Just two months after swapping Bayern Munich for Girona, life couldn’t be going much better for Daley Blind. His family like their new home in one of the most attractive parts of Spain, his team are surprisingly top in La Liga, and the 33-year-old has played almost every minute of their matches so far.
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Ahead of facing Real Madrid on Saturday, Blind spent an hour talking to The Athletic about Ajax, Manchester United, Bayern, the Netherlands national team, his ambition to be a coach and… his heart.
“I got this… and I must look for the right English words here,” he says, “cardiac arrest on the pitch.”
He pauses, thinking about that Champions League game against Spanish side Valencia in December 2019.
“My heart recovered by itself and took over. When it happened I felt light-headed, like when you stand up too quickly, but after a few minutes I felt good again and continued the game. After the game, the doctor had doubts and sent me to hospital.”
Blind was kept in for 10 days.
“They showed me I’d had a cardiac arrest and that was not good. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe the doctors. Yet I told my wife and family that if there was a possibility to return to football, I would go for it.
“My wife told me I was so focused and determined on coming back that I was getting into a tunnel with only one goal. I’m so thankful for the support my wife, family and friends gave me at that moment. I was in a mental tunnel to get back playing and I was given a green light. Two months later, I was playing games again.
“It’s incredible if I think about that now, but there were no issues until the pre-season of the next season (August 2020), when it happened again. I got a shock during the game, because I am wearing an ICD (implantable cardioverter-defibrillator).”
After that happened, Blind returned to hospital.
“They told me I was close to another heart attack. Because of the adrenaline, there is more oxygen in your body. My heart rate took over by itself but I still got the shock from the ICD because my heart rate went too high.”
Many thanks for all the kind messages I received 🙌🏻. I can say that I’m okay and feeling fine. pic.twitter.com/uBhD1jV5An
— Daley Blind (@BlindDaley) August 26, 2020
He stands up to show The Athletic the device. It’s a small box that sits under the skin, close to his heart.
“It measures my heart rate,” he says, sitting down again. “If it goes too high, I get a shock.”
That second heart attack took a psychological toll.
“I started to get a little scared.”
During games, Blind says, he would think about it, not focusing on the match happening around him.
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“Some parts of me wondered what I was going to do. But when I had a choice whether to put my boots back on or not, I always put my boots on. I had a lot of conversations with a mental coach and with my medical team and my wife. They told me I should not be scared and that they wouldn’t send me back if they were not convinced.
“They did lots of tests. I was a bit scared in the beginning to push my heart, but I completed it. After a few months, the worries slid away and I don’t even think about it now.”
Blind looks fantastic. He recently passed 500 professional club appearances.
“I did not know that,” he says. “Nice.”
One stat he does know is that he has won more than 100 senior caps.
“I started playing for the national team at 22, which is quite late for Holland. Once I got a position, I kept it. I’m now No 7 on the list (of appearances for the Netherlands, with 103). I’ve just passed Robin van Persie. I never thought I’d make that many caps.”
His father Danny, a legend at Ajax after making 500 appearances and later managing them from 2005-06, won 42 caps for their country and went on to manage the national team.
“Dad was head of the youth academy at Ajax when I was there and that brought pressure as people expected more of me,” Blind says. “Playing six out of 10 (as a rating) wasn’t enough, people always expected more. I needed to be eight out of 10 to convince. It was difficult with this pressure at the start. At games, it was always about my dad, but in the end it helped.
“In the car after, he’d talk tactics. At home, Dad had a tactics board. I could handle the criticism — it was amazing having my dad helping me get better; my own trainer, 24/7. Even now, we talk about my games and I’m proud of my dad and proud I could bring a second name to the name ‘Blind’.
“Since I started winning trophies we’d have a competition about who won the most or how many caps. I’ve beaten him on a lot of the things, but there’s one thing I can’t beat him on: the Champions League (which his father won with Ajax in 1995). He uses that one to win any argument.”
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Winning a Champions League of his own with Bayern was plausible last season after his January move, less so with his new club, who finished 10th in 2022-23 after spending the previous three years in Spain’s second tier. “Girona wanted me before I went to Bayern. I had my difficulties with Ajax at that point, so I left for Bayern. Before that there was Girona, (Belgium’s) Antwerp and some other clubs interested.”
