There's an old saying of his father's that Micky van de Ven often draws upon while he laces up his boots to help clear his mind and settle the nerves.
'Peace is a weapon that never refuses.'
You know the chaos is coming, his dad says. Accept it, stay calm and do your thing. Or, as Tottenham defender Van de Ven also phrases it: 'Just don't give a s**t.'
If anyone knows the importance of staying calm under intense pressure, it's Van de Ven's dad Marcel.
Marcel spent his younger days as an undercover agent tackling the most serious crimes in Holland and went on to become a household name as lead detective on their version of the television show Hunted, where members of the public go on the run and try to evade detection.
He leads another show where he rescues kidnapped children taken to foreign countries. No wonder he's also written a best-selling autobiography.
'I didn't know everything he was doing because it was quite dangerous,' says Van de Ven. 'For me, it's just my dad so I see it normally. I was really young but, yeah, he was an undercover agent, so he was working on the highest-level criminals in Holland. I can't say too much, of course. He did his work with other agents. They were based somewhere in the Netherlands and he was always there, every day. He came back late and always in different cars, you know what I mean?'
All of a sudden, welcoming Nottingham Forest to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in a bid to secure a place in the top four of the Premier League and the Champions League doesn't quite seem such a big deal.
This level of perspective, though, instilled by his father during his young career is what the 22-year-old believes has been the key to his journey from Dutch second-tier side Volendam to Wolfsburg in the
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