It is going to be a life-changing few months for Justin Kluivert – and not just because his team, high-flying Bournemouth, are making a push to finish in the Champions League spots on a spell-binding streak of form.
His 2025 will also be dominated by the arrival of his first child. She is expected on February 10 and, given the Kluivert family is male-dominated – Justin, son of legendary Dutch footballer Patrick, has four brothers – the arrival of a baby girl makes for added excitement.
His sea-view house on England’s south coast is already kitted out with memorabilia from his well-travelled career that, aged just 25, has already seen him play in Amsterdam, Rome, Leipzig, Nice, Valencia and now Bournemouth – or, as he says: ‘Every country I have played in, I have picked the nicest place, right?’
But the latest keepsakes are finding a home in what will soon be his daughter’s room. They are the match balls earned with a pair of hat-tricks in a whirlwind few months that has seen Kluivert establish himself as the Premier League’s breakthrough star this season.
‘I put my hat-trick balls in my daughter’s room,’ Kluivert, speaking in near-perfect English with a relaxed demeanour, tells Mail Sport. ‘In two or three weeks I will be having a little daughter. She gives me extra motivation. It is super nice, they say the girls are beautiful for their dads, I can imagine it!
‘I am nervous… very nervous, to be fair. But also I am very excited. Especially because it is a girl, it makes me more excited. I have no sisters, not many girls in my family so she will be the first.
Kluivert has been the breakout story of this year’s Premier League season
He has two hat-tricks already and 10 goals in 21 Premier League games for Bournemouth
He is one of just three players to score in each of Europe’s top five leagues – answer to follow…
‘I can picture in my mind being up all night changing nappies! I need some rest on match days though, so maybe my wife will help me… I will obviously do all I can, of course, and be up in the night.
‘My game has been improving since my wife has been expecting a baby, so maybe that is the start of something beautiful. Maybe my game will get even better when she is here, it will be special to be a father and that is extra motivation.’
To spend time in the company of Kluivert this week was to discover a talented prodigy just as ambitious as his father. Clearly naturally gifted but certainly not a ‘nepo baby’, this is a young man who has made hundreds of sacrifices to get to where he is now.
He is clearly full of confidence, though far from arrogant. As we walk around the ground, he cracks little one-liners. A picture of him in the tunnel with his arms crossed with a frown prompts: ‘I look like a bouncer in a nightclub. “IDs please, lads”.’
Kluivert struck a hat-trick last weekend at St James’ Park as Bournemouth beat Newcastle 4-1
He took home the match ball for his treble and also the man of the match award
The hat-trick came on the pitch that his famous father Patrick used to call his own
Bournemouth were without nine senior players and had no recognised striker but ran riot
Walking around the inner sanctum of the Vitality Stadium was also to witness a club on the up. The place was brimming with positivity given Bournemouth are on a run of 11 games unbeaten, riding the crest of a wave after thrashing the league’s other form team, Newcastle, 4-1, on the St James’ Park pitch that Justin’s dad used to call home.
Manager Andoni Iraola could soon be sainted in these parts and unleashed one of the tactical performances of the year on Tyneside, with nine senior players out injured, no recognised striker and Kluivert his main protagonist.
He settles into the interview by mentioning he has already hit double digits for the campaign and how he is targeting 20. He speaks with authority and Mail Sport is minded to listen when he jokes about how many fantasy football managers should be taking note of his form.
Kluivert has already played all over Europe at the age of just 25
He is back in the Netherlands senior team after six years away, and has won three caps
Kluivert believes Bournemouth can upset the apple cart this season and get into Europe
Kluivert is perched in one of the executive boxes at the Vitality Stadium and, though the conversation often loops back around to fatherhood, he is here to talk about his unique upbringing, how he is the answer to two great pub quiz questions and his adoration for Iraola.
‘I never really saw my dad play, I cannot remember being at the stadium unfortunately,’ says Kluivert, who was born in May 1999 when his father was at Barcelona, where he scored 122 goals in 257 games before moving to Newcastle for a season.
‘I remember I was around 10 years old, though, and I started to notice people taking pictures. Then I thought, “Wow, he must be really good… I want to be a footballer too!” I never understood why they wanted pictures.
