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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 Van de Ven once phrased 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.
Micky van de Ven has enjoyed a brilliant debut season for Tottenham since joining last summer
An old saying of his father's helps Van de Ven to stay calm when he feels nerves before games
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 Bundesliga and, finally, to Tottenham in the summer for £43million.
'The first couple of times when you are a young guy and you play in big stadiums, you are nervous,' says Van de Ven. 'He always taught me just to accept the chaos.
'When I went to the Bundesliga, that was really when this helped me. He was always saying, like, just in the warm-up, just enjoy what you see. Enjoy the people around you.
'Just enjoy the vibe of the stadium and everything. And then, when you have to go in and come back out, just switch on. Just accept everything what's going on around because you know it's going to happen and you can't do something about it so he was just like: 'Accept it.' And that was the moment that I was like, when I went on the pitch, I just felt: 'Okay. Accept everything.' I know that it's going to be chaos. I know it's going to be weird for so many people but just do your job and then it went well.'
Marcel (R) spent his younger days as an undercover agent tackling the most serious crimes
Marcel went on to become a household name as lead detective on Holland's version of the television show Hunted, where members of the public go on the run and try to evade detection
It's not always been so smooth,
