5 breakout players of the season

#2 Frenkie De Jong

De Jong won the Johan Cruyff award aka - Dutch Footballer of the Year this season

A season ago, very few people outside Dutch football knew about De Jong. But when the next season starts, he will be plying his trades for FC Barcelona and sharing the pitch alongside Leo Messi.

A product of Willem II, De Jong played as a make-shift center back in his first season but moved to his preferred midfield position under Erik Ten Hag. His strongest trait, to many people's surprise, is dribbling and bringing the ball out from the back. When we take a look at his overall career dribbling stats, it is incredibly high at 87.1 % (3.64 per game).

Frenkie wins more than half of his duels with 53 % (19.82 per game) overall and the highest going as far as 85 %. But what makes De Jong special is his ability to break the lines. With just one pass, he bypasses 5-6 of the opposition players.

In the second leg against Juventus, when Dybala (who man-marked him in the first 45 minutes, and totally nullified his passing threat) was taken off for Kean, Juventus struggled to control the game because Kean failed to mark the Dutch who with his array of passing destabilized Juventus's backline. Such is his ability to control the game and its pace.

With Arthur already being considered the heir to Xavi and Riqui Puig game so reminiscent to Iniesta, De Jong can easily sit at the base of the midfield and form a midfield trio which would dominate the game for the next decade or so for Barcelona for sure.