From Brighton rows to Spurs reunion: how De Zerbi shaped Van Hecke’s career

The first time Jan Paul van Hecke met Roberto De Zerbi’s tactical demands, he pushed back. The Dutch defender arrived at Brighton in 2020, but it was only in the 2022/23 season that he began to establish himself under the Italian coach. De Zerbi’s system required defenders to step into unfamiliar territory, and Van Hecke admitted the adjustment was far from smooth.

Van Hecke described frequent discussions with De Zerbi in those early months. The disagreements centred on how the team should build attacks from the back, a concept that clashed with the defender’s established approach. “At the start, we argued a lot about how he wanted the team to play, and I had to adapt,” Van Hecke said. “Sometimes you step out of your comfort zone, and other times we ended up arguing over situations.”

The friction gradually gave way to mutual respect. Under De Zerbi, Van Hecke evolved from a squad option into one of the Premier League’s most highly regarded centre-backs. The coach publicly labelled him a “great player” and one of England’s most promising defenders. The recognition was mutual—when De Zerbi left Brighton in 2024, Van Hecke posted on social media thanking the coach and calling him someone who had “changed my life.”

Now the pair are reunited at Tottenham. De Zerbi’s influence was decisive in persuading the club to beat off competition for Van Hecke. The coach recently revealed that, after securing Tottenham’s Premier League survival with victory over Everton, one of the first messages he sent was to Van Hecke. In playful terms, he wrote that the defender would now have to follow him to London “one way or another.”

Johan Lange, the club’s sporting director, said Van Hecke had long been a Tottenham target even before De Zerbi’s arrival. “But I think that’s a beautiful thing in football. Ultimately, the coach wants the best, the player wants the best, and one pushes the other to a higher level,” Lange said. “We still talk about it sometimes. He jokes with me: ‘Do you remember our first months?’ And then we look back at everything that’s happened.”

Van Hecke said he was given assurances he would be a cornerstone of the club’s rebuild and pointed to the arrivals of Sandro Tonali and Mateus Fernandes—reportedly costing over £180 million combined—as evidence of the project’s ambition. “That’s exactly what the club presented to me. They said I would be one of the pillars of this project. It’s great to be one of the first reinforcements. They also said other big players would arrive, and you really see that happening,” he said.

Since taking charge amid a relegation battle last season, De Zerbi has sought to embed his philosophy at Tottenham. Van Hecke, who knows the process well, expects an aggressive, ball-dominant side committed to building from the back. The defender’s reunion with Micky van de Ven—close friends since their youth international days—added to the appeal of the move.