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If you listened to Jan Paul van Hecke talk, you can begin to understand why Fabian Hurzeler empowered the center half to talk more, especially in a week like this.
Brighton and Hove Albion were so focused on the right mindset that they sent their group clippings of late goals. The idea is to promote faith, especially since the club aims to take the important next step and win their first major trophy through the FA Cup. “I feel like we can really do something in this cup,” says Van Hecke.
The Dutch center’s approach helps. “I like to motivate other players,” explains Van Hecke, but staff say it is typical of the humility of this leader. The 24-year-old man, of course, emerged as a senior voice.
The context of Saturday’s FA Cup quarterfinals just highlights it. Like Brighton hopes at the best moment in the history of the club, the club that stands in their way is what has caused their worst moment of the season. It has only been eight weeks since Nottingham Forest Hurzeler’s side has subjected to a 7-0 humiliation.
Such defeats saw many teams collapse. Instead, Brighton responded with six wins in seven, as well as a 2-2 draw in Manchester City they should have won. Van Hecke places it on “the character” in the club. “I felt that it was unacceptable of ourselves,” he says. “But then you also come back on the training ground and feel like everyone has that feeling. And they were like ‘no, it doesn’t happen to us’.
“And of course it’s a bad result … but it’s only three points.”
This argues why Van Hecke was chosen as a leader, because it is in line with the attitude of the club. The Brighton hierarchy quickly announced to Hurzeler that their famous analysis showed that it did not have the numbers of 7-0 defeat, even if it was not exactly a good performance. There was a fratness to it, exacerbated by injuries. Hurzeler helped the mindset by literally burning the playbook out of the game and sent the message that the game was gone.
“I think the mentality was like, we can’t go worse from 7-0,” says Van Hecke. “But now we can show what we are all about. And then it’s just turned on in our head.
“Of course it’s 7-0, it’s hard, but it can also be a good thing. And that happened after that. ‘
Van Hecke says the most important motivation is now “to go to the next round and play in the semi -finals”.
Brighton has been there for the past seven years, and is now aware of the need not to treat games like Saturday as days. They should consider it something natural to take the next step and win Brighton’s first big trophy. The chance comes with the challenge of reaching the Champions League for the first time.
“I think if your real fans ask what they prefer, they’ll say to win a trophy,” says Van Hecke. “But I think you can do both … We can do big, big things.”
The feeling of measured progression fits Brighton’s respected approach to recruitment, and how their players develop. Van Hecke already looks like another inspired signing, and he reveals that the reason why he chose the club in 2020 to the fact that he was able to act in the second level NAC Breda was due to the road map they laid out.
“I also talked to other clubs, big clubs, but they had no plan,” says Van Hecke. “They just want to buy me, sit me down with other players and watch what happens.
“But I was like ‘good, Brighton sounds really good and they have a good plan’.”
It was the first time in the Netherlands, which was with Heerenveen, and then to the championship, with Blackburn Rovers, before working on the team. The plan has helped Hecke visualize the idea that a Premier League soccer player can actually be ‘realistic’.
‘To play in the first team when I was like 19 … It’s not realistic. I had to build myself up to be a Premier League footballer.
“And of course they said,” It’s a plan, it can’t work either … But we think you can have the potential to be a Premier League footballer. I may have felt a bit like a risk … but I have to try. Eventually it worked well. It was a good plan. ‘
Van Hecke admits that he was a ‘raw’ defender at that point, but the club began to develop abilities they admired, such as his energy and a will to drive forward. It fits especially with Hurzeler’s aggressive approach, with the high line that allows the 24-year-old to work with what he enjoys most in football: “Headers, Duels and many sneakers”.
However, Van Hecke does not consider Hurzeler’s approach in any way as ‘naive’.
“He is good at his meetings and in his details,” says Van Hecke. “He is very young and he has different things in his head about football.
‘You see us more forward and take more action in the last third. You see that we are all trying to push. I think that’s all the credit for the driver.
“The way we play is also more attractive and people enjoy looking at us.”
Just as important, Hecke says the opposition doesn’t like to play it.
“They lose the ball and then four or five seconds it’s in the net and they’re like ‘oh, it’s not really nice to play against them’.
‘Lots of pace and intensity. I think that’s why many people love the Premier League. ‘
Such a comment leads to the obvious question, about whether Van Hecke grew up the FA -Cup in his village of Aremuiden. He says he “loved it”, partly because it is “so traditional”.
This is no mere line. Van Hecke is one of the players who is completely obsessed with the game and has as much as he could grow up.
“I just like football,” he notes.
So much so that he went to watch all three most important clubs of the Netherlands and initially followed Arsenal in England because he liked Dennis Bergkamp.
“My dad always told me to look at his cuts,” he recalls.
Van Hecke’s parents were some of the kind that drove him and his brothers across the Netherlands to play football. Consequently, there was a particular pride to represent the country last year with its first cap, as his father passed away a few years ago.
“When the national anthem is going on, I think of him,” he reveals.
Van Hecke played with another player last week that he looked up: Virgil van Dijk. The two formed the Dutch Center half-pairing for both legs of the Nations League quarterfinals against Spain, which produced a penalty of the penalty after a 2-2 and 3-3 draw.
“He is really coaching a lot in the game,” details. “When he goes to a duel, you almost know he’s going to win it. That makes it a little easier for me to play next to him. ‘
Van Hecke now plays a similar role for Brighton and consequently wants to give the right message before Saturday: “Now we have another big one against Forest. So it feels like it’s our cup now, and we really want to do special things. You have to win the game first.”
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