THREAD: Remember Jonathan de Guzman? Played for Feyenoord, multiple other clubs, a while at Swansea, and was then bought by Napoli in 2014 after a fantastic World Cup with the Netherlands. This is the insane story of the past 3 years of his career.
After the 2014 World Cup, van Gaal declared him as one of the central pieces to the Netherlands' amazing third place. Napoli are interested and buy him that same summer, under Benitez. The first few months go great: he's a starter and playing very well.
March 2015: he feels a slight knob in the bottom part of his stomach, and it hurts. He tells the club doctor, de Nicola, who is unable to diagnose him, and just puts him on a different diet and rest. De Guzman wasn't allowed to go see another doctor: De Nicola was the boss.
The summer goes by, but the pain is still there. Sarri is the new head coach, and Giuntoli the new sport director at Napoli. De Nicola declares De Guzman fit to play, but in his own words, he is now only able to walk 6km per game at 50% instead of 10km at 100% previously.
People at Napoli want to get rid of him. They think he's faking the pain, and don't hesitate to tell him. De Guzman starts to doubt if he actually has the pain. Last day of the 2015 summer mercato, and Giuntoli tells him: you have to leave Napoli, we don't want you here anymore.
De Guzman doesn't want to leave: he wants to be fit again first. He tells Giuntoli, who says that if he doesn't leave, he'll become very angry, and his career in Napoli will be done, over. He's a dead man. Still, De Guzman refuses to leave, and returns for training.
First day of training after the mercato: Giuntoli comes to him, and screams "Hé pezzo di merda, piece of shit, come here. You had promised you were leaving". And then: Giuntoli gives him a punch straight in the face. De Guzman starts fighting with him, and Zuniga has to separate.
On the way home, De Guzman tries to call de Laurentiis, who doesn't answer. Next day at training, Giuntoli brings de Laurentiis' son Edoardo, with whom de Guzman had a great relationship, yet he tells him: "you're not going anywhere now: you're a dead man".
For four months, the only thing he was allowed to do was jog around the training pitch. Not a single one of his teammates reached out, tried to help him. He says he doesn't blame them: the club would've latched out at them if they had.
Finally, he's allowed to go see another doctor. And here's the crazy story: this new doctor diagnoses a sport hernia in 10 minutes. Back in Italy, de Nicola (Napoli club doctor) STILL refuses to allow an operation. He has to wait longer.
Finally, he's loaned to Carpi, and they allow the operation. The pain is gone. We're now in the summer of 2016: de Guzman will take another year to fully recover. He refused a multi-million offer from Asia because he loved the game too much.
In 2017, he signs for Eintracht Frankfurt. Finally back to his top level, they beat Bayern München to win the German Cup last season. He becomes the first Dutch player in history to score in the 4 major leagues.
What would his career have looked like had he been diagnosed correctly in 2015? We'll never know. But at least he's back and happy now. End. Full credit goes to @BVlietstra for the original Dutch interview: I just felt it had to be shared in English with more people!
Quick additional information: De Guzman’s moves to Bournemouth & Sunderland fell through because of this. He had Advocaat on the phone on that last mercato day and had to ask him to call Giuntoli down because he was getting too crazy.
UPDATE: Napoli have refused to comment on this story after they were asked by @volkskrant and @BVlietstra. That says a lot.
Another quick update, thanks to @mkvland: Gazetta reporting only the “fight” part of the story shows another massive problem in Italian football — journalism. gazzanet.gazzetta.it/?refresh_ce-cp
By the way: @jdeguz is on Twitter. Don’t hesitate to tell him we support him!
Second point: interesting to look back on this Instagram picture from early 2016 now, and the caption..."Crazy how someone can put your career on hold for such a long time", De Nicola. Oh and look at the answers to the tweet/instagram pics. Great fans...