He says his midseason departure from the Amsterdam club came out of the blue, but Bayern offered a six-month loan and he saw it as a “great opportunity”.
“I didn’t enjoy my time in Munich as a player, but I enjoyed it as someone who loved football. I learned from (Joshua) Kimmich and (Thomas) Muller about how they trained, from (Julian) Nagelsmann about how he coached. I tried to learn from them rather than moan because I wasn’t playing.”
Bayern wouldn’t extend his deal, so he talked to Girona, a Catalan club just over an hour’s drive north east of Barcelona.
“I came to see the city, the coast, the countryside, the club and spoke to people. My wife and kids like it. Girona are not one of the biggest clubs in the world (their average home attendance last season was just over 11,500), but they were positive, wanted to grow and I was excited when I spoke to the manager about the style of football and the club. I have no regrets so far and the good start has helped.”
What happened with you leaving Ajax?
“In short, there were some difficulties between me and the manager (Alfred Schreuder). The board picked the side of the manager and decided I had to leave (Schreuder was fired three weeks later, seven months after succeeding the Manchester United-bound Erik ten Hag). For me, it’s not about picking sides but fair competition in the team and that you treat each other with respect. If there are problems, you look each other in the eyes, talk and move on together. It’s painful that this didn’t happen.”
Let’s rewind to 2014, the year you first left Ajax…
“Playing for Ajax was always a dream, something I’d done since I was seven. When Frank de Boer came in (as manager in 2010) I started to play more, usually in midfield or left-back. We won the league four times in a row, we did well in the Champions League. I was living my dream at Ajax, even though the team was not full of big names. The World Cup came in Brazil and that changed my life and career.”
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Why?
“The 5-1 win over world champions Spain, with my assist for Robin van Persie. I got so much attention, which I wasn’t used to. I had a lot of interest from other teams, too, but not definite offers. There was a lot of media attention linking me to Manchester United, partly because (his Netherlands manager) Louis van Gaal was coach (having signed to move to Old Trafford after that World Cup).
“The rumours were heavy so, at one point, we asked him directly if he wanted me. He said he was fine with his squad and the season had started and that was fine as I was at Ajax. Then United lost 4-0 against a third-division team (MK Dons, in the League Cup) and I got a call asking me to join. I was happy to join and play in the Premier League.”
What type of club did you find?
“A huge one. Ajax is big, United is big around the world — a beast. I saw that on pre-season tours in Asia. I needed to find my role in a team and I played as a midfielder in a difficult season, with good and bad games. The first season was OK and Van Gaal gave me confidence, but from the second season I really stepped up my game and I was important for the team as a centre-back.”
You scored against Liverpool and won man of the match that day…
“We practised a free kick several times in training. I had a connection with Juan (Mata, the Spanish midfielder) and hit the ball perfectly. It went in. That noise in the stadium was one of the best I’ve heard in my life. That was at Old Trafford (in a 3-1 win in September 2015). I had a great season with Chris Smalling as my partner and we conceded the fewest goals in the league (35).”
You’re 180cm (5ft 11in). Is it an issue being a small centre-back?
“In England, you have an image of how each player should look and how the physical part of the player should be, but football these days is so much more than that. The typical English way of football isn’t seen in the Premier League anymore. So many managers from abroad have brought their different types of football to the table. Matches are now very tactical and about being in the right position.
“For example, with Lisandro Martinez (United’s 5ft 9in former Ajax centre-back), he has this intelligence but also an aggression — he’s strong. People like to talk about his height when something goes wrong but he is so good on and off the ball that his height is not an issue. Martinez is a great player. He’s clever enough to stand his ground in the Premier League and it was the same for me.
“I didn’t have the aggression of Martinez or (Nemanja) Vidic, and I didn’t have the height of Smalling when I played alongside him, but I was in the right position nine times out of 10.”
Why did it not work out for Van Gaal at United, and how did you feel when he lost his job?
