Frenkie never found his place

De Jong controls the ball during Barça-Elche last March. Silvestre Szpylma (Getty Images)

Ajax has long functioned as a kind of

for Barça.

When hard work and audacity are conspicuous by their absence —defects that have become routine over the last decade—, there is always a street-smart person who looks towards Amsterdam and identifies one or several footballers who, from their logic of minimal effort, can be transplanted to the new ecosystem without provoking rejection, as if the

were a kind of universal donor for the Barça club:

.

Frenkie de Jong, with all his virtues, belongs to the elite of this accelerated movement that nourishes Barça with improbable dreams while Ajax fattens its coffers with sums of money that seem to grow from trees.

In the case of the midfielder, the transfer of him was valued at 75 million euros plus another 11 in variables, a bargain that PSG or Manchester City could not afford due to the limitations that

financial

imposed on them at the time. .

But Barça could, oblivious to any principle of prudence and without any of the prevailing controls —neither their own, nor those of LaLiga— raising their voices due to the already more than doubtful financial situation of the club.

Worldly matters aside, the truth is that Frenkie never found his site for two reasons.

The first has a name and surname: Sergio Busquets.

The second, easy to guess, but difficult to recognize in a club that lives on set phrases, is that Barça and Ajax do not play the same game.

They look alike, yes.

But they also feed certain contraindications that make footballers like De Jong difficult to fit.

If we add to this the fact that Barça has not had a coach-trainer since Guardiola left, the result is a footballer who insists on moving the ball and stepping on the rubbish without anyone being able to explain to him that football is one thing positional of Ajax and another very different one, the game of position that Xavi tries to recover in the Barça.

Only time will tell if Terrassa's coach can pull it off, but everything seems to indicate that Frenkie's time is over.

He has been enrolled in the ship for three years and not even for those has he been able to interpret what novice footballers like Pedri and Gavi understand from the first moment: that is also true quality, which is a first cousin of intelligence for a reason .

Dreaming of an immediate redemption of the Dutchman would be, at this point in the adventure, the Blaugrana version of friction and affection: the same empirical value, the same deadly trap.

So it remains for Frenkie and Barça not to hurt themselves in the farewell.

An impeccable professional, De Jong deserves that the club does not exceed certain lines when it comes to showing him the exit door.

His case is not comparable to that of Coutinho or Dembélé: he, it should be remembered, was convinced that he had been born to play for Barça at a time when not even Barça knew what he was playing.

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on

50% off

Exclusive content for subscribers

read without limits

subscribe

I'm already a subscriber