Steven Bergwijn is expected to walk out the door of Tottenham Hotspur this summer without ever truly realising the potential he arrived with.
The 24-year-old Dutchman has reached a point where he feels he cannot progress any further at Spurs due to the restrictions placed on his game time because of those above him in the pecking order. As often is the case for fringe players, international duty has not only provided a release from club frustrations but also an arena in which to air their views.
Bergwijn used the opportunity this week to admit that it is time to move on from Tottenham after two-and-a-half years and 83 appearances in the club's shirt.
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"Have I talked to [Ajax coach] Alfred Schreuder about my future? I'm at Oranje now and then we'll have a look. It would be nice if there was clarity soon. I just have to go play, but I want to leave Spurs now, that's for sure," he is quoted as saying by Dutch media outlet Algemeen Dagblad. "Whether it is important that my new club plays in the Champions League? That's not even top priority. Though it would be nice. What's important is that I'm going to play."
On that rebuffed Ajax move in January, he added: "I wasn't allowed to leave Spurs in the winter and then I didn't have any problems. The last few months I was hardly looked after there. Now I want to play somewhere weekly. That could be [an option], yes, [a return to the Eredivisie]. It's about my situation now, that has to be different."
Netherlands coach Louis van Gaal has stated that he believes Bergwijn is too good to simply be warming Tottenham's bench and has compared him to former Chelsea and Bayern Munich star Arjen Robben.
"The comparison with Robben, I'm not there yet, I think, but I can get there, I feel that," said Bergwijn. "Confidence does a lot to a player. I get that with Oranje."
Bergwijn has had a smile back on his face while on international duty, scoring a fine goal from distance against Belgium to make it five goals in four matches for his country.
Bergwijn began his Tottenham career with plenty of confidence, arriving from PSV Eindhoven for a fee of around £27million and he marked his debut with a spectacular goal against Manchester City. He scored three goals in his first six matches at Spurs and even had Jose Mourinho admitting at the end of that season that despite not being his top choice in that January transfer window, the Dutchman had proved his worth.
"Good player, good professional, good boy. Congratulations to my club, the way they did it," he said. "Initially – and I’m always very honest on this – he wasn’t my first option when we decided to make a movement in the winter, but in the end, a great decision. A player with a great future, can play on the right and the left. We’re more than happy, not just his age, but also his professional attitude. The way he trains, the way he lives. He’s the kind of kid that can only be better."
An ankle injury against Burnley had brought a premature end to his early months but the pandemic-enforced break in the season after that game allowed him to return for the final fixtures and he scored in the first match back against Manchester United.
His first full season brought seven assists and one goal but after a spell as a regular starter midway through the campaign, the second half of the season saw him occupy more time on the bench, his confidence having taken a hit with a couple of big misses at crucial points as Mourinho seemed to lose confidence in him.
The former Manchester United and Real Madrid boss departed and Nuno Espirito Santo arrived and immediately took a shine to Bergwijn, who started his first three matches and laid on an assist for Son Heung-min in the opening weekend win against Manchester City. Then another ankle injury, this time on international duty, kept him out for six weeks and soon had Espirito Santo calling for his return.
"Stevie started the season very very well. Very, very well. Unfortunately he got injured in the national team, he got injured in national team, and since then he’s struggled again, but now he’s getting back, like I said to you before, it’s about getting him fitter, stronger, faster because he’s a very talented player. Very talented player. Unique inside our squad," said the Portuguese. "He has things that really can really help us. He’s fantastic in one v one, offensive, he’s fast, he gives us speed. He gives us… We need Stevie. I repeat myself, we need Stevie."
Soon after though, another head coach was gone and Antonio Conte took the reins of the north London club. One of Espirito Santo's last acts had been to take off Lucas Moura to bring on Bergwijn during the 3-0 defeat to Manchester United, which brought boos from around the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Bergwijn's relationship with Conte has been a strange one. The 52-year-old former Inter Milan and Chelsea boss clearly believes the Dutchman has the ability and he blocked his departure in January, yet only handed him a single Premier League start.
Bergwijn ended the campaign with four goals and two assists, including those two dramatic added time goals at Leicester as well as a starring role in the Carabao Cup quarter-final against West Ham. During that period the winger also had a big moment with the Netherlands, scoring the goal that took them to the World Cup.
"We are talking about a player with important qualities. It was a shame for me that he left during the international break, because I would have liked to have gotten to know him better during this break. It was of course not a shame for him, because he scored and qualified with the Dutch national team for the World Cup," said Conte.
"Obviously he has a lot of quality. He’s good one-on-one, he’s quick and he can score goals. We are working with him and he understands what I want from him. For me, he is one of the forwards and someone who can play in the three positions up front. I’ll have to make an important evaluation, but Steven is in my squad and I’m counting on him."
The arrival of Dejan Kulusevski from Juventus on the final day of the January transfer window though brought another problem for Bergwijn with the Swede being a player Conte had wanted to sign in the past and his instant adaptation to the English game brought five goals and eights assists in a remarkable first 18 Premier League matches.
The problem for Bergwijn lays perhaps in the fact that whenever Conte turned to his bench, he looked to Lucas Moura first, even during periods when the Dutchman had been scoring goals for club and country. For instance, Bergwijn was in one rich run of form, netting goals aplenty for the Netherlands and then he returned to Spurs to score against Newcastle. His reward? Six minutes from the bench in the next game against Aston Villa, Lucas having come on ahead of him in the second half despite Spurs being 4-0 up in the game.
A popular player within the club, it's not difficult to understand Bergwijn's frustration at this point in his career. He's had misfortune with ankle injuries at key points when he was finding some rhythm and he's missed some big opportunities himself, but he's also provided some crucial goals in big moments to offset that.
There's a sense among some within Tottenham that while an older player like Matt Doherty reacted to his time out of the team with increased efforts, impressing Conte in doing so, the younger Bergwijn at times took his frustrations to heart. Conte would constantly praise him in the media but the minutes just weren't there for the Dutchman in tandem.
Despite his more diminutive stature, Conte saw Bergwijn as a striker back-up for Harry Kane or Son's replacement on the left-hand side and with both players certain starters most weeks and the latter in contention for the Golden Boot in the final weeks, the Dutchman's game time dwindled yet further. Son did admit though that in the final match of the season, Bergwijn as well as Lucas, came off the bench and told him they were going to help set him for the goals that would get him the Golden Boot.
In 2022, Bergwijn got just 239 minutes of Premier League football, the equivalent of playing two and a half matches. It's not hard to see why he wants out of north London and Ajax are desperate to take him back to the Netherlands. With the World Cup this winter, he needs to be playing every week but the Dutch club will have to get much closer to the £27million Spurs paid in 2020 for the player if they are to prise him away.
Bergwijn is likely to depart this summer and Spurs will have to replace him, but there will always be that regret that they never truly saw him shine in anything other than moments in the Premier League.
