Signing for a Premier League football club would inflate the ego of most teenage boys but not Johan ter Horst. His parents have already made sure of that.

The wiry centre-forward has been scoring goals in a Folkestone Invicta shirt since he was 12 years old but from next season, he’ll be a Hull City player. He’ll be rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s best players – and that thought still hasn’t sunk in for the ter Horst family.

Sitting in the front room of their family home in Hythe, I get the impression that Johan’s parents Jeroen and Clare are still pinching themselves to make sure the last few weeks haven’t been a dream.

"I think we’re still in the 'not believing stage,' Clare said. "What is it (about Johan) that’s different? He runs around on the pitch like everybody else."

Jeroen, who moved to the UK from the Netherlands in 1992, added: "Neil Cugley made us believe it. We know he’s a good footballer but we asked 'is he really that good?' Neil kept saying 'believe me, he is.' We’re over the moon. But you don’t know how this is going to end. It’s only the start of something, isn’t it? He was going to university, now he’s going to football university, as it were. Is he going to graduate? That’s the question."

Johan admitted that Folkestone manager Cugley was more excited than he was when scouts from big clubs first arrived at the Fullicks Stadium to watch him. Cugley knew he had a future star on his hands as soon as he called the striker into Invicta’s first-team squad last season and fielded hundreds of phone calls from clubs and agents before the deal to take Johan to Hull was finally done.

Clare said: "I could not fault him. We asked him to keep us in the picture because it’s quite a big step for Joh and if your child was going to university, you’d be involved. Neil called in regularly to update us as things changed.

"I saw a side to Neil that I hadn’t seen before. He was compassionate and caring. That was quite a surprise to me because he’s a football manager and we’ve heard him from outside the changing-room, a little scary."

Transfer rumours quickly spread. "It was one thing one day and one thing another," Clare said. "It was exciting to start with but then we were like 'OK, can we just have a decision now?' because we were beginning to think that Joh was feeling a little pressure.

"There was a bit of excitement when Bolton came into the picture but that turned out to not be exciting. It was an instant decision that he would not be able to play for Folkestone, which was devastating for Joh. That was a bit of a setback for us and we started to get a little bit fed-up with it all by then. But we always knew the Hull thing was bubbling away in the background.

"When it happened, we were a bit gobsmacked because it had just been there for so long. I cried, of course, because it was emotional."

The journey in club football began for Johan at the Stars & Stripes Saturday morning football session in Cheriton. But the home-made goal in the ter Horst’s back garden was where he really put the hours in.

"I never used to have shots,” said the youngest of four brothers. “They always stuck me in goal. I started off right-back for the school team when I was in Year 7. But I was never the stand-out player, even in Year 9. When I got to Year 10, that’s when I started to work hard at it."

Clare added: "At that age, you have to make choices. Joh was playing hockey for the school, he was Shepway cross-country champion numerous times, so he had all sorts of other things going on. But as you go further up the school, you have to go one way. You can’t be a jack-of-all-trades."

And it was football Johan chose. Having been coached by Micheal Everitt in mini-soccer when he was six, he eventually found himself training alongside the experienced Folkestone midfielder.

He recalled: "When I was told to train with the first-team, I was taken aback by it. I remember first sitting on the bench at Ramsgate. It was a horrible night, the rain was coming down, it was freezing cold. I remember the first time I came on for five or 10 minutes. Your heart starts going and you think 'this is actually happening, I’m actually going to go on'. I went on and ran around like a headless chicken.”

Johan quickly got to grips with men’s football and he’s still got a few more opportunities to terrorise Ryman League defenders before moving to East Yorkshire.

He said: "It is a bit daunting but it’s also something to look forward to. Most boys dream of playing football every day.

"I decided to take a year out, to play football, under Cugs’ advice. He told me I’d got a year to make a go of it. He said he thought I was good enough to get picked up by a higher team and it’s now happened. It’s gone to plan."

The trip to football university looms large. And this student couldn’t wish to have two better parents waving him off.