It does not take Davy Pröpper long to pinpoint the period that altered his outlook for good. Life had initially been kind since the midfielder made his debut for Vitesse Arnhem, the club he supported, in January 2010 but things had soured. A new owner, Merab Jordania, brought in players he preferred and there was the intense frustration, too, of seeing childhood friends push ahead of him in the reckoning. The way back was unclear; it all became hard for a young player to take and during the 2012-13 season, when he played 14 games, Pröpper sought a means of regaining control.
“I went to see someone, I guess you’d call him a motivational coach, and it helped me a lot at the time,” Pröpper tells the Observer. “He told me that events were there to be shaped by me, and not about the choices a trainer or somebody else makes. It led to a change in my career; when I didn’t play, I was able to throw the problem away a little bit. I didn’t keep disappointments in my head.”
There have not been many since and the emotion was far closer to delight when, last month, Pröpper signed the Premier League contract he had been hoping for. He became, for a fortnight at least, Brighton & Hove Albion’s record signing after the club agreed a deal with PSV Eindhoven and the move felt timely. Pröpper turned 26 on 2 September and, by Dutch standards, his move abroad has come fairly late.
“I knew it was my time to go,” he says of his reaction when, straight after PSV’s elimination from the Europa League play-offs at the hands of the Croatian side Osijek, Brighton were given the encouragement they needed to make a deal. “There were other clubs interested, but not from England, and the Premier League was very important for me. I’d been really close to joining Zenit St Petersburg in the winter break; they wanted to pay a lot of money but PSV didn’t want to sell me at the time and I wasn’t especially disappointed. I preferred to move on in the summer.”
Brighton have taken possession of an all-rounder who grew up watching Vitesse in the stands and, after joining PSV in 2015, shifted up the couple of gears required for a move overseas. “Taking that internal step was the best route for me,” he says. “I needed some time just to see how it goes and feel comfortable.”
It was Pröpper who, rifling in a late winner against CSKA Moscow in December, ensured PSV were the first Dutch club to reach the Champions League knockout stage in eight years. He had blossomed into a forceful, assertive figure on the pitch; off it, during an interview split in two by the demands of a rain-affected Brighton squad photo session, he is shy and unassuming, lacking the formidable range of English expression held by many of his compatriots but illuminating in his perception of how football in his home town – and country – has changed. “Things became different when the new owner arrived at Vitesse,” he says of Jordania, who has since moved on but set in train their relationship with Chelsea and, accordingly, the conveyor belt of loan players to Holland that has verged on a running joke.
“At first you had a lot of Dutch players there and it was a smaller club, but a good club. After that, they had more money and hired a lot of new guys; the quality went up, but it all changed a little. In the first few years the supporters had some problems with all the players they loaned, but last season they won the cup and if you’re winning then people tend to like it.”
The situation might be better if there were not constant gaps to fill. As Ajax have discovered since last season’s Europa League final, a flush of early success can lead to premature departures from a league short of money and big sponsorship deals. “It’s the biggest problem now, but it will be difficult to change,” Pröpper says, and he knows a first-hand example. He has been a close friend of Marco van Ginkel, the Chelsea midfielder, since the pair were nine and eight years old respectively, progressing through the Vitesse academy. Van Ginkel has made four appearances since leaving for Stamford Bridge in 2013 and has just begun a third straight season on loan at PSV. Whether you see it as folly or an incidental aspect of modern player ownership, such situations surely cannot be ideal.
“Marco has seen a lot of the world, which is great for him, and he likes it also,” Pröpper says. “At that moment, aged 20, it was a big chance for him to go and everyone would take the opportunity. If I had been offered it at that age then I would have gone, too.”
Van Ginkel’s departure was one of the cues for Pröpper to regain his place in the Vitesse team and competition with those dear to him has been a running theme. Pröpper is the eldest of three footballing brothers: Robin and Mike are defenders for Heracles and Den Bosch, all of them having been coached by their father, Peter, at the local amateur club VDZ in their formative years.
He was, Pröpper says: “Strict, I think more for us than the other players.” His brothers looked up to him but there was a role reversal in 2016 when Robin’s De Graafschap held Ajax to an improbable draw that allowed PSV to steal in and take the title. Robin was suspended for that match but it did not prevent Davy, taking a moment up the stands as his team-mates celebrated, from telephoning him to offer heartfelt thanks. “We spoke before the game, too,” he says. “I was like: ‘Just win.’ Everything went right, and felt right.”
Things feel right at Brighton, too. His debut, a study in possession by Manchester City, was a struggle but he has felt stronger with every game. He was instrumental in the promoted club’s first league win of this season, when West Brom were convincingly seen off a fortnight ago, and has looked comfortable in a central pair alongside Dale Stephens. If required he can play further forwards; that is arguably his best role and that was in evidence when, in the recent World Cup qualifiers, he scored twice in Holland’s 3-1 win over Bulgaria after expertly timed darts from the No10 position.
“Those late runs are a quality of mine,” he says. If Holland, who had just been beaten 4-0 by France and appear stuck between generations, had lost that game … “then we are gone,” he completes the sentence. “It was my sixth cap and I think maybe it was the first time I’ve really felt part of the team. I’d been playing in games that maybe weren’t the most important, but this one was and we needed the goals.”
Not for the first time, the importance Pröpper attaches to a sense of belonging becomes evident. You sense he is in the right place at Brighton, where Chris Hughton has created an enviable atmosphere, and it helps that he has settled down into a property near the town too. With him are his partner, Mandy – a cousin of Van Ginkel and not, as has sometimes been reported, his friend’s sister – and their 15-month-old daughter, Rocky. Life is peaceful in Sussex, although it may liven up on Sunday if Brighton beat Newcastle United at the Amex Stadium and erase the frustrations of successive league and Carabao Cup defeats at Bournemouth. A repeat of that commanding display against West Brom would put player and club back on track.
“That was our best game for sure, and mine too,” he says. “It’s given us a lot of confidence and we can achieve what I wanted when I came here – to come with the team and stay in this division.”
Those days of self-doubt and uncertainty are fading further into the distance.