Blues set to secure Dutch box-to-box midfielder

He may not be a familiar name to most but Chelsea believe that Vitesse Arnhem’s Marco van Ginkel is already good enough to hold down a midfield spot at the West London club straight away and will use their good relationship with the Dutch club to sign him, according to football journalist Duncan Castles.

The writer claims that a deal has already been put in place for the 20-year-old, who is one of the best young talents in the Netherlands recently winning the Johan Cruijff Prijs ‘talent of the year’ and has been compared to Steven Gerrard in his style.

Castles describes van Ginkel as a powerful box-to-box runner that creates goals as well as scoring them, and scored eight goals from midfield in the Dutch Eredivisie this season. He also says that he wouldn’t be regarded as a mere squad member but as an individual that is already good enough to play an influential role in the team.

Vitesse Arnhem finished fourth in the league this season and there success has been aided in no small part by Chelsea loaning them Gael Kakuta, Patrick van Aanholt and Tomas Kalas, so the Blues would receive preferential treatment if they were interested in the player. The bigger Dutch clubs Ajax, PSV Eindhoven and Feyenoord have all been tracking van Ginkel’s progress.

I do see a few games of Dutch football over the season on ESPN but not regularly enough to be able to judge van Ginkel so I won’t give my opinion on him just yet but the reviews of those that do know of him sound promising and the Johan Cruijff Prijs is a prestigious award, previously won by Adam Maher and Christian Eriksen in the last few years, so he’s definitely highly thought of an would be on Chelsea’s radar considering the links we have to Vitesse Arnhem.

Central midfield is one of the areas that the next manager is keen to strengthen, could Marco van Ginkel be the first signing to help bolster the position this summer?

Source: Goal.com