Tottenham Hotspur fans have already witnessed one Roberto De Zerbi masterclass this year – keeping the club in the Premier League. They have grown fond of his energy and his obvious conviction. Yet the version of football he truly wants to build has been kept on ice. That is about to change.
Everything begins with the defence, and the man best equipped to translate De Zerbi's methods onto the pitch is Jan Paul van Hecke. Spurs paid Brighton £52m for the Dutchman, and it was not simply his ability that persuaded them – it was the fact he already understood De Zerbi's system inside out.
According to ESPN, the transfer was a fixed £52 million package with no add-ons attached, and Tottenham officially confirmed the deal on 18 June 2026. Reuters noted the move reunited van Hecke with De Zerbi, the manager who had previously worked with him at Brighton.
The full, uncut De Zerbi experience is notoriously difficult to grasp, even for seasoned professionals. Lewis Dunk, who partnered Van Hecke at the back for Brighton, has admitted he felt completely bewildered during his opening weeks under the Italian's guidance.
Anatoliy Trubin, De Zerbi's goalkeeper during his time at Shakhtar Donetsk, described the adjustment as something close to reprogramming, with players needing to shed almost everything they thought they knew about the game.
"He opened a new way of playing," Trubin told Sky Sports.
James Milner assumed he had experienced every possible coaching style, having come through the ranks under Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson before lifting the Premier League title with Manuel Pellegrini and later Jurgen Klopp. De Zerbi, he found, was a different proposition entirely.
"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."
Pre-season will have been relentless for those Spurs players tasked with building attacks from deep, because the passages of play that look effortless from back to front are actually the result of rehearsed patterns drilled repeatedly on the training ground.
De Zerbi does not tolerate deviation from the plan easily.
"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 solely about executing the correct movement but about executing it at precisely the right moment. Dunk has previously explained that Brighton's players learned to anticipate every possible pressing scenario, recognising exactly where the pressure would come from and how to construct the passing lanes needed to escape it.
All of which explains why Van Hecke, now 26 and with more than 100 Premier League appearances behind him, is far more than simply a talented defender entering his prime. He is arguably the single most important figure in helping De Zerbi's ideas click quickly this season.
The Athletic reported that Van Hecke had just a single year remaining on his Brighton contract at the time of the move, a detail that turned him into more of a market opportunity than the subject of a prolonged bidding war.
The pull of De Zerbi
In an interview published on 7 August 2026, Van Hecke told The Athletic that De Zerbi's involvement was the decisive factor in his decision to join Spurs, recalling that the Italian had called him "son" when technical director Johan Lange first floated the idea of the transfer earlier in the year.
The BBC reported that Van Hecke had already featured on Tottenham's pre-season tour, and that Spurs pushed the deal through despite reported interest in the defender from Chelsea.
Adapting to the on-ball courage that De Zerbi demands is no simple task, but it happens to be one of Van Hecke's greatest strengths. In last season's Premier League, he ranked second for passes made from open play and second for accurate switches of play – a combination of volume and range that few defenders can match.
His progressive passing, threading the ball through opposition lines as well as spraying it across the pitch, has earned particular praise from De Zerbi, who has highlighted the blend of arrogance and confidence running through Van Hecke's distribution. He is never afraid to attempt the difficult pass that splits defensive 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 the way Van Hecke gets himself into these positions that makes him truly stand out.
An outlier even among elite carriers
There is a facet of Van Hecke's game that separates him from virtually every other defender in the top flight – arguably every other player, full stop. Statistically, he is an even bigger outlier than Erling Haaland in his own category, and it all comes down to one specific metric.
Van Hecke is, first and foremost, a ball carrier, and not merely by the modest standards usually applied to centre-backs. He carried the ball forward on 597 separate occasions in last season's Premier League. The players closest to him in that particular list were Declan Rice, Bernardo Silva and Jeremy Doku.
When it comes specifically to carries made under pressure from an opponent, Doku edged narrowly ahead of Van Hecke – understandable, given that teams are naturally more inclined to let a defender advance with the ball than to allow a winger operating in far more dangerous territory to do the same.
Yet this only underlines how far ahead of every other defender in the division Van Hecke really is. He completed 315 pressured carries last season, 133 more than any other centre-back in the Premier League. Simply put, nobody else at his position plays the way he does.
The end result is that Van Hecke carried the ball a total of 10.66 kilometres with it at his feet across the course of last season – more than four kilometres further than anyone else in the competition, and roughly double the distance covered by every player bar England's Marc Guehi and Ezri Konsa.
Supporters should notice the difference this season. With Marcos Senesi similarly progressive in his passing, and Van Hecke drawing opponents out of position like no one else in the league, Tottenham are assembling a side capable of playing through the thirds rather than around them. Having already rescued Spurs from the drop, De Zerbi's true footballing vision now returns in full.
De Zerbi himself addressed the wider rebuild on 11 August 2026, telling reporters that restoring Tottenham's "spirit and mentality" was the key to reviving the club, according to Reuters. He specifically named Van Hecke among the summer arrivals already settling into the squad.
Reuters also reported that Tottenham's summer recruitment extended well beyond Van Hecke, with Sandro Tonali, Mateus Fernandes, Andy Robertson, Marcos Senesi, Cole Ramsey and Martin Dubravka all brought into the squad by 11 August 2026. Fernandes has already made an impact of his own, having stunned onlookers with a volleyed goal on his Tottenham debut against MK Dons following his £85million move from West Ham, a deal Manchester United ultimately chose not to pursue.
What happens next
Tottenham were due to round off their pre-season schedule with a final warm-up fixture against Hoffenheim, according to beIN Sports, before their Premier League campaign begins away at Brentford on 22 August 2026, as confirmed by Reuters.
Watch Brentford vs Tottenham Hotspur live on Saturday Night Football on Sky Sports Premier League from 5pm; kick-off 5.30pm.