‘After last weekend, people have been asking me for pictures! My childhood was very football focused. My parents divorced quite early so we lived in Holland, in a house where if you jumped over the fence, you would be in the playground.
Patrick (left) with Justin, one of his five sons – four of whom play football
Justin joined Ajax back in 2007 when he was just eight years old and went on to play 56 times for his boyhood club, scoring 13 times
Father Patrick spent a season in Newcastle, signed by Sir Bobby Robson in 2004
‘It was so busy with our friends all there playing football. That is where you learn, with your friends on the concrete. When I visited my dad we could all play together, we just needed a ball and we were already there. It was an amazing time.’
There is no sibling rivalry, insists Kluivert, though it is quite the family. One brother, 17-year-old Shane, is in Barcelona’s vaunted academy. Ruben, 23, plays in Portugal at Casa Pia, one of Ruben Amorim’s former clubs, and Quincy, 27, is at Amsterdam non-League club AVV Zeeburgia.
To add to the mix, their grandfather Kenneth was a prolific goalscorer back in his native Suriname, scoring 366 goals in 345 games for the superbly named SV Robinhood and twice in three appearances for the South American country’s national team.
‘My little brother Shane is very like me, how he plays, he looks up to me,’ says Justin. ‘He wants to be like his big brother, just like I wanted to be like my dad! He obviously wants to be like his dad also, too, his idol. Ruben is a defender. I am proud of them all.
Justin’s younger brother Shane, 17, is in Barcelona’s vaunted La Masia academy
Patrick sends Justin texts to congratulate him after matches
‘I think as soon as I was born maybe I was given a football directly then! I had no chance to be anything else but a footballer. With a dad like that, of course, you want to be like him.
‘My dad was never strict. He was easy-going. I didn’t live with him when I was younger so it was different but he gives me some advice. I know enough about football now, though. After games he texts me to congratulate me.’
It has not always been plain-sailing for Kluivert. He achieved his ultimate dream as a teenager of playing for his boyhood club Ajax – but struggled when he left for Roma after club legend Francesco Totti had wowed Kluivert Snr.
In the eternal city, this boy wonder was brought back down to earth and often found himself struggling for game time.
Bournemouth sit seventh, just one point off Manchester City in fifth
Bournemouth have beaten Arsenal, City, Manchester United and Tottenham this season
‘My biggest dream was always to play for Ajax – growing up in Holland and Amsterdam, of course it was,’ he explains.
‘But the low point of my career was going from Ajax as one of the world’s top talents.
‘I went to Rome and it was a whole new world. At Ajax, everything was perfect. I did incredible, scoring goals. Then I made the step into the big world, and it was totally different.
‘I was on the bench a lot, not a lot of people looking at you. You are just one of the young guys. That was tough, moving to Italy alone. The media back home was saying, “He left too early, he is too negative, he won’t get picked for the national team”.’
That was the toughest moment of his own career, but the hardest moment of his life also came in football. During a pre-season friendly in 2017 for Ajax, Kluivert’s good friend Abdelhak ‘Appie’ Nouri collapse on the pitch.
Kluivert pays tribute to his stricken friend Abdelhak Nouri after he collapsed in 2017
Kluivert came through Ajax’s academy with the likes of Frenkie de Jong (right)
Then 22, Nouri was one of the most gifted footballers of his generation and tipped for big things. He was left in a coma for 13 months after suffering the cardiac arrhythmia attack and emerged with severe and permanent brain damage.
‘It was the worst thing that has happened to me in my whole life,’ says Kluivert. ‘He was such a close friend. An hour before the game we were talking about the future. An hour later, it was no longer possible for him to achieve his dreams, to reach his goals or fulfil his potential.
‘He really had potential to go far in football. He was, honestly, the best guy ever. It was so sad. Everybody you ask will say the same. I wish that upon nobody.
‘When I went to Roma I wore his shirt number (34). That was a little thing I did, but none of it can take the pain away.’
Kluivert joined Bournemouth in 2023 for £9.6million from Roma
He has 20 goals in 59 appearances across a season and a half for the Cherries
This was the only time in the interview when Kluivert’s toothy grin left his face. He did not well up and smiled when recalling the good memories he spent with his pal.
