Jonathan de Guzmán
Jonathan Alexander de Guzmán is a professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for Sparta Rotterdam.
De Guzmán is Canadian-born, but made himself available for the Netherlands after he gained Dutch citizenship in 2008, having lived in the country since the age of 12. He progressed through the Feyenoord Academy, making his first team debut in 2005 and went on to play over 100 matches for the club from Rotterdam. In the summer of 2010 de Guzmán signed a three-year contract with RCD Mallorca following a free transfer. The following summer he was purchased by Villarreal.
Internationally, he was capped four times for the Netherlands U21 team, scoring three goals and playing in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Later, he went on to become a full international, making 14 appearances for the senior Netherlands side between 2013 and 2015.
In 2014, De Guzmán was described as a player with good technique, vision, and shooting ability from distance; he is also known as a free-kick specialist.
Early life
De Guzmán was born in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario and is of Jamaican and Filipino descent. His father Bobby, from the Philippines, and mother Pauline, from Jamaica, came to Canada when they were ten years old and have three children: a daughter Jenelle and the two sons Jonathan and Julian. De Guzmán's older brother, Julian de Guzman, is also a former professional football player who retired as the most capped player for the Canada men's national soccer team and was the general manager at Ottawa Fury from 2017 until 2019. Julian was the first Canadian to play in La Liga.De Guzmán's childhood was completely focused on football. His father first wanted his sons to play basketball, but due to the brothers' short height, they started to concentrate on other sports. Once they started playing football, the brothers fell in love with the sport completely: "After school, all we did was playing football. That was pretty unusual in Canada, because almost nobody of our age did it. Canada is not a football country; we were exceptions." He attended St. Rose of Lima in his early years.
Club career
Youth career
Like his brother, De Guzmán started his youth career at North Scarborough Soccer Club in Canada, training six times a week to improve his skills. Julian left Canada to join Olympique Marseille's youth academy and two years later, at the age of 12, Jonathan followed him to Europe, joining the Feyenoord youth academy in the Netherlands. Upon his arrival in Rotterdam, de Guzmán was taken in to the home of an employee of the club; he later stated, "I was basically her son for three years." At fifteen, he moved into a dormitory at Feyenoord, remaining there at weekends when his peers returned to their families in other parts of the Netherlands.Feyenoord
The rise
De Guzmán was not allowed to play for Feyenoord's first team before he was 18 years old. On 15 September 2005, three days after turning 18, de Guzmán was part of Feyenoord's first team squad for the first time. However, he remained on the bench in the UEFA Cup home match against Rapid Bucharest. Three days later, on 18 September 2005, de Guzmán made his official Feyenoord debut in the Eredivisie home match against SC Heerenveen. He replaced Ghaly in the 87th minute. De Guzmán scored his first professional goal on 30 September 2005, in the Eredivisie away match against Willem II. After his debut against SC Heerenveen, De Guzmán quickly became a first team regular. On 11 December 2005, he received much praise after outplaying former Barcelona player Philip Cocu in a midfield battle at Feyenoord's Eredivisie home match win against PSV. De Guzmán finished the Eredivisie season 2005–06 with 29 matches, scoring 4 goals. On 29 December 2005, he signed an improved contract with Feyenoord until summer 2010. His old contract was set to expire in 2008.Initial difficulties
At the beginning of the season 2006–07, Feyenoord sold their star players Dirk Kuyt to Liverpool and Salomon Kalou to Chelsea. Management had high expectations of de Guzmán, who was ready to make the next step in his development. However, the youngster couldn't prevent the club from finishing on a 7th Eredivisie place. De Guzmán's disappointing season ended with a red card in the 21st minute of the first playoff match against FC Groningen on 10 May 2007. Feyenoord lost the double confrontation and missed out on European football for the first time in 16 years. At the end of the season, De Guzmán acknowledged there was perhaps too much pressure on him: "I was only 19 years old, I couldn't just tell everyone what to do. It was really a disappointing season. I didn't make progress as a football player, but I did grow mentally because of all the problems we had. It was a very tough season for me personally."With the 2007–08 arrival of experienced players like Giovanni van Bronckhorst from Barcelona and Roy Makaay from Bayern Munich, Feyenoord created the perfect circumstances for de Guzmán. The pressure on the youngster was taken away, however de Guzmán wasn't too happy with his new position in the team. Where de Guzmán always played as a midfielder, new manager Bert van Marwijk placed him on the right wing position in a 4–2–3–1 system. De Guzmán played 33 Eredivisie matches, scoring nine goals.
Injuries
De Guzmán had a personal agreement with Manchester City, but Feyenoord could not agree on a transfer fee with the Citizens: "Last summer, I assumed that I would depart from Rotterdam That eventually fell through, at that time was mainly to Feyenoord. Personally, I already said yes and I thought it was quite a nice sum. But the clubs were not there and later took another City player, Shaun Wright-Phillips."Despite a turbulent pre-season full of transfer speculations, De Guzmán remained at Feyenoord. However, De Guzmán also had a disappointing start to the season, as he was sent off in Feyenoord's season opening Eredivisie match. On 31 August 2008, De Guzmán received a red card for a flying elbow in the 30th minute in the away match against Heracles Almelo, resulting in a suspension of four matches. Not much later, De Guzmán started having physical problems. What started with minor groin, thigh and knee injuries, ended with a serious meniscus surgery in January 2009. He was out for the rest of the season. Due to his injuries, he only played two Eredivisie matches in the 2008–09 season.
De Guzmán made his comeback in the 2009–10 pre-season friendly away match against Sporting Portugal, scoring the equalizer. Due to his expiring contract, Feyenoord was keen to sell their youth product in the summer. However, new Feyenoord manager Mario Been wanted De Guzmán to stay. He stated De Guzmán was an important player for the team and was willing to let him play on his favorite central playmaker position. Despite interest from Chelsea and Valencia, De Guzmán stayed at Feyenoord.
After a promising start of the season, scoring three goals in his first nine matches, injuries kept following the midfielder. On 3 October 2009, De Guzmán was subs cartilage in the right knee, needed surgical intervention and was out for over two months. He made his comeback after the winter break, but after playing four more matches, he had to leave a training session injured on 4 March 2010. He was struck by the same injury as he had earlier this season, only this time on his left knee. De Guzmán made his final comeback in Feyenoord's last match of the season. However, he could not prevent Feyenoord losing the KNVB Cup final against arch rivals Ajax on 6 May 2010, and left the club on a free transfer: "For me personally it's nice that I am fit again and still could get some playing time during the finals, but the result is very disappointing obviously. It's very sad I have to leave Feyenoord this way."