Former Ajax youth coach Brian Tevreden has admitted it was ‘painful’ for them to watch Donyell Malen move to Arsenal as a youngster.
Malen moved to the Emirates in the summer of 2015 after working his way up through Ajax’s youth ranks from 2008.
He would struggle to establish himself at Arsenal, though, failing to make a single appearance for their first team and instead spending his time playing for the youth sides before a move to PSV Eindhoven in 2017.
Since then, he established himself as a star in the Netherlands, so much so that he made a £27m move to Borussia Dortmund this summer to replace Jadon Sancho.
That move is the second big one of his career so far after joining Arsenal as a youngster, a transfer that hurt everyone associated with Ajax, according to Tevreden.
“That was painful, of course,” he told NOS.
“I was a trainer who was close to the players and parents, so already knew something was going on.
“I then said to Wim Jonk (head of youth training): ‘watch out, if we don’t do anything, we’ll lose him’. But it was already too late; he had already made his choice.”
As already stated, things didn’t work out for Malen with Arsenal, who failed to give him his chance in the first-team despite impressing at various youth levels.
NOS explain that the youngster had actually negotiated, courtesy of agent Mino Raiola, that he would have to train with the first team during his time at the club.
This happened initially, but after a week, it ‘became clear’ he was not physically ready for the level the Gunners expected.
That saw him transferred back into the youth teams, and Arsenal’s former head of their youth academy, Andries Joncker, has revealed what was going on.
“Now he is physically very strong, but then he was at 75 percent of what he is now,” he added.
“The physical fight was certainly difficult for him in the under 23s. He was then playing against 1.95-metre guys with Premier League experience. You just have to stand there.
“He saw that he was not going to make it this way. Donyell then took care of mental coaching himself and turned the knob to deal with it in a different way. He did that all by himself. Very clever at that age.”
