The former Netherlands international has had a close-up view of that process with Micky van de Ven, who he coached at Wolfsburg before the defender moved to Tottenham. Van de Ven has since established himself as one of Spurs' leading defenders.
Hofland remembers a young player whose potential was obvious, but whose eventual development still surprised him.
“Micky was a young player when he came to Wolfsburg, and he made an amazing development. If you see him now in England, playing for Spurs, it's amazing,” Hofland tells Football Presse.
“He had some quality, of course, but he was a young player when he came to us and also when he went to England, and he really surprised me. He's a good athlete. That was already shown in Holland and also in Germany.”
For Hofland, however, Van de Ven's athletic qualities were only the starting point. The bigger transformation was seeing him become a more complete defender.
“If you see how he made the next step to become a real defender, in the national team and also there, that's really surprising,” he says.
Hofland's assessment of Matthijs de Ligt is more complicated, but it reveals another part of his thinking about developing defenders: the importance of mentality and stability.
De Ligt left Ajax for Bayern Munich before moving to Manchester United, where his progress has been interrupted by the difficulties of playing in an unsettled team.
“De Ligt went to Bayern Munich, but now you see that his development has stood still a little bit,” Hofland says. “I saw an interview where someone said that he is maybe doing too much power training, but I don't know.”
Hofland is nevertheless reluctant to write him off.
“I know that he is also a guy who has a good mentality and he will come back,” he says. “Hopefully he can show it this season again at United.”
His broader point is about the environment around a defender, rather than simply the defender himself.
“In the situation Manchester United have now and had last season, I would always prefer a more stable system, with players in their own positions where they can trust each other and themselves, and where they can rely on each other,” Hofland says. “That's something I miss.”
Then there is Jorrel Hato, another Dutch defender now learning his trade in England. Hato joined Chelsea from Ajax and has already been used both at left-back and in central defence.
Hofland sees a player whose age is important when assessing both his mistakes and his potential.
“Hato is a talented player. He made his debut for Ajax at a very young age, and if you saw him playing, he was really playing like an adult,” he says. “Of course he made his mistakes, but that's normal for a young player and you need to learn.”
Hato's versatility is one of the reasons Hofland believes there are several ways to develop him.
“If you play with four at the back, I think he's best as a centre-back. If you play with five, you can let him play as a wing-back, but also as the left one of the three.”
But Hofland has a preferred route for the youngster at this stage.
“For him, the best position at the moment to learn is the left wing-back position,” he says.
The three players illustrate different stages of the same process: Van de Ven developing from a promising athlete into an established international defender, De Ligt trying to rediscover the trajectory he showed at Ajax, and Hato learning how to turn exceptional early promise into consistency.
For Hofland, the increasing movement of Dutch players into the Premier League and Bundesliga can only help that process.
“You see that most of the players also — (Jeremie) Frimpong, he was born in England, he played there in the academy, then he went to Germany for a long time,” Hofland says.
He points to the increasingly international development paths of Dutch players, with experience in different leagues exposing them to different styles and demands.
“The Premier League is a big competition, maybe one of the biggest in Europe,” he says. “I think it's a good development for those players and also for the Dutch players and for the national team.”
Hofland believes the talent pool remains strong, both in the Netherlands and among Dutch players developing abroad.
“We have every year a lot of talent, and I think that our future will be positive,” he says.
For a country with such a long tradition of producing defenders, the challenge is turning that talent into players capable of succeeding at the highest level. Hofland's examples show the different routes that can lead there — and why experience outside the Netherlands can be such an important part of the process.