As his £36.5millon transfer to Manchester United moved closer in May, Joshua Zirkzee headed back to his very first club to keep fit on the grass pitch there.
A black Porsche roared down the quiet lanes of Spijkenisse, south west of Rotterdam, and pulled up at VV Hekelingen where Zirkzee emerged with two mates and a bag of footballs. They were out of luck.
‘He came here in a big car with a lot of noise,’ said club groundsman Hans van Bodegom. ‘First of all, I told him to slow down because there were a lot of kids about. Then I said they couldn’t train on the main pitch. “That (the astroturf) is for you!”.
‘They were here for about two hours. I only recognised him later. A policeman we know at the club said they gave him a speeding ticket in Rotterdam later that night.’
Van Bodegom isn’t the only local not to recognise Zirkzee. On the 40-minute journey through the tunnel from Rotterdam to Spijkenisse, Uber driver Kadir describes playing a game of three-v-three in the streets of Snoekenveen five years ago.
Joshua Zirkzee joined Manchester United from Bologna in July for a transfer fee of £36.5m
Zirkzee takes a trip down memory lane at his old boyhood club where he learnt his craft
A few weeks later, he saw one of his opponents playing in the Champions League for Bayern Munich. ‘I pointed at the TV and said “I know that guy!” My two younger brothers said, “yeah, that’s Zirkzee!”.’
So how does a 6ft 4in professional footballer with a distinctive mop of curly hair go unrecognised on his own doorstep?
Maybe one reason is that Zirkzee has taken a rather peculiar route to Old Trafford. Instead of making his name at Feyenoord, their Rotterdam rivals Sparta or other Dutch powerhouses like Ajax and PSV Eindhoven, he flirted with fame at Bayern before going around the houses at Parma, Anderlecht and Bologna.
Zirkzee has never played in the Eredivisie. He only made his senior debut for the Dutch national team at the Euros this summer after Ronaldo Koeman gave him a late call-up while he was on holiday at Disneyworld in Florida.
Four days after winning his second cap off the bench in the semi-final defeat to England, Zirkzee was a United player.
The 23-year-old is living in an apartment in Manchester while he looks for a house, which means there is no place yet for his beloved dog Kobe.
‘That dog is already legendary,’ says Daniel van der Meulen, Zirkzee’s youth-team coach at ADO Den Haag, referring to Kobe’s appearances on social media.
‘Kobe Bryant was Joshua’s favourite athlete. He was also not a big mouth or troublemaker, he was a hard worker with intelligence. Joshua prepares the same way for matches. He is being the best of himself that he can be.’
Zirkzee (third from top right) always had an abundance of talent right from an early age
Zirkzee made his debut for the Netherlands at Euro 2024 (pictured in action against Turkey)
The Dutchman cut his teeth playing cage football and he has that kind of flair about him
In a video filmed at Bologna last season, Zirkzee revealed that giving Kobe an early-morning walk and a set of daily rules help him stay so chilled.
‘Let stuff go,’ he said. ‘Don’t let your day get ruined by something that happened yesterday. Stay calm: some things are not in your control and need time. Let stuff happen sometimes. And smile every day.’
At United, Zirkzee has instantly gravitated towards two of the club’s other Dutch-born summer signings, Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui.
A dream debut off the bench against Fulham two weeks ago saw him claim an 87th-minute winner before celebrating in front of the Stretford End.
Back home in Rotterdam, Zirkzee’s coach at his second youth club Spartaan 20, Ricardo Willemse, picked up his phone and messaged the player’s father Remco.
‘When Joshua used to score he would just walk away, a little bit arrogantly,’ says Willemse. ‘His father would say: “Hey Joshua, it’s okay to cheer”.
‘After the first goal in Manchester, I wrote to congratulate him. His father replied: “Now he cheers!”.’
Zirkzee scored again in United’s defeat at Brighton last weekend but in rather different circumstances after coming on as a half-time substitute for Mason Mount. He inadvertently touched Alejandro Garnacho’s effort over the line and it was ruled out for offside.
With Rasmus Hojlund still unavailable and Bruno Fernandes likely to switch from a false nine to replace Mount at No 10, Zirkzee could make his full debut against Liverpool at Old Trafford on Sunday.
Zirkzee holds up a shirt to be hung at his old club and is humble when he is off the pitch
Zirkzee scored the winner on his Man United debut in a 1-0 victory over Fulham at Old Trafford
He doesn’t see himself as a centre-forward, more of a nine-and-a-half; an intuitive player who likes to cut in from wide areas or come from deep, as he did in getting on the end of Garnacho’s cross to guide home the winner against Fulham.
It was typical of the technical skill people don’t expect from a big man, but Zirkzee has been doing it his whole career. Two-footed, quick over short distance and full of the tricks he admired in his childhood heroes Ronaldinho and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
‘I see myself in Ibra,’ Zirkzee said earlier this year. ‘Scoring goals isn’t enough – I want to entertain people.’
Other former United strikers Edinson Cavani, Dimitar Berbatov and, whisper it, Eric Cantona fit the same mould. In Holland, some say Bergkamp. In Bologna, they compared him to Roberto Baggio, but that was more a measure of affection for the young man who helped their club qualify for the European Cup after 60 years.
‘He is not a centre-forward, he is in between. He works in the spaces,’ explains Willemse.
‘His attitude is a little bit the same as Cantona. But Cantona was a character. Some players present themselves in public in a different way for the fans or the cameras, but Joshua is more down to earth.
‘He is a nice boy. He is not drinking he is not smoking. For me, he is the same person. Always relaxed. He hasn’t changed.’
In his 25 years as a coach at Spartaan, Willemse has seen many good players come and go. It’s a tradition that those who make it in professional football give the club a signed shirt in exchange for the old one they used to wear here.
Zirkzee’s jersey from the Champions League final in 2020, when he was an unused substitute for Bayern against Paris Saint-Germain, has pride of place in the clubhouse alongside Denzel Dumfries and Lutsharel Geertruida, two other members of Holland’s squad for the Euros. Bruno Martins Indi is another alumni. All of them have a dressing-room named after them.
‘I never thought Bruno Martins Indi would become a professional player, but with Joshua you saw it,’ says Willemse candidly.
‘At that age you know don’t what’s going to happen. But in your mind you think, “if this boy doesn’t make it then something is wrong”.’
Zirkzee has compared himself to former Man United and Sweden striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic
It was clear to those who saw Zirkzee playing from a young age on these pitches that he would make it to the very top
Amid the warren of streets and alleyways that make up Snoekenveen, there are two concrete cage football courts.
This is where Zirkzee first kicked a ball growing up in the Waterland district of Spijkenisse with his Dutch father, Nigerian mother Doris, younger brother Jordan – also a professional footballer – and their sister.
Remco spends a lot of his time in Manchester to support Joshua, although it’s unclear if the player is still with his model influencer girlfriend Celina Kerr.
A 10-minute drive from this quiet suburb brings you to VV Hekelingen where Zirkzee joined at the age of four and his pictures hang on the wall.
This is the unassuming location of Zirkzee’s formative years playing football
Zirkzee (pictured left, with his hands near his mouth) was part of the Bayern Munich squad that won the Champions League during the 2019-20 season after beating PSG in the final
His first coach Ferry Verbeek knew at once that he had something special on his hands.
‘He played the whole team and got past them all. It wasn’t normal,’ says Verbeek whose son played with Zirkzee when competitive games began at Under-7. ‘That year the team scored 60 goals and Joshua scored 55 of them.
‘His mother was African and she was singing and dancing around the field when he scored.
‘His father would film every game but he’s a really normal guy. Most dads here say, “my son is the best” but he never said that. We knew that Joshua was special, so relax.
‘Some kids you have an argument but Joshua never. It’s unbelievable. Players would kick him but he never reacted. He was very different. We’ve never had another player like him.’
At Spartaan, Willemse realised the importance of developing an emotional bond with Zirkzee.
‘He wasn’t shy but Johsua wasn’t an easy boy to talk to. He was a little bit inside (introverted). You had to pull the words out of him if you want to talk seriously with him.
‘His father told me that he is sensitive. When he has a connection with a trainer, he feels trust and plays at a better level.’
Before playing for United, Bayern or the Netherlands, Zirkzee started out at VV Hekelingen
Willemse was surprised Zirkzee didn’t go to Feyenoord or Sparta. Instead, he ended up at Den Haag where he formed a similar connection with Van der Meulen.
‘He was a little bit lost maybe,’ says the coach. ‘He expected to be at a bigger club. I met his father outside the gate of an amateur club and he told me Joshua can do this and that. He didn’t lie.
‘Joshua told me in the first evaluation we had that he would win the Champions League. I never heard that from a player. Normally they say they want to be like Messi or Ronaldo.
‘If you give him the trust that you believe in him, he goes through walls for you, no problem.
‘If he can make that connection with a mentor at United like Ruud van Nistelrooy, who knows the perfect positioning of a striker, then I think it’s a disaster for your opponents.’
After Den Haag, Zirkzee spent a year in Feyenoord’s academy and then joined Bayern. Goals in his first two Bundesliga games raised expectations that he could be the natural successor to Robert Lewandowski, but by the following season he was languishing on the sidelines at loan at Parma.
A more fruitful spell at Anderlecht reflected a good relationship with Vincent Kompany, not that you would think it from the coach’s outburst caught on camera in a documentary on the Belgian club.
‘Zirk, that’s the last time I talk about your attitude,’ screamed Kompany after substituting the striker in a draw with Sint-Truidense. ‘When you come off, I don’t need a f*****g smile, but I do need an attitude that’s perfect.’
Bologna bought Zirkzee for £7m and it paid off handsomely. After a frustrating first season stuck behind Marko Arnautovic, the Austrian moved to Inter Milan and messaged Zirkzee saying: ‘It’s your time now’.
Zirkzee scored 14 goals in 58 appearances for Bologna over two seasons at the Italian club
The Dutchman stepped up with 12 goals and seven assists last season, and was voted the best young player in Serie A. In Holland, it made the pundits and Koeman sit up and take notice.
Willemse adds: ‘I’ve heard him say that when he went to Bayern Munich he thought, “I’m there”. No. When he went to Bologna, he learned that he had to work harder to be a big player.’
Rather like Hojlund at Atalanta, it was Zirkzee’s success in Italy that convinced United he was ready, although the buyout clause meant he cost half as much as the Dane. Liverpool were said to be ready to hijack the deal but there was no truth in those reports.
The biggest fixture in the English football calendar will have more than a little Dutch flavour on Sunday as Erik ten Hag faces Arne Slot – and you wouldn’t bet against Joshua Zirkzee taking centre stage.
