Andre de Jong says he hopes to emulate Jeremy Brockie and become a regular goal scorer as he embarks on his new journey with Orlando Pirates.
De Jong, 29, joined Pirates in the mid-season window from Stellenbosch, and has admitted he’s able to play as a false nine and in the 10 role as his favoured positions.
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With 11 caps to his name with the New Zealand national team, with two goals and three assists, he stated the move to Pirates was definitely one to boost his 2026 FIFA World Cup ambitions and having arrived here back in 2019, he’s now, albeit belatedly, found himself.
“There’s a few contributing factors [into why I found form at Stellenbosch], one of them is game-time, it was massive and having the support of the technical team at Stellenbosch, it was massive for me,” he explained.
“At AmaZulu I got injured a few too many times and then was in and out of the team and at Royal AM it was a short stint, but I really found my feet at Stellenbosch, it was a great sort of stepping stone for me.”
Prior to his move to Usuthu, de Jong was a prolific striker with 46 goals and 21 assists in 97 games in the NZ Premiership and he’s now looking towards finding the net regularly as his compatriot Brockie did at one point in the country with SuperSport United.
“Obviously there’s been a few New Zealanders who played here before, also Michael Boxall, so prior to coming over here I actually chatted to them, and they spoke very highly of the league and the country in general,” he said.
“And so far, my time has been incredible, so yeah – just hoping to emulate some of the stuff Brockie did in front of goal and if it’s half of what he did it would be amazing of course.”
De Jong featured for Pirates in back-to-back matches against Mamelodi Sundowns at FNB Stadium in midweek in the Betway Premiership and Casric Stars at Orlando Amstel Arena in the Nedbank Cup on Saturday suffering defeats in both.
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