“Painful. Other players felt bad too. I think 90 per cent of the squad liked Louis van Gaal, the person. He was always honest and direct. You can like that or not, but I’d appreciate him telling me to the face, even if the truth was hard to take at times. He’d tell you why he’d decided, like why he hadn’t selected you and that allowed me to learn where to improve.
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“At United, we played quite good football under Louis but we didn’t score a lot of goals and we didn’t create a lot. We might lose a game to a counter-attack, that can happen to any team in the Premier League. When he left, United started buying a different type of player. It would have been interesting if Louis had those players as well.
“We won the FA Cup (in Van Gaal’s final game in May 2016) after a hard campaign. I’d dreamed of that as a kid. We had a great night celebrating in London until we learned Louis was getting fired. The rumours spread quickly and he told us the next morning. It was hard and emotional.”
How was it when Van Gaal was replaced by Jose Mourinho?
“I felt I had to prove myself again, because I’m maybe not the first type of player you’d relate to Mourinho’s playing style, but he gave me an honest chance. He felt I was a player he could trust; who was stable and wouldn’t do crazy things on the pitch. I took that chance and played as a centre-back and left-back. I played a lot in the first Mourinho season.
“Mourinho brought players in his second season and the competition got stronger and I would play less, but I have no hard feelings towards him. I learned a lot from him and felt he was honest with me. And I still played in the Europa League final.”
Against your boyhood club Ajax in Stockholm…
“I’d supported Ajax in the competition as a fan, but then they were playing United. I felt like I couldn’t lose in front of my friends and former team-mates, even as an Ajax fan. I was also a little jealous, in case Ajax won a European final and I wasn’t part of it. I was so focused for the game and (defending against Kasper) Dolberg, who was great that season. It was one advantage that I knew about the Ajax players, there would be no surprises for me.”
Mourinho got his tactics spot on that night…
“He gave us this crazy, brilliant plan to shut them down and kill the game. Ajax played attractive football and pressed high. We had a midfield of (Paul) Pogba, (Marouane) Fellaini and (Henrikh) Mkhitaryan. We were physically stronger than Ajax, we also played directly with more long balls so Ajax couldn’t press us. It wasn’t that attractive but Mourinho took away Ajax’s strongest point. We got an early, slightly lucky, goal (and went on to win, 2-0).”
Did you see your Ajax mates after?
“It was weird, as I had to do a doping test with Phil Jones and I took a long time to pee. We were angry with the doping guy because he held us and we missed the celebrations — we got a fine for that. It was my only European final and I felt the celebrations were taken away from me. There was only the trophy waiting when we got back to the empty training room.”
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It felt then like United were getting stronger under Mourinho. The form was good at the end of 2017; he signed a new contract…
“It was a difficult season for me. An ankle injury meant I wasn’t playing a lot. I knew I wasn’t close to the starting XI and that I’d have to decide about my future. I chose to return to Ajax in 2018.”
Current United manager Erik ten Hag was Ajax coach by then. What’s he like?
“He was very important to me. He explained his playing style, which was offensive. I had my doubts but after a month I was sold on it and believed in every part of it. We also had the right players to do it. He is tactically so clear in what he wants and it’s easy for players to follow that. If you leave things open, there’s a space for doubt.
“We became like a machine, better and better. In time, he can do that for United. He’s a great manager, great personality. He’s direct, honest, and tells you what he sees. He’s not afraid to make big decisions. If you don’t like it, you can go another way because his train goes on.”
You played in a defence in front of Andre Onana, now at United…
“He’s one of the great goalkeepers in the world. He has a nonchalance, he’s complete and when he has his head right he can be one of the best goalkeepers. He’s a winner. Always wants to train more. I had a good relationship with him.
“There are other players who I played with at Ajax who are now at United — Antony was a big signing when he arrived and he showed his talent straight away. Neres (a fellow Brazilian midfielder) was there to help him a lot and he developed quite well. Donny van de Beek is a very good guy and a very good player, but big injuries have been an issue for him. They can be hard to come back from.
“Donny’s a real No 10 and there are not a lot of teams who play with a No 10 in top football. I think he can adapt to new positions if he gets time. He has the quality to be a top player at United, but United doesn’t wait for anyone.”
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos via Getty Images)
