Sepp van den Berg: The Realities of Being a Footballer

As van den Berg affirms, he’s living the dream. Being a professional footballer is all he ever wanted to do as he grew up in Zwolle, Netherlands in a tight-knit household with his mum and dad (“I have very, very good parents and I’m really close with them”, he says), as well as his two siblings.

His younger brother, Rav, who currently plays for Bundesliga side Köln, and older sister Sare - a keen hockey player - are, and always have been, “also very close but very competitive too”, by van den Berg’s own admission.

And that competitiveness consistently drove him to be better at anything he put his mind to, even from a young age, which goes some way to explaining why PEC Zwolle, the local side where van den Berg was in the youth ranks, believed he was good enough to make his Eredivisie debut at the age of just 16.

His first start came a week later against 16-time Dutch top-flight champions Feyenoord - a daunting prospect for a teenager still completing his exams at school.

“They are a huge team in Holland, and they had some very good players. I was very nervous,” admits van den Berg.

“Especially playing against Robin van Persie! He’s one of the best Dutch strikers of all time.

“I remember our coach didn’t announce the starting XI until the morning of the game, and I wasn’t expecting to start. When I found out, the nerves definitely kicked in.

“But, overall, I think I dealt with it quite well. I’ve always been calm in those situations. Of course, you feel the nerves before the match, but once the whistle blows, it’s just football.

“It sounds very easy but, for me, personally, ever since I made my debut, it’s been like this.”

Managing those nerves and controlling his emotions is something that van den Berg acknowledges that he’s capable of - but, when he first came into the first team as a teenager, it was more of a necessity rather than a luxury.

Facing an Ajax side that would go on to reach a Champions League final just 15 games into his professional football career is not a scenario he could go into fretfully; André Onana, Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong, Hakim Ziyech, Dušan Tadić and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (just a select list of the players in Erik ten Hag’s squad that day) would take no pity on such emotions.

And that ruthlessness was evident in the final score, as the eventual title winners, who scored 119 goals in the process, ran away as 4-1 winners.

But, despite this, it was a game that van den Berg can still look back on positively, which is an attitude he has when reflecting on some of the other heavy defeats throughout his career, as he alludes to one of Brentford head coach Thomas Frank’s favourite quotes: “You either win or you learn.”

Van den Berg recalls: “I remember playing as a right-back, which wasn’t my preferred position, and Ajax had a crazy, amazing team.

“We played at home, which helped to have our fans there, but it was so difficult. You could just see the quality. I felt sorry for the midfielders because they had to go up against De Jong! He just twists and turns, you can’t get the ball off him, he’s unbelievable.

“But those games are the most enjoyable - you come against the best of the best and you want to challenge yourself as much as possible.”

That Ajax defeat was one of Zwolle head coach John van 't Schip’s final games in charge, as he was sacked and replaced by a former Dutch Footballer of the Year; someone that, crucially for van den Berg, will go down as one of the greatest centre-backs of all time.

“I was really excited by the appointment of Jaap Stam,” says van den Berg, smiling at the mention of the former defender who won the Champions League with Manchester United in 1999, before finishing 12th in the Ballon d'Or later that year.

“As a centre-back, having a coach like Stam was amazing. After training, almost every day, he would take me and work with me, one-on-one.

“Whether it was defending crosses or playing with my weak foot more, just anything. He took a lot of care with me, which was really nice.

“If you have someone like that as your coach, you can only learn from them. It was really good for me.”

And the work that Stam did with the centre-back clearly helped as, at the end of the 2018/19 season, some of the biggest clubs in the world took an interest in the 17-year-old superstar, who had already racked up 21 senior appearances.

Van den Berg confirms that PSV, Bayern Munich and Liverpool were the three teams that he was considering, “but there was just something about” Jürgen Klopp’s Reds, who had just beaten Tottenham in the Champions League final.

He adds: “It was the way they spoke to me, the way they spoke about me, the plan they had for me, the whole package was really attractive.

“One night, my parents just came into my room and said, ‘Liverpool have called’. I was like, ‘What do you mean?’... they said, ‘Liverpool want to buy you!’

“At first, I just said, ‘No way am I doing this, I’m not leaving, I’m not moving house, I’m not moving countries, I’m not doing it’.

“But then my parents went over there to see it all and they came back with a lot of positives to say. As a kid, to make that decision on your own is impossible. You need your parents.