Kluivert is motivated to succeed for his friend Nouri and went out on loan three times from Roma, to France, Germany and Spain. It meant that when he scored his first Cherries goal, he became just the third player in history to score in all of Europe’s top five leagues.
The other two are Florin Raducioiu, briefly of West Ham in the mid-1990s, and Stevan Jovetic, the Montenegrin forward who played 44 times at Manchester City. Go on, put that question to your mates in the pub tonight.
Kluivert is also the answer to the question: ‘Who is the only player to score a hat-trick of penalties in the Premier League’. He did so at Wolves in a 4-2 win in December, the first top-flight star to net a treble entirely from the spot since Manchester City’s Ken Barnes in 1957.
His first Premier League hat-trick came from three penalties against Wolves
He was the first player to score a hat-trick of penalties in the English top flight for 67 years
Kluivert will put the match balls from his two hat-tricks in the room reserved for his daughter
He spends a day a week practising his penalties and decides where he is going to place his next one before the match. At Molineux, he went right, left, right, with Jose Sa going the same way each time. Mail Sport asks where the next one is going but he is tight-lipped, even when we suggest we could report it as ‘bottom left’ if he says ‘bottom right’.
So apologies, Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Mats Sels, who faces Kluivert on Bournemouth on Saturday. Your guess is as good as ours.
Normally when footballers are asked about their ambitions for the season, the response is the media-trained answer – or perhaps the one to avoid being laughed at if it all comes crashing down – of ‘taking each game as it comes’.
Bournemouth and Kluivert are doing that but they are all daring to dream. When Forest travel down on Saturday in the battle of the teams disrupting the big boys at the top, the Cherries knowing a win would strengthen their quest for Europe, ahead of playing leaders Liverpool at home next week.
Kluivert scored another penalty at Old Trafford in December as Bournemouth won 3-0 three for the second season in a row
Kluivert believes Bournemouth can dream big and that the Champions League could be in sight
‘Dreaming big is normal and important,’ says Kluivert, whose side are seventh, only a point off Manchester City in fifth, which could well be guarantee entry to the Champions League next season. ‘It would be weird if we were dreaming about being relegated, right?! I think we can go very far. The last game, beating Newcastle, everyone saw how good we are.
‘Everyone always says, “Bournemouth, yeah, very tough team to play against”. But none of this is luck, we are beating these teams because we are the better side. We are a special team. I have a good feeling we can continue to show something beautiful this year.
‘In the summer, we lost two very important players in Dominic Solanke and Lloyd Kelly. So it was like, “OK, how is this season going to be?”. But from the first moment we just really believed in the team we had, believed in the coach with no doubts. You see it now… lovely.
‘The manager is a foreigner, he came here and it is not easy for coaches to come to England and think they can change the game. But he is doing that. And doing a great job. I played against his previous club and loved how they played – the intention, the pressing.
Kluivert has forged a bond with Bournemouth manager Andoni Iraola
The Dutchman credits Iraola for improving his game ‘significantly’
‘He had a rough start with a lot of losses but the club believed in him, we believed in him – and that is paying off now. He has improved my game significantly… is that the right word? He played me in a different role so I thank Andoni for that… he had a good vision!’
Iraola’s leg-up helped Kluivert mark the ‘super proud’ day of returning to the Dutch national team after a six-year absence in November. He reckons he learned a lot from that experience playing and training under Ronald Koeman – now he is hungry to add to his three caps. His father won 79, scoring 40 times.
Kluivert caught the eye of Jose Mourinho when he was Manchester United boss in 2017, after Ajax lost the Europa League final
That can wait for now as, by the time the next international camp comes in March – a two-legged Nations League quarter-final against Spain, he will be a father. He says: ‘I keep my Netherlands shirts and I want to have a big collection for later in my life, hopefully maybe I will have a little boy and can show him, “Guess who I played against”.
‘We are going to have a little girl now, I wouldn’t say she will definitely be a footballer but who knows. I told my wife, “We have gotta keep working because we need to have a boy!”.’
Either way, maybe one of his kids will one day go on to be the next Kluivert ripping up European football.
