Over the last four years, Arnaut Danjuma’s career has followed a unique trajectory. No player has flitted between the Champions League and the Championship in quite the same way.
After eight seasons in PSV Eindhoven’s academy and two more with Eredivisie side NEC Nijmegen, the 25-year-old made his name in Belgium with Club Bruges. In Belgium, he gained wider attention by scoring an audacious long-range effort against Atletico Madrid in the continent’s most elite competition.
Four years since this @Danjuma golazo!
Coming up this week: Club Brugge vs Atlético #OTD || @ClubBrugge || #UCL pic.twitter.com/WyjyGBX3wS
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) October 3, 2022
Danjuma moved to Bournemouth in August 2019 but two unfortunate foot fractures limited his involvement during his first season, which ended in relegation. But during the following campaign, he dragged Bournemouth to the Championship play-offs, scoring 15 goals and registering seven assists as his side dramatically lost 3-2 on aggregate to Brentford in the semi-finals.
Now playing top-flight and European football again, Danjuma has readjusted seamlessly, playing a vital role in Villarreal’s run to the Champions League semi-finals, where they were eliminated by Liverpool.
Danjuma became Villarreal’s all-time top scorer in the Champions League with six goals in 11 appearances and beating Giuseppe Rossi’s previous record of five. He also finished as his team’s top goal scorer in La Liga (10 goals) as they finished seventh in the table.
“A good one to remember” is how Danjuma describes the 2021-22 season to The Athletic.
With numbers and performances on his side, it seemed as though Danjuma would be one of the first names in the Netherlands’ World Cup squad but a muscle problem meant the forward missed the end of last season and the beginning of the current campaign.
The timing of Danjuma’s injury coincided with then-manager Louis van Gaal’s pre-tournament training camps and he was ultimately left out of the 26-man Dutch squad. While he recognised the rationale and difficulty behind the decision, Danjuma firmly believes he did enough to be on the plane to Qatar.
“You always have to respect the opinion of the manager,” Danjuma says. “He’s only got a set amount of players to choose from, which is a difficult decision for him as well. The manager mentioned to me specifically that because of the niggle, I missed the training camps for the national team. They were a big deal for the manager and very important going into the World Cup, so missing those camps definitely didn’t help.
“But I do feel that missing out on this World Cup wasn’t due to my abilities. I still feel what I’ve shown in my career, what I’ve proved to myself, what I’ve done in the Champions League and La Liga, and the numbers I put up, that should have been enough for me to be at the World Cup.”
As a practising Muslim who was born in Lagos to a Dutch father and Nigerian mother, Danjuma saw the opportunity to represent the Netherlands in the first World Cup held in a Muslim country slip agonisingly out of his grasp,
but when speaking to The Athletic a wry smile of acceptance begins to take shape on his face as he recalled his reaction to missing out on his first international tournament.
Despite his frustration, his sense of pride in the national team softened the stiff blow of rejection.
“I was obviously gutted,” says Danjuma, who has been capped six times by the Netherlands. “As a kid, your dream is to play in the World Cup. I could have contributed to any success we achieved, so I’m disappointed to not have been a part of it — maybe a bit more so because I believe I could have been of extra value.
“But they’ve done amazing, as well. They went hard against the winners, so you have to give credit where credit’s due — Argentina is a difficult country to beat (the Netherlands were defeated on penalties in the quarter-finals after a 2-2 draw). You always support your country regardless — you can’t help but be proud if they do well.”