The Dutch don’t get their World Cup campaign underway until Tuesday so, until then, Danielle van de Donk has been using her time to catch up on her studies.

Danielle van de Donk was one of Arsenal’s standout players in their title-winning season. When she’s not starring for Arsenal, she’s also studying Sport Management and Marketing at the Johan Cruyff Academy, revealing that she’s been working on her ‘pre-thesis.

Currently based in Le Harve, which one paper described as ‘not a city where you go on holiday for a week’ and a place where the ‘sun was shining by accident’, van de Donk is using her downtime to study.

“I haven’t been able to do much about my studies lately, but I want to finish this before we play football for the echie,” she told Algemeen Dagblad.

“At first I only went shopping after training. I then thought, ‘I don’t want that at all’. Now, I do this.” For van de Donk, it serves as a form of relaxation. “I notice that it helps me a lot with the right focus on football.

“There is little pressure on it because I can organise my time myself and I have no deadlines. Football is the most important thing, but this is refreshing and educational to add,” she said, before laughing, “I never thought I’d say all this. You used to have to drag me to school.”

The Netherlands start their World Cup campaign against New Zealand. Kick-off is 2pm (UK) and it will be live on BBC iPlayer.