“And, over the summer, I said to them, ‘Okay, let’s do it’. At the end of the day, going to a club like that, you can’t say no!”

The transition from moving to Liverpool - a city four times bigger than Zwolle - was tricky, at times, van den Berg says: “Life felt dangerous! Back home, I would ride my bike around wherever I wanted; if I went on a bike there, I felt like I would get hit by a car!”

But that soon became the least of his worries as, after a few months over 300 miles away from his friends and family, living alone, van den Berg first began to struggle with his mental health, not helped by the loneliness of being by himself.

But, ironically, he suddenly had hundreds of thousands of people trying to connect with Liverpool's newest wonderkid on social media: another challenging aspect of moving to one of the biggest clubs in the world, that nobody told him how to navigate.

“My Instagram absolutely blew up,” he says. “There were a lot of people suddenly showing an interest in me.

“After signing, I remember one of my friends from home was refreshing my profile and, every second, it was adding 1,000 followers every time!

“In the first week, I went from 4,000 followers to 150,000. I stayed quite calm but it was just… wow.

“You can imagine, for a 17-year-old guy playing for Liverpool… it could have gone wrong. I could have thought, ‘I’m the guy’.

“But I’m lucky because my family are so down to earth and I’ve known my girlfriend a long time. They made sure I didn’t do anything stupid.”

'A 17-year-old guy playing for Liverpool, I could have thought, ‘I’m the guy’. But I’m lucky because my family are so down to earth and I’ve known my girlfriend a long time. They made sure I didn’t do anything stupid'

And, as well as his family and girlfriend (who he has known since they first met as 13-year-olds at school), there was one team-mate who made his switch to Merseyside a little easier: “Virgil van Dijk made me feel really welcome,” van den Berg states, discussing his fellow Dutchman.

“I remember, on my first day, he said to the kit man, ‘Make sure his place in the dressing room is next to mine’, and it was those small things that made me feel more at home.

“From a footballing perspective, it was just watching him in training and in matches, he was the best defender in the world at that stage… those moments will always stay with me.

“Watching what he does, how he plays, how he speaks, how he leads the team - to see that up close was priceless.”

Van den Berg spent his first 18 months at Liverpool learning from Van Dijk and the rest of the Liverpool first team, but mainly featuring for the Under-23s, under the guidance of Neil Critchley.

However, he did make four appearances for the senior side, all in the domestic cup competitions. During the 2019/20 season, he came on for the final minute of the Reds’ 1-0 win away at MK Dons in the Carabao Cup, before making his first start in a ridiculous 5-5 draw with Arsenal at Anfield in the next round, which Klopp’s side won on penalties.

The quarter-final stage saw the Reds' first-team players in action at the Club World Cup in Qatar, meaning Critchley led a side containing five debutants and which had an average age of 19 years, six months and three days.

It was a difficult night for van den Berg, who featured alongside a 15-year-old Harvey Elliott, with Bees keeper Ben Winterbottom on the bench, in a 5-0 defeat for the Merseysiders against Aston Villa. His final game for Liverpool was a 1-0 win over Shrewsbury Town in the FA Cup third round in February 2020.

But that taste - which could have been a slightly sour one after the thrashing by Villa - of senior football left van den Berg wanting more, which saw him and Liverpool look for a loan move in January 2021.

Van den Berg was keen on a return to the Eredivisie but Liverpool wanted him to stay in England, with League One moves mooted for the then 19-year-old.

But a last-minute call from Preston North End saw the defender make the move to the Championship.

“I had such a good time there,” van den Berg says. “It was the perfect loan: I matured as a person but also as a player. I grew a lot… metaphorically but also literally!

“The Championship is so tough, but I loved it. There is such a variety of teams and players.

“We played against Brentford: they were playing some amazing football, Ivan Toney scored 50 goals or something ridiculous that season.

“But then you would go and play Rotherham United away or against Adebayo Akinfenwa!

“And you play so many games but, because of that, you have so many intense moments as a group so you become really close.

“Going there really made me grow, which was the same with my other loans, too. You meet new people again, you have to open up again - going out of my comfort zone made me a better and more confident person.”

He extended his initial six-month loan at Deepdale for another 12 months, keeping him in Lancashire until the end of the 2021/22 campaign.

During his season-and-a-half with the Lilywhites, van den Berg made 66 appearances for the second-tier side (he missed just four games in all competitions), which culminated in him winning the club’s Young Player of the Year award. You can understand why he describes it as “the perfect loan”.

