Picture the perfect centre-back.
You’re probably thinking of somebody like Sergio Ramos executing a perfectly-timed slide tackle or winning a towering header. With Micky van de Ven, the first images which spring to mind are of him charging up the pitch with the ball at his feet or chewing up the ground as he hunts down an opposition striker.
They have become the 23-year-old’s signature moves. He recorded a superb assist in Tottenham Hotspur’s 4-0 victory over Everton in August and repeated the trick a few weeks later when they beat Manchester United. On both occasions, he won possession in his own half before striding forward and passing to a team-mate in the box. Opposition players bounced off him or were too scared to bring him down at full speed — it would be like jumping in the way of a rampaging rhino.
Van de Ven recorded the two fastest sprint speeds in the Premier League last season: 37.7km/h in a 3-2 victory over Brentford and 37.2km/h in a 4-0 defeat to Newcastle United. The only players who came close were Luton Town’s Chiedozie Ogbene and Nottingham Forest winger Anthony Elanga (both 36.9km/h). During Spurs’ 3-0 victory over United at Old Trafford, there were a couple of occasions where Alejandro Garnacho did not even bother chasing a loose ball because he saw who he was competing against.
But Van de Ven in full flow has become a rare sight. He has only played 12 times in all competitions this season due to a persistent hamstring injury and his only appearances in the last four months were against Chelsea on December 8, when he completed 79 minutes despite reservations over his readiness to play, and a 45-minute cameo in a Europa League victory over Elfsborg in January. But Van de Ven was not in the squad for the 2-0 victory over Brentford three days later: Postecoglou insisted he had not “reinjured the (same) injury” but he missed a crucial week as Spurs were eliminated from the Carabao Cup and FA Cup.
This is not a new problem: last season, he missed 10 games with hamstring issues. It feels like Spurs have a Ferrari collecting dust in their garage while they work out what the best fuel for it is.
Last week, in his press conference before the game against Manchester United, Tottenham’s head coach Ange Postecoglou said that they were looking into the “mechanics” of Van de Ven’s body to work out how they can maximise his speed without the risk of further injuries. He also revealed Spurs had received “guidance and information” from external experts on how to make sure that “Van de Ven’s body is better equipped to handle the athlete he is”.
“With Micky, we made a decision, and I was certainly the catalyst of that, to just have a look at exactly, beyond the injury, how we can get him back in a good spot,” Postecoglou said. “He is doing some different things and working with some different people.
“It’s not as much about the injury as about the mechanics of him because we want him back and we want him back in a really good space. He is training and feels really good. We are still confident his return is imminent but we want to make sure we get it right.
“Look, it is not my space but you look for the experts in those areas and there have been various people looking at different ways. He is an elite athlete but he is also at the extremities of speed and with all those athletes there are different methodologies in how they get to the space where they can perform at that optimum level without putting their body at risk.
“He is still a very young man in terms of experience and his career. We want to get it right. What you want is for Micky to play 10 years at the very best possible level. This hopefully gives us an opportunity to address as much as we can, in season, to give him the best chance of getting back to the level we know he can get to.”
It is not unusual for a footballer’s running style to come under scrutiny. During his time with Middlesbrough, Adama Traore worked with the former British sprinter Darren Campbell. While Arne Slot was in charge of Dutch side Feyenoord, the medical and performance team worked on improving Mexico forward Santiago Gimenez’s running style as they noted “the control of his trunk and around his pelvis” could be improved. Gimenez, who joined Milan in January, had to settle for reduced playing time at the start of the 2022-23 season as club staff focused on tweaking his technique.
Mauricio Pochettino, meanwhile, helped Kylian Mbappe learn how to control his speed during their time together at Paris Saint-Germain and that decelerating at the right moment could help him to quickly change direction or create space to shoot.
Sir Alex Ferguson admitted that Manchester United nearly signed Jordan Henderson from Sunderland but medical staff believed his running style meant he was at a higher risk of suffering injuries. United have recently hired Harry Marra, a world-renowned track and field coach who has worked with multiple Olympic medallists, as a consultant to offer his insight on athletics and running techniques.
The difference with Van de Ven is that this is not the first time in his career where he has been picked apart. When he was a teenager in Volendam’s reserves, first-team manager Wim Jonk, Jasper van Leeuwen and Ruben Jongkind (the technical leadership at the then Dutch second division club) spotted a player with huge potential — who nearly left the club under the previous regime — but required refinement. One of the first things that Jongkind, who has a background in athletics, noticed was that the defender “did not move elegantly”.
