DENZEL’S DESTINY
Dutch starlet Dumfries has always eyed the top
IT IS not just Denzel Dumfries’s buccaneering runs down the right that gather real momentum as he g o e s a l o n g . His c a r e e r h a s progressed in a similar vein.
Celebrating his latest exploits for the Netherlands after securing qualification for the knockout stages this week, their official Tw i t t e r account hailed the fairytale journey of their new national favourite.
‘From non-league to Netherlands hero i n eight years… Denzel Dumfries,’ they posted, alongside three flame emojis.
The 25 year-old has already lit up the Euros, emerging as one of the Netherlands’ and tournament’s sensations so f a r, wi t h h i s relentless, unstoppable raids from his right wing-back role.
PSV captain Dumfries has scored twice and been involved in all five of t he goals t he Dutch have scored.
It was only in the summer that the Netherlands last reached a major tournament, in 2014, that late developer Dumfries made his f i r s t move i nto professional football.
When they faced Spain in their unforgettable opening game in that World Cup, a 5-1 win, Dumfries had travelled to Amsterdam as a fan to be part of a huge crowd watching the game on a big screen. Just four years later he was making his debut against Germany.
In some ways it is rather fitting that Dumfries has enjoyed the sort of inspirational career journey that sounds like a film script.
The man who has the same surname as a Scottish market town, has a first name inspired by award-winning actor Denzel Washington.
Born in Rotterdam and part of a family of six, he grew up playing football in the shadow of Feyenoord’s De Kuip stadium but, football-wise, often found himself unwanted in his earlier years.
Rather than being in a professional academy, he was left largely overlooked and forced to make his early steps in amateur football until he turned 18.
Just before that things began to change. Before Dumfries was finally picked up by Sparta from non-league side Barendrecht in 2014, he was also invited to play for Aruba — the country where his dad Boris is from. The ‘very nice experience’ to play international football was an opportunity Dumfries considered too good to turn down.
But he accepted it — playing twice against Guam and scoring once — on the condition that any games he played in were non-competitive.
To the disbelief of many, Dumfries did not want to commit his international future to Aruba because he still harboured dreams of representing the Netherlands.
His ambition was laughed off. ‘ Some guys looked at me with skewed eyes :“You play for Barendrecht, what are you talking about?”’ he recalled.
But proving people wrong has been a recurring theme of the Dutchman’s rise. From Sparta, Dumfries earned a move to Heerenveen where he stayed a year before being snapped up by PSV in 2018 by Marcel Brands, now Everton’s director of football. Dumfries had already taken to mapping out his career and, now he is starring for the Netherlands, has already proved rather accurate. ‘ I have a notebook at home and for years I wrote down how my career as a player should go,’ he told Dutch publication Algemeen Dagblad in 2018.
‘(Playing for) the Netherlands also came in that. There are still some pages left in the notebook. Let’s just say I’m on the right track.’
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