First time I've heard of him, but after watching some yt clips, and reading up on him, he seems like an intriguing option. Seems to have really good passing range from deep, good technique, strong physical frame, left footed, and already a club captain at 22. Any Eredivisie fans to elaborate?
Been watching a lot of AZ (bit of a fan myself!) and absolutely his passing is outstanding and because people watch his highlights they think that’s all he does which results in posters on here who haven’t watched him a lot (or in some cases at all) seem happy to pigeon hole him for it.
He’s a very well rounded DM/CM could comfortably play the Pogba style raking passes into Rashford but equally adept at line breaking passes from deep positions.
He’s by far AZ’s best player, more people know of Stengs and Boadu (probably from Fifa or because they are attacking players) but take Koopmeiners out of AZ and they’d really struggle.
He’s defensively similar to Matic in that he doesn’t dive in and engage in high risk defensive play unless he knows he’s covered he’s excellent at positional defence (delaying attacks until support is available).
He’s so good defensively that he does also play CB from time to time and would comfortably be able to drop back into CB roles like Matic has done on occasion.
I honestly do not see a better mix of potential, current ability, age, price, mentality and availability on the market at the moment. There are other DMs I like Zakaria and Rice being the other two but they would be more expensive options.