Looking for another successful period away from Liverpool, where he could prove himself, this time at a higher level, Bundesliga side Schalke signed van den Berg for the 2022/23 season.

He had a successful start to his spell with his new side, who had recently been promoted to the German top tier, starting all of their opening four matches.

But an injury during a 3-2 loss to Augsburg saw him stretchered off and taken to hospital - which was the beginning of a long process of physical and mental recovery.

Van den Berg explains: “It was a real horror injury; it was really unlucky as well. My ankle just twisted, it dislocated, and all my ligaments went.

“All I remember from that time was just crying. I was devastated. I just wanted to play football. It’s the most fun thing in my life, it’s all I wanted to do. That was a hard year for me.

“It took me one or two weeks to have surgery and, during those two weeks… I’m not saying I was depressed, depressed is a big word, but I was very emotional.

“I couldn’t watch any football. Every time I watched it, I just replayed what had happened to me back in my own head.

“Not playing for five or six months absolutely killed me. As a loan player, I knew I only had a year to prove myself, which I felt made things worse.

“But, luckily, I was a lot closer to home and I could see my family a lot, which really, really helped me. I would have struggled a lot more if it wasn’t for that.

“Eventually, my emotions settled down, I turned on a switch, and I just tried to look forward, be positive, and work as hard as I could. And, in the end, I managed to get back and play some games at the end of the season.

“Those moments, as a young player, are lessons. If I get an injury now, I know my body a lot better, I know how to deal with injuries and the emotions that come with them.”

'All I remember from that time was just crying, I was devastated, I just wanted to play football... I’m not saying I was depressed but I was very emotional. Not playing for five or six months absolutely killed me'

And the lessons learnt during his first spell in the Bundesliga saw van den Berg return for a superb second season in Germany, this time with Mainz.

He played 33 of their 34 Bundesliga matches, clocking up more minutes (2,839) than any player at the club. Only one player blocked more shots (36) and won more aerial duels (173) than van den Berg in the entire division, as his impressive defensive performances helped Mainz avoid relegation.

And, after three years out on loan, van den Berg was keen for a fresh start - but, this time, a permanent one.

“Liverpool wanted me to stay but I knew what I wanted - I wanted to be the guy that was starting week in, week out,” he explains.

“I was very fortunate that there was a lot of interest… but it also made it very difficult, it was a luxury problem to have!

“For me, Brentford was one of the first clubs interested and, as well as getting the chance to play in the Premier League and live in London, it was speaking with Thomas Frank.

“The first meeting we had, he was asking me some straight questions: ‘Why do you want to play for Brentford? Why do we need you at Brentford?!’ It was so direct, it was like a proper job interview!

“Then, me and Thomas had lots of phone calls and messages - he would call me every other week and we’d speak on WhatsApp and stuff - he’s just a very, very nice person.

“Of course, the football part has to be right as well - and it was. But Thomas just made me feel like I was really wanted here.”

So far, he has had a good start to life back playing in England with the Bees, which was helped by being back closer to his young brother, Rav, who had been a mainstay for Middlesbrough before signing for Köln - the defensive genes clearly run in the family.

But, after the struggles that van den Berg went through earlier in his career, he wants to ensure his brother doesn’t have to endure that distress - or, at least if he does, that he’s got someone there to support him.

Speaking on his relationship with his brother, van den Berg smiles: “Having him play football is great; we’re so close because of the game.

“Me being his older brother, I feel responsible for him. If he looks up to me, I want to be someone good he can look up to.

'Me being his older brother, I feel responsible for him. If he looks up to me, I want to be someone good he can look up to'

“After what I went through as a young player moving to England, I was definitely worried about him when he signed for Middlesbrough.

“So, at that time, I was at Liverpool, I drove all the way there to be at his signing day, and I stayed overnight to make sure he was okay.

“But he’s a slightly different personality to me: he’s a bit more open about his feelings.

“I told him the things I struggled with, to make sure he doesn’t do the same things.”

Van den Berg is enjoying life since moving to Brentford, having bonded with his new team-mates, settled into life in west London, and the love he’s already felt from the Bees supporters is key to his contentment.

But, just like the fans in the stands at Gtech Community Stadium, he’s human - and he’s grappling with the same emotional challenges as everyone else.

“So far, I’m dealing with it okay,” he insists. “I’m not complaining, I’m really lucky, I have a great life… but it’s difficult sometimes.”