Vincent Janssen has been thrown in at the deep end of English football but his sporting family makes him certain he will swim rather than sink.

The Tottenham forward’s mother, Annemarie Verstappen, won a silver and two bronze medals in the pool at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.

Two years earlier, aged just 16, she was crowned world champion in the 200m freestyle.

Janssen’s older sister, Stephanie, competed in national championships while his younger sister, 16-year-old Frederique, was part of the Dutch team that won two relay silvers at the 2015 European Games in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Janssen never wanted to follow the path of his mother and sisters but as he prepares for Spurs’s most difficult test of the season, at home to leaders Manchester City on Sunday, he revealed their success and dedication had inspired him.

Janssen’s rise has been startling. Barely a year ago, he was playing in the Dutch second tier with Almere City FC, whose average attendance that season was 1,074. A single season with AZ Alkmaar brought 30 goals in all competitions and took him into the senior Holland squad. Those achievements convinced Tottenham to buy the 22-year-old for about £17million in July.

Such rapid change brings challenges but as he tries to adapt, Janssen is grateful for his background. He told Standard Sport: “If you compare the training required for football and swimming, then football is an easy sport.

“We always made jokes about this in the family because at 6am my sisters were always in the swimming pool, whereas we footballers can start training at about 11am.

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“So there are some differences but in the end, there are similarities. It’s about the mentality and how you react to these kinds of things. When a lot of people are watching you, it’s about how you cope with the pressure.

“For example, to succeed in high-level sport, you need to go to bed early and not go out partying. My parents taught me a lot about this but also my sisters were important in helping me understand it.

“My mother knows how to live the sporting life and she would tell me sometimes how to do that, and my father, Piet, was also very important.

“I am not one of the most talented guys: a lot of people are more talented than I am. But I ask myself to go at 100 per cent every time I play or train, and perhaps that in itself is a very big talent. I have to understand that I have this talent and it is good to see that with hard work, you can come far.”

With Harry Kane absent through injury at least until early November, Janssen is Tottenham’s sole fit centre-forward. Though he scored a penalty in the 5-0 win over Gillingham in the EFL Cup, he has yet to register in the Premier League.

Such numbers are a burden for any forward, regardless of what he may say publicly. But Janssen’s journey should help him. This is not the stereotype we have of the richly gifted Dutch footballer, who plays regularly in his teens and quickly becomes one of the most coveted players on the market.

Janssen was released by Feyenoord at 18 and then spent two seasons at Almere, with their 3,200-capacity ground and relatively brief history.

His impressive progress earned a move to Alkmaar in summer 2015, for about £280,000. When Janssen still had not scored by early October, there were doubts about the wisdom of the transfer. How he proved them wrong. Speaking at the Cruyff Court — a dedicated space for youngsters to play sport — in Tottenham to see the charitable work of the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation, Janssen recalled: “The moment Feyenoord told me ‘You’re fired, we’re not giving you a contract’, I had to look further. A bad thing happened but what do you do next? I could have thought ‘Ah, they don’t want me anymore’, or tried something new — which I did by joining Almere.

“I thought: ‘Maybe, one day Feyenoord will regret that choice’. Earlier this year, after I had joined Alkmaar, I scored three goals against them.

“After I joined Alkmaar, I didn’t score for seven league games but soon afterwards, I started to score. In a season, every striker has some periods where he doesn’t score. It doesn’t matter to me. I know what I can do, so the goals here will come, for sure.”

Those first goals for Alkmaar — a double in a 3-0 win over FC Twente — came a year ago this weekend. Thereafter, Janssen never looked back, helping Alkmaar finish fourth in the Eredivisie and scoring for Holland in a 2-1 win over England at Wembley.

For his work, Janssen collected the Johan Cruyff Trophy, awarded to the brightest talent of the year in Dutch football.

Previous winners include his club-mate Christian Eriksen and former Tottenham playmaker Rafael van der Vaart, as well as Dennis Bergkamp and Clarence Seedorf.

Janssen took advice from another Dutch great, Ruud van Nistelrooy, before joining Spurs, and he added: “The award gives me a lot of confidence. When I’m older, I’ll be able to say I won this award, which is something I can be proud of.”

Vincent visited the Cruyff court being used by the Foundation to deliver its Premier League Kicks programme offering free football sessions to 12-19 year olds living in the local community