Jan Paul van Hecke to Tottenham Hotspur: Why defender holds the key to Roberto De Zerbi's style of play at Spurs

Tottenham Hotspur supporters have already seen Roberto De Zerbi keep their team in the Premier League. They have noted his passion, warmed to his enthusiasm. But De Zerbi ball had to wait. Now, Spurs must be ready to embrace the real thing.

It starts from the back. And the most obvious conduit to help his ideas take shape is Jan Paul van Hecke. The Dutchman has been brought in for £52m from Brighton not just because of his talent but because he is already au fait with De Zerbi's unique approach.

That matters because the full-fat version of his football can be complicated, even for professionals. Lewis Dunk, the erstwhile centre-back partner of Van Hecke at Brighton, has been open about feeling utterly lost during the first weeks of De Zerbi's time there.

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Having spoken about this to Anatoliy Trubin, De Zerbi's goalkeeper at Shakhtar Donetsk, he talked of his team-mates almost having to unlearn all that they had learned about football up to that point. "He opened a new way of playing," Trubin told Sky Sports.

James Milner thought he had seen everything football could throw at him, having been coached by Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson as a youngster before winning the Premier League under Manuel Pellegrini and Jurgen Klopp. But De Zerbi was different.

Speaking to Milner, he talked of De Zerbi helping him to understand "how a team plays and why it happens" like no manager that he had worked with before. "He wanted each player in this exact position and to time their movements," Milner told Sky Sports.

"Finding that free man and how you do that is something that you have maybe done a lot in your career but not realised you were doing it. And then, [working with De Zerbi] pieces together exactly how that works and gives you a deeper understanding again."

It will have been a hectic pre-season for his players, particularly those expected to build the play. Because what might look like free-flowing football from back to front is the product of prescribed movements developed through constant repetition in training.

The rules can be strict. "I remember one situation, I played a good ball, but it was not the way how we need to do it and he screamed a lot," recalls Trubin. "So he demands, he wants, that everyone knows their role, how we need to play, one idea from the team."

It is not just the right movements but the right timing of them. As Dunk has explained, the Brighton players knew every scenario, where the pressure would be arriving from, and how to create the passing lanes that would open up the pitch to beat that pressure.

All of which is a long-winded way of pointing out why Van Hecke, now 26 years old and with over 100 Premier League appearances to his name, is more than just a fine player in his prime. He is an essential figure if De Zerbi is to get his ideas across quickly this season.

Adjusting to this bravery that is required on the ball is not straightforward but that is among Van Hecke's best assets. In last season's Premier League, he ranked second for passes from open play and second for accurate switches of play. Volume and range.

His progressive passing, playing through the pitch as well across it, is much admired by De Zerbi, who has praised the balance between arrogance and confidence in Van Hecke's distribution. He is not afraid to play the difficult pass that breaks the lines.

"He is a strong, intelligent centre-back who is brave in possession and plays with personality," said De Zerbi upon his signing. "Those are important qualities for the way I want our team to set up." But it is how he gets into those positions that is interesting.

There is an aspect of Van Hecke's game that makes him truly unique, even among the elite players in the Premier League. Indeed, in terms of output, he is even more of a statistical outlier than Erling Haaland. And it all comes down to one particular metric.

Van Hecke is a ball carrier. And not just by the standards of centre-backs. Van Hecke carried the ball up the pitch on 597 different occasions in the Premier League last season. His nearest rivals in the competition were Declan Rice, Bernardo Silva and Jeremy Doku.

Now, when it comes to those carries that were pressured by an opponent, Doku was just ahead of Van Hecke. Understandably so. Teams are more likely to allow a defender to bring the ball up the pitch than a winger playing in a far more advanced position.

But this only highlights the gulf between Van Hecke and every other defender in the Premier League even more. He had 315 pressured carries, which was 133 more than any other centre-back in the competition. He simply does it differently to the rest.

The upshot is that Van Hecke carried the ball 10.66 kilometres with the ball at his feet over the course of last season. That is over four kilometres more than anyone else and twice as far as everyone bar the England defensive duo of Marc Guehi and Ezri Konsa.

Supporters will notice the difference. With Marcos Senesi similarly forward thinking with his passing, and Van Hecke committing opponents like nobody else, a team is being constructed that can play through the thirds. After saving Spurs, De Zerbi ball is back.

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