Completely agree with this. I believe that this was his role at Ajax wasn't it?
Yes, he was used much more as a box-to-box player and built around. Schone was alongside him, shielding and doing the dirty work, essentially just shuttling the ball to De Jong every time he won it back. Van De Beek would play ahead of both, dropping deep to be a wall for De Jong to bounce the ball back off, creating different angles of attack and allowing Ziyech and Tadic to find space behind the players Van De Beek dragged out of position.
I think the Busquets stuff is understandable because of similarities in the way they play, I just think that with De Jong having an engine and a greater passing range (not necessarily better than peak-Busquets over shorter distances), he needs to be used as the main man, not a platform for others, as Busquets was. Which necessitates an additional, more defensive player being alongside De Jong.
At Ajax, something you'd see often is Daley Blind and De Ligt splitting, with fullbacks Tagliafico and Mazraoui pushing into the wide midfield areas. Schone would sit, Van De Beek would bomb on and Tadic would drop deep. The issues this caused for the opposition were numerous - Tadic operating as the centre forward would drag a defender deep with him - creating space for the wingers in behind, or force a midfielder to come out of the middle of the park, giving the full backs more space as they attacked the middle.
Van De Beek's late runs also meant all of a sudden, you had one static defender having to react to his sudden forward movement, pedalling backwards, whilst the other centre half often chased the retreating Tadic further up the field. Ziyech was typically the main beneficiary of this as he'd come in from the left into the gap that was created. De Jong would then hit him with a long ball, or use the full backs who'd taken up the empty midfield space to advance the play, whilst the bamboozled opposition tried to get a grip on exactly who was moving where from Ajax's midfield and wide players.
All of this was only possible because of De Jong's passing range and his ability to hit the player he needed to 9 times out of 10. When it worked, it was an absolute joy to watch, both domestically and in Europe. Go and look at De Jong's all touches video v De Graafschap in 2018 for an idea as to how the above used to work. Ziyech has become the playmaker now and is scoring less, this is due to him not being the main man for getting in behind a defence carved open by De Jong.
Great player and the finest talent Ajax have produced in a long time in my eyes.
