De Zerbi trusts. “I haven’t got words to explain his improvement,” says Brighton’s Italian head coach.
De Zerbi made that remark following Van Hecke’s “incredible” performance in the 3-1 home win against Newcastle at the start of September. “He’s a serious player, a serious guy. I’m very, very pleased,” De Zerbi added. “He has a big personality, big courage, great attitude and he deserves to play.”
Van Hecke’s display would have been accompanied by a clean sheet if Callum Wilson had not come off the bench to score a consolation two minutes into stoppage time.
Another strong performance by Van Hecke coincided with the first clean sheet of the campaign for De Zerbi’s side, in last month’s 2-0 victory against Ajax in the Europa League at the Amex Stadium — a further boost to his growing reputation in his homeland. Brighton head to Amsterdam for the return meeting this Thursday with Group B delicately poised (head-to-head results count before goal difference if teams are level on points).
TEAM
| PLAYED
| POINTS
|
|---|---|---|
Marseille | 3 | 5 |
AEK Athens | 3 | 4 |
Brighton | 3 | 4 |
Ajax | 3 | 2 |
“I was telling myself before the game, ‘You need to show the people in Holland’,” Van Hecke said. “If you play against Ajax, you get more attention. Luckily for me, it went well.”
Van Hecke represented his country in the European Under-21 Championship in the summer, featuring in draws against Belgium, Portugal and joint-host nation Georgia, results which were not enough for the Dutch to advance from the group.
If Van Hecke’s progression continues, the possibility of a call-up from Ronald Koeman to the senior national team, alongside Brighton goalkeeper Bart Verbruggen, will increase.
All of this felt pretty unlikely when Brighton’s challenge for a Champions League place last season wilted in the face of injuries, a punishing programme of fixtures and fatigue in a 4-1 defeat at Newcastle in May.
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Van Hecke, by his own admission unaccustomed to the relentless demands of a full 90 minutes in a Premier League fixture, also suffered in the campaign’s closing stages, as late goals by Wilson and Bruno Guimaraes turned a narrow defeat into a convincing one.
Every player has turning points in their career.
For Van Hecke, it came six days later in a 1-1 draw against Manchester City at the Amex, when he marked Erling Haaland.
That wasn’t a full-throttle City. They had already retained the Premier League title and were preparing to complete a treble by winning the FA Cup and Champions League finals, but keeping Haaland under wraps after he had netted at least once in 11 of his previous 16 appearances was a huge tonic for Van Hecke.
He says: “I knew I could do it, (after) playing against really good players in training. And when you are playing against the best striker, I told myself, ‘Just make sure you are ready, because he is always scoring goals’. He didn’t, and that for me was a really important moment, a breakthrough in the team.”
Brighton colleague Joel Veltman has witnessed countryman Van Hecke’s development at close quarters.
“Roberto said it as well — he is the one that maybe has improved the most,” says the 31-year-old former Netherlands international defender. “He played a couple of games last season and now he’s played even more games. Because he is playing a lot, he’s improving as well. The more games you have, the more you improve. For him, it’s really good that he’s played against Haaland and other big strikers. That’s what makes you better as a young kid.”
Van Hecke epitomises Brighton’s vaunted recruitment system of sourcing young players — often from abroad, when they are playing at a relatively low level — and nurturing them until they either reach the club’s first team or can be sold on at a significant profit.
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The secretive global database of owner-chairman Tony Bloom and a traffic light system of scouting reports — green for a great fit; amber equalling close to fitting a tick list based on factors such as age, minutes played, and possession stats; and red for monitoring — identified Van Hecke five years ago while he was playing for NAC Breda in the Dutch second tier.
Van Hecke was immediately sent back to the Netherlands on loan for the season, to top-flight Heerenveen, gaining experience via 28 appearances in a step up to the top flight. His defensive qualities were showcased in his first taste of English football, on loan at Blackburn Rovers in the Championship for the 2021-22 campaign. After 30 league starts, he was named their player of the season.
That was followed by a year getting used to the Premier League, mainly by watching — he was an unused substitute on 24 occasions last season, while five of his eight appearances in the competition were from the bench.
Reigning Dutch champions Feyenoord wanted to loan Van Hecke, but De Zerbi was keen to keep him.
The manager persuaded him to sign a two-year contract in July in the expectation he would get an increased number of opportunities following Brighton’s qualification for the Europa League. That is exactly how it has turned out, with Van Hecke combining his defensive attributes with an increasing comfort in possession.
“It was a big difference when the manager came in, a lot of different things,” Van Hecke says of the transition from Graham Potter to De Zerbi early last season. “I needed to adapt quickly. It took a while before I got some minutes, but it went quite well.
“I was full of confidence in pre-season and, since then, this season is going really well for me. Hopefully, I can continue like this. In Europe, I’ve played all three games; in the Premier League also, quite a lot. It’s really good for me.”
(Photo: Nigel French/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images)
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