Brentford’s Sepp van den Berg: ‘At points at Liverpool I was going home crying’

Sepp van den Berg knew what he had to do. The Brentford centre-back knew what he was going to do. Another summer, another change; another push to find a footballing home. It was June 2024 and as he enjoyed a lunch in the sunshine with his brother and friends in their hometown of Zwolle in the Netherlands, he could reflect on an excellent season on loan from Liverpool at Mainz. “Then I got a tap on my shoulder,” Van den Berg says.

It was Arne Slot. Another guy who had grown up in the area. Slot’s first job as a manager had been with the PEC Zwolle under-13s after he retired as a player at the club in 2013; Van den Berg, playing a year up, was in his squad. Now Slot had been confirmed as Jürgen Klopp’s successor at Liverpool and he was looking forward to the start of pre-season.

“I was a bit surprised,” Van den Berg says. “And maybe it was a little bit awkward. It was just funny … coming from the same hometown, he’d coached me when I was a kid and now he’s the guy at Liverpool. He was just like: ‘How’s your off-season been? Have you been working? Are you ready for pre-season?’ I said: ‘Yes, of course.’ But in my own head, I was thinking: ‘Yeah, I’m ready but hopefully I’m not even coming back for pre-season,’ because I wanted to leave.”

Van den Berg’s move to Liverpool from PEC Zwolle as a 17-year-old in 2019 had descended into a nightmare. After making four appearances in the domestic cups, he was dropped into the reserves and came to feel forgotten. Living on his own, he was overwhelmed by loneliness and felt his mental health crash. It reached the point where he did not want to go in for training.

It was not the reason why Van den Berg did not fancy a return to Liverpool with Slot because he was back on the up, having rebuilt himself initially at Preston, where he went on loan for the second half of the 2020-21 season and the whole of the following one.

It is as if Van den Berg’s body lightens when he remembers his time at the Championship club. “Life-saver is a big word but it opened me up again,” he says. “I just enjoyed playing and feeling important; feeling useful … let me say it this way.”

Van den Berg would endure a horror ankle injury on loan at Schalke in 2022-23 that needed surgery and almost seven months out but Mainz could hardly have gone better, even if what he describes as the “hierarchical” system in German football had unusual consequences.

“I played every game for Mainz but I was still 20, 21 and so before every training I had to check the air pressure of the balls and if they were not correct I had to blow them up myself – with the two other young players,” he says. “Every training I had to bring the balls and the bibs. And every training I had to bring the balls and the bibs back in. It’s because you are the youngest player.”

Van den Berg needed regular starting football and he knew he would not get it at Liverpool. Yet Slot was persuasive. He did go back for the pre-season and he loved Slot’s sessions, his man‑management, too.

“It was totally different,” Van den Berg says. “The years before, I never had this feeling of me having a proper chance. A few weeks down the line, he was saying: ‘You’re doing very well. I want you to stay.’ If you have the manager of Liverpool saying that, it’s not nothing. So, of course, I started thinking again. ‘Maybe I should stay, maybe I should sign a new contract here.’ It was weird.

“He was open, easy to speak to. We’re both Dutch, so we are very direct. I like that. He told me: ‘You’re not going to start but I believe if you stay you will get a chance in the future to start.’”

Van den Berg was not swayed. He knew what he had to do. His transfer to Brentford for an initial £20m was completed towards the end of the summer window last year and it had to be a strange feeling, three days later, when he was an unused substitute on the visiting bench against Liverpool at Anfield in the second round of Premier League fixtures.

The defender has found alignment at Brentford. The more he talks about the personnel and the environment, the more perfect he makes it sound. It is the friendliness, the transparency, the spirit of equality and togetherness. “Because the building is small, you see everyone,” he says. “You see the technical directors almost every day. You see the owner [Matthew Benham] coming into the dressing room every home game and shaking your hand.”

Van den Berg was an important player last season for Thomas Frank, the manager who persuaded him to sign, starting 29 times in the league. And he has arguably been even more so for the new manager, Keith Andrews. As he prepares to face Slot and Liverpool at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday, the numbers show he has not missed a minute.

The numbers, of course, are a big thing at Brentford. The game is in the grip of a data arms race and yet many clubs are getting theirs from the same sources. What sets Brentford apart and gives them an edge is that the data they use is proprietary, in-house, coming principally from Benham, who has made his fortune out of statistical modelling.

“The main reason they signed me was because my data was very good, especially at Mainz,” Van den Berg says, but it goes deeper than that. Brentford get data on their players from gym sessions, training and matches – even after matches. “There are so many new places they can find data or new things they can figure out,” Van den Berg says.

It informs Brentford’s approach and so does another, more human detail – the famously strict “no dickheads” policy. The club take their due diligence on signings very seriously. When they wanted Vitaly Janelt from Bochum in 2020, for example, they asked him to name his favourite restaurant. They then visited it to ask the staff how Janelt was with them. Did he treat them with respect? When the answers were positive, they pressed on with the deal.

“It’s what they have said many times – we don’t sign dickheads,” Van den Berg says. “I’m used to coming into new clubs and meeting new people and it was definitely one of the easiest coming in here. I love everyone in the building.”

Van den Berg has found a particular connection with Brentford’s sleep consultant, Anna West. The way he tells it, she is more like a psychologist – a neutral outsider in whom to confide and share, to lessen any burdens. “My girlfriend, Bente, is at university in Amsterdam and my family is in Zwolle so I live alone,” he says. “It’s just nice with Anna to have someone I can speak to in person. I find it very helpful.”

It is easy to wonder whether things would have worked out better for Van den Berg if Liverpool had looked after him differently. “It was definitely dark days,” he says. “As a 17-year-old boy coming in from a different country, you’re not the priority.

“I was going home crying at some points and then not speaking to anyone. Do you call this depressed? I think it’s a bit too heavy a word. But I wasn’t feeling well. I wasn’t in the head space you are supposed to be in. I had no confidence and that really affected me as a footballer. I was just constantly doubting myself, like I was not good enough. I didn’t want to go to training, which is not me. Then, you know you are really down low.

“Looking back, if someone had taken care of me as a young player, it would have helped me, for sure. For young guys going abroad, going to big clubs, I’d say to parents: ‘Be careful. Make sure the kid is OK.’ I have lovely parents, my mum FaceTimes me every day but still she didn’t know 100% how I felt. And for the clubs, definitely look out more for the younger players.

“On the other hand, I did learn a lot from the situation. It made me the guy I am today. My injury at Schalke, as well – it makes you stronger. You learn so much because you go into such a dark space. It feels like your whole world dies in front of you because football is your world. Luckily, I survived it.”

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