Mixed-up guy gets his act together

Swansea: His dad is Filipino, his mother Jamaican. He was raised in Canada but represents Holland. Naturally, he plays under a Danish coach in English football for a club in Wales.

If anyone epitomises the multinational character of modern football it is Jonathan De Guzman – and if any club do, perhaps they are Swansea. The city can seem remote until you visit the Liberty stadium, where it’s all about connectedness to a wider world. There, in front of an approving, converted support, the team eschew the British long ball in favour of, as De Guzman puts it, “looking for that football solution” in tight situations - a very Mediterranean thing. Swansea’s dynamic is such that matches against the supposed better teams seem the easier ones.

“I totally agree. The bigger teams try to play football also. You get more room and we can then play too. No disrespect to the smaller teams but those are the harder teams to play against, actually. More pressure, just more physical, we’re not the biggest team,” De Guzman says.

De Guzman, who lives in town, deems Swansea “a nice city” but knew “not much at all” about the place or its location before signing on loan from Villarreal. Yet it was “a no-brainer” because of the club’s football brand, and Michael Laudrup, his former coach at Mallorca. The most important influence on Swansea is Spain.

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As a playing great Laudrup’s spiritual home was there; Barcelona inspired his predecessor, Brendan Rodgers, and the whole “Swansea revolution” began with Roberto Martinez. This season’s further progression stems from the four amigos Laudrup signed from La Liga: De Guzman arrived after Chico and Michu, then Pablo Hernandez followed.

“When Swansea got Michu I thought ‘wow’ because I’d played against him. He’s a great player. He’s a sensation for the Premier League, I believe. Very smart on the ball, very relaxed on the pitch, knows what he’s doing.

“I also knew Pablo, from Valencia, and knew he’d be a success: the fast player who plays the last pass and is always trying to surprise the defence. I actually met Chico before I left Mallorca for Villarreal. Strong player. People say he’s a bit crazy but that’s his game, always throwing his body out for the team.

“The dressing room is a great mix and because we’re doing so well everyone’s happy. Michu speaks English, Pablo a bit, Chico’s trying to learn. You have the little Spanish group, the little Dutch group [that includes Kemy Agustien and Michel Vorm], who all speak. I might be the only guy who can understand everything.

“Of course, I’m used to [multinational environments]. They make fun of me: Jamaican and Filipino and also coming from Canada with a Dutch passport. I’m not weird ... but I’m different.” De Guzman, controversially in Canada, chose to play for Holland at the Beijing Olympics. An ambition remains to become a full Dutch international.

Football-wise he feels Dutch because that’s where he was educated in the game; when De Guzman, now 25, was 12 he left his family in Scarborough, Toronto, to move to Rotterdam and join Feyenoord’s academy. “I remember my dad telling me, ‘Some days you’re going to cry by the window and want to go home, but you’ve got to stick in there because you have a great talent’,” he recalls. Dad had already cashed in his life savings to take Jonathan’s older brother, Julian, to Europe for trials and he’d won a contract at Marseilles.

“My brother is my idol and by the time I moved to Holland he was playing in Germany. I’d call him every day and still do.”

At Feyenoord he loved the long, 8am-6pm academy days packed with football and school lessons and became a sensation, a first-team regular at 18 and compared to Zinedine Zidane by club legend Wim Van Hanegem.

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“He got carried away,” De Guzman laughs. “In your first year as a player you play with fire and can do nothing wrong.” Nevertheless interest from big clubs, including Arsenal and Chelsea, followed and in 2008 he was poised to join Manchester City — but Feyenoord’s asking price of €10m (Dh48.7m) was too much.

Then came the setbacks. Though he’d excelled when moved to the right wing by coach Bert Van Marwijk, De Guzman wanted to return to what he deems his best position, attacking midfielder, and having perhaps been overplayed in his youth, he suffered a meniscus problem which required three operations. By 2010 he was a free agent but the big clubs had stopped ringing. In stepped Laudrup.

“He’s played a huge role in my career because in the two years prior to signing me for Mallorca I was pretty much injured and I needed someone to show faith. I remember going to away games at Barca or Real Madrid — normally fans ask for the players’ autographs but everyone went straight to him. And yet, with all that status, he’s a humble man, very calm and easy to talk to, though you know when he’s serious and he’s clear in what he says.

“He knows how players feel: he knows what we’re thinking if we’re 2-0 down at half time and, for example, against Reading he used that to make us come back.”

— The Times Newspapers Limited, London 2012