Jurrien Timber’s Journey Towards Betterment Begins Anew
Jurrien Timber had never played for a team outside of his native country until he joined Arsenal in the summer. Perhaps more importantly, though, was that he had never switched clubs before without his twin brother accompanying him.
At the age of 22, Jurrien Timber has played football for as long as he can remember—since he was only four years old, in fact—and his twin Quinten has followed him to every new club he has joined. That is, up to his July transfer from Ajax to Arsenal.
Up until a few years ago, the two brothers—the youngest of five siblings—had always been together in every part of their lives. Jurrien is therefore in a great position to discuss what it means to be together. Yes, he does not understand what it means to be apart.
Jurrien and Quinten were born in Utrecht, in the very middle of the Netherlands, in June 2001. Before starting school, they were members of their local club, DVSU.
“Yes, I joined a small team when I was four years old,” the defender replies. “I played there for two years and got scouted pretty quickly. When I was six, I left to join Feyenoord.”
“Maybe because I was with my twin, we were better than the others, and I got noticed sooner!” he exclaims with a smile.
So what was a young Jurrien like? Did he discover that to be acknowledged with his twin, he needed to speak up more?
He admits, “I don’t think we were quiet men, but we weren’t captains or anything like that either. We weren’t the loudest, either. However, I believe that we were some of the team’s leaders.
“When we were six and he was seven, I played with my twin and my older brother Dylan, who was also scouted to go to Feyenoord.”
With Feyenoord in Rotterdam, the boys advanced further; at the age of ten or eleven, Jurrien assumed his defensive position. Then, when Feyenoord’s fiercest rivals, Ajax, approached at the age of twelve, the junior Timbers once more relocated together.
He remembers, “Dylan had already left Feyenoord by then, but because we were always together, I think it made moving to a new club easier.”
“You don’t know at that point that it was easier, looking back. It was never too hard to join somewhere new when you had someone by your side.
After Quinten moved to Utrecht in 2021, the two parted ways but carried on with their journey at Ajax. They had essentially spent every day of their life together up until that point, or twenty years. They even served together while representing the Netherlands at the U15, U16, U17, U19, and U21 levels while on foreign assignment.
Yes, it is the reason for our closeness. We were together every day, wherever we went, and we even shared the same friends because we did the same thing in football and at school.
It’s intriguing, but that’s all we were aware of. We were so accustomed to it that when we parted ways, it coincided with his move to Utrecht. We had spent almost every day together up to that point. Even so, when we finally parted ways, it wasn’t odd in any way. It felt normal, for some reason. I anticipated that day would come. Like with my other brothers, it felt natural.
