Dries Mertens

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Dries Mertens
Bel-Tun (12) .jpg
Dries Mertens at the 2018 World Cup
Personnel
birthday May 6, 1987
place of birth Leuven ,  Belgium
size 169 cm
position Storm / wing
Juniors
Years station
0000-1998 Stade Leuven
1998-2003 RSC Anderlecht
2003-2005 KAA Gent
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
2005-2006 KAA Gent 0 0(0)
2005-2006 →  Eendracht Aalst  (loan) 14 0(4)
2006-2009 AGOVV Apeldoorn 98 (30)
2009-2011 FC Utrecht 65 (16)
2011-2013 PSV Eindhoven 62 (37)
2013– SSC Naples 228 (91)
National team
Years selection Games (goals) 2
2004 Belgium U17 4 0(0)
2011– Belgium 90 (18)
1 Only league games are given.
As of June 28, 2020

2 As of November 16, 2019

Dries Mertens [ ˈdris ˈmɛrtə (n) s ] (born May 6, 1987 in Leuven ) is a Belgian football player . He is under contract with the Italian first division club SSC Napoli and is a Belgian international .

Career

In the club

In his youth, Mertens had played for the Belgian club RSC Anderlecht , among others , before moving to the junior division of the KAA Gent . After he was supposed to join the professional squad for the 2005/06 season, the KAA officials decided to borrow the talent. So Mertens was drawn to the lower class club Eendracht Aalst . After first competitive appearances and goals, he should return a year later. But the Ghent decided to borrow again, so that the attacker was transferred to the Dutch club AGOVV Apeldoorn . Despite a moderate number of goals, AGOVV secured the services of the striker for the 2006/07 season and signed him permanently. This scored fifteen goals in the 2007/08 season. In the following year, Mertens regularly scored goals and became team captain .

In the summer of 2009, FC Utrecht signed Mertens. There he was a regular for two years and qualified in his first season with FC Utrecht for the Europa League , from which the team was eliminated in the group stage. For the 2011/12 season, Mertens moved to PSV Eindhoven together with his teammate Kevin Strootman . There he was part of the regular team and scored three goals against Excelsior Rotterdam and four goals against Roda JC Kerkrade in one game at the beginning of the season . Spread over the season, he scored 21 goals and was the fourth best goalscorer in the league. At the end of the season he was third in the table with PSV and won the KNVB Cup 3-0 against Heracles Almelo , which he scored 2-0.

For the 2013/14 season Mertens moved to Italy in Serie A at SSC Napoli under coach Rafael Benítez . He won the Italian Cup with SSC Napoli in 2014 ; In the final against Fiorentina he scored as a substitute to make it 3-1 in added time. In December 2014 Mertens won the Italian Supercup with the team . In the 2016/17 season he was the second top scorer in Serie A with 28 goals .

In the 2019/2020 season, Mertens scored his 122nd competitive goal for SSC Napoli in a 1-1 draw against Inter Milan in the semi-final second leg of the Italian Cup . This makes Mertens the new record scorer of SSC Napoli ahead of Marek Hamšík (121 goals) and Diego Maradona (115 goals). The later cup final against Juventus Turin won the SSC Napoli on penalties with 4-2 . A few hours before the cup final, Mertens extended his contract by 2 years until 2022.

In the national team

In 2004 Mertens played four friendly matches for the Belgian U-17s . Six years later he was appointed to the senior national team for the first time for the qualifying matches for the Euro 2012 against Kazakhstan and Austria , but had to cancel due to injuries. At the beginning of 2011, he finally made his debut in a friendly against Finland when he came on for Nacer Chadli in the 58th minute . As a result, he also made his first competitive appearances in the European Championship qualification, but did not make it as third in the table and remained without a goal. In a test match shortly before the start of the European Championship in 2012 against England, he pushed the opposing defender Gary Cahill with force into his goalkeeper Joe Hart , so that he was canceled for the European Championship due to a double broken jaw. With the national team he took part in the 2014 World Cup and reached the quarter-finals with the team. In the tournament, he completed all the Belgian games and scored one goal. At the European Football Championship in France in 2016 , he came into the group stage three times as a substitute, and in the round of 16 against Hungary he also played from the start. Against Wales, he was sent into the quarter-finals in the final quarter of an hour when the opponent led 2-1. Belgium were eliminated after a 3-1 defeat. He finished third with the national team at the 2018 World Cup and scored one goal in his six tournament games.

titles and achievements

National team

society

PSV Eindhoven

SSC Naples

Personal awards

Web links

Commons : Dries Mertens  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Strootman en Mertens officieel PSV'er. PSV Eindhoven, July 3, 2011, accessed December 27, 2019 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ Press release on kicker.de
  3. ^ Mertens is a new Napoli player. Announcement on the homepage of SSC Naples, June 25, 2013 (English). Retrieved June 25, 2013.
  4. ↑ Debutant Dries Mertens onzeker voor Kazachstan na blessure. (No longer available online.) In: sportmagazine.knack.be. October 6, 2010, archived from the original on January 15, 2013 ; Retrieved December 27, 2019 (Dutch).
  5. ↑ Press release on kicker.de
  6. ↑ Press release on voetbalkrant.com
personal data
SURNAME Mertens, Dries
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Belgian soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH May 6, 1987
PLACE OF BIRTH Leuven , Belgium