“We saw this incredible talent in terms of speed, dribbling courage, tenacity in the duels and a pure winning mentality,” Jongkind, who previously worked at Ajax, tells The Athletic. “We gave him a new contract immediately and started working on his development. We put him in the second team but within a few weeks we saw he could join the first team.
“I didn’t know him as a child but he told me his growth spurt went really quickly. Players need time to grow and in football they never get it. They need several years to develop muscle on the body and for their brains to adapt to the new length and force. He never got a real individual education on how to be more agile, to cut and turn quicker and to run smoother, which meant his movement was not efficient.
“We worked on his posture and did a lot of stability and mobility work. The joints have to be able to stabilise because his power was enormous already. If the joints do not stabilise, it is dangerous in terms of injuries. When he runs, his range of motion is slightly too big to the rear and that could give too much strain on hamstrings. We reduced it dramatically but it’s an ongoing work and it never stops. I always compare it to the best sprinters in the world. They still dedicate a lot of time on drills and technical stuff and they are already incredibly quick.
“Imagine you have a Fiat and you put a Ferrari engine in it. You put the pedal to the metal and the engine would shoot out of the framework. The tendons, bones, muscles and movement patterns should be able to deal with the power (Micky) can generate.”
Van de Ven was placed on a special nutritional programme by Volendam. By cutting out sugar and consuming the right amount of carbohydrates and protein before and after training, the defender put on 10kg without losing any speed. Staff carried out a series of different exercises with him and started to see progress.
“I can change somebody’s running style in 10 minutes, but how do you maintain it?” Jongkind says. “Running is automated so you have to relearn it and with football, it is worse because your brain is occupied by a thousand other things. If the player doesn’t have the desire to do it, then there will be no connection between the brain and the body. They will do it with resistance and the change in movement efficiency will not happen.
“You always have to keep measuring them. If you see that they are getting slower, then something has gone wrong and you need to start again. (Micky) became a lot quicker over longer distances and it became easier for him to do more sprints at the same speed.
“It’s something you have to look constantly into. I don’t know what happened afterwards at Wolfsburg or Tottenham, although I know they have a world class performance staff, but sometimes when you get injured your gait changes. He is a fighter anyway. It’s important to be patient and look into all the factors. Hamstring injuries are very complex and there could be 10 factors involved.”
Dr Ben Rosenblatt is the founder of 292 Performance, which gives individualised performance support programmes to Premier League players, cricketers, boxers and even Hollywood actors. Rosenblatt spent four years working as a senior rehabilitation scientist for the British Olympic Association (BOA), was lead men’s physical performance coach for the Football Association between 2016 and 2023, and has a PhD in the biomechanics of sprinting.
Dr Rosenblatt agrees with Jongkind that an athlete’s running style can be changed in one session but they need between six to eight weeks for it to become permanent. That is a window of time that footballers are never afforded during a season.
“Every athlete has a unique way that they move and that is across jumping, kicking a ball, sprinting and landing,” Dr Rosenblatt says. “Some tasks leave an athlete more vulnerable to injury. As a performance coach, your responsibility is to identify if the way they’re moving is safe and effective or if it is putting their body under stress. Then you have to do a detailed diagnostic approach to understand why they move that way and what’s going to be helpful for them.
“I worked with one athlete who could run fast but it was giving them stress fractures in their back. They needed a stronger core, calves and hamstrings to make sure their back could handle their running style.
“The biggest risk is that you’re trying to change something which doesn’t need to be changed. I worked with a group of athletes in another sport who became faster but it did not affect their game speed. We invested a huge amount of energy and effort so you have to consider the cost benefit. Moving more efficiently is always going to be good but the amount of time, effort and energy it takes is always demanding.”
Becoming quicker is a nice bonus but Rosenblatt says that the main reason to change an athlete’s running style is to make them more resilient. This is what Spurs will be hoping happens with Van de Ven: having him fit for the first leg of their last-16 tie in the Europa League, their last hope of silverware, on March 6 would be a huge boost.
But for all the importance of having him back, Van de Ven and his club will hope that taking an extra couple of weeks to fully understand his “mechanics” will reap long-term rewards.
(Top photo: Warren Little/Getty Images)