Swan of Utrecht
Gritty strikers never etch themselves permanently onto the historic memory of fans. They don’t look as good as the flashy.
The ink runs dry. Therefore, not remembered as much. Then there’s the flashy. Ronaldo, Messi, Kaka, Ronaldinho and the list goes on.
“I see Messi now, still playing at 33, Ronaldo at 35, even Robert Lewandowski at 32.”
“And when I see what they are still achieving, I feel a little bit of regret. Ronaldo is still playing at the highest level and he has been on the highest level for a long time.”
“What can I say? I just have to be happy I had these nice experiences at a young age. It is still lovely to see Messi and Ronaldo giving us these nice moments when we watch football.” said the swan himself.
That one name that helped put Ajax on the map. His ink is still indelible.
Marco van Basten. He is 6ft 3inches and put in a bracket of elite elegance in football history. A juxtaposition very uncommon in modern day football.
He is known as one of the greatest strikers of all time – his flamboyance just as credited.
Early beginnings
Utrecht, the Netherlands, was the place of birth for Marco van Basten on October 31, 1964.
Weridly enough, van Basten has emulated the career aspirations of a gymnast.
He longed to hone his skills and dazzle crowds with the pommels, bars, rings and the vault. However, how quickly could a a six year old’s dream dissipate?
Football was a major part of van Basten’s early years. At age six, he began participating in EDO club games.
Eventually joined UVV Utrecht after a year. van Basten played for Elinkwijk, another Utrecht team, after nine years.
He played for Elinwijk U19s for a while before making a career-defining move to Ajax u19s.
Ajax
Van Basten and his brother Stanley were both asked to trial for Ajax at the age of 16. One brother was chosen while the other was passed over.
Van Basten made his senior debut on 3 April 1982 in a second-half cameo against NEC Nijmegen after tearing through the club’s esteemed youth system, which record for 68 goals scored in 44 appearances for Ajax’s youth, reserve, and first teams.
Van Basten came on to replace Johan Cruyff and scored ten minutes after doing so. Van Basten, in actuality, never stopped scoring.
In 1982–83, when he was 18 years old, Van Basten played 25 times for the Ajax first team and scored 13 goals. His inauguration was exhilarating, incredibly comforting, but thoughtfully planned.
The club’s coaching staff, which included head coach Leo Beenhakker, his brief replacement Kurt Linder, and, to a significant extent, returning player and technical advisor Johan Cruyff, were aware of Van Basten’s prodigious talent and knew better than to throw him into the deep end with little more than hope that he could swim.
Van Basten was also forced to compete for playing time with another outstanding young striker by the name of Wim Kieft, whose goals had helped the club win the Eredivisie title in 1980, a year prior to the emergence of his compatriot, and who would emerge as the league’s top scorer in 1982, as Ajax wrestled the title back from AZ’s grasp.
But Kieft left Ajax before the team’s subsequent effort at championship defence.
Kieft left the Netherlands on a plane bound for Italy and signed with Pisa, drawn in by the chance to practise his trade there, much as Van Basten did as well.
In spite of his relative misfortune in Italy—relegation with Pisa and a forgettable year with Torino leaving no stains on his trophy-laden stints with Ajax and, later, PSV Eindhoven—he would come to question his passing peripateticism.
However, for Van Basten, Kieft’s departure had a profound effect. The youthful striker and his goal-scoring form rocketed off like a rocket when his countrymen’s departure cleared the runway.
Van Basten commanded the Ajax offence with unmatched prodigiousness for the following four seasons, from 1983 to 1987.
Van Basten demonstrated that he was virtually unstoppable over the aforementioned time by scoring 118 goals in 112 league games and 138 goals in 145 games overall. He was never more effective than in the second part of those years, when he scored 43 goals in 43 games in 1986–87, which was more goals overall than any other season of his career.
But his ratio from the previous season would linger above all and stand out as his most notable, with his record 37 goals in just 26 league appearances being enough to win him the European Golden Boot award for the season.
Even though it is important to recognise the sheer number of goals Van Basten scored for Ajax, doing so would be meaningless if it were not for the variety and grandeur of his goal-scoring tendencies.
Even though his totals stand up to those of any player from any era, the numbers alone reveal very little about a player who appeared to regularly spend 90 minutes each week relishing his ability to defy description from his fellow humans.
If any player were born to score goals, it was Van Basten. Because he was so nimble and skilled at scoring each and every goal, it appeared to everyone who saw him that he wasn’t genuinely specialist in any one type of goal.
Six
Van Basten used his predatory instincts to score a very deft two-touch goal against Sparta Rotterdam at home in December 1985. That day, the striker assisted on six goals as his team thrashed them 9-0. Gerald Vanenburg, a teammate, attempted a long-range shot but was only able to skew it wide. Van Basten’s right instep caught and swept the curling ball goalwards in one motion, but before any quick defender could clear their team’s lines, Van Basten nudged the ball with his left foot beyond the diving custodian.
Van Basten’s football career, thrilling though it had been, had become irrevocably saddled with a horrible proviso by the lamentably premature end of his playing days – physically weary at barely 28 and condemned to tread on an ankle ravaged by injury.
At his astonishing pinnacle, there was no questioning the dizzying heights to which he went, but the question of how much higher he could have gone if not for injuries would persist.
No one who had the good fortune to observe the Dutchman’s impressive strength could resist asking the question about the vengeful monkey on his back.
Van Basten’s injuries, the rift in reality they created, and the subsequent skewing of how the world views his legacy didn’t occur until after he had left his home in the north of the Netherlands and started the second of two six-year stints into which his career can be so neatly divided.
The issue of how amazing the boy without weight could genuinely be for him was an invitation to joyfully fantasise of his infinite future rather than to pore over the heartbreaks of his past or to pretend like he was invincible.
The Marco van Basten that Ajax had the honour of calling their own for six years only dealt in hope and joy, excellence, and grace.
And it will always be the way people perceive the man, even just among Ajax supporters.
Manager
Van Basten declared he would never try management when he formally left Milan and retired from sport in 1995.
He later changed his mind and enrolled in a course through the KNVB, the Royal Dutch Football Association.
He served as John van Schip’s assistant with the second squad of Ajax in 2003–2004 during his first tenure as a manager.
Van Basten was appointed the new head coach of the Netherlands national team on July 29, 2004, and Van Schip was hired as his assistant.
Since Van Basten had only recently begun his coaching career and the media felt that he lacked much expertise, his selection as the Netherlands’ manager at the time caused a little amount of criticism.
Van Basten took over as Ajax’s manager following Euro 2008, however he quit on May 6 after his club missed out on the Champions League.
After spending millions on players like Miralem Sulejmani, Isma’l Aissati, Daro Cvitanich, Evander Sno, Eyong Enoh, and Oleguer, Van Basten had a strong start to the season.
However, when striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar left for Real Madrid in the second half of the season, Van Basten began adjusting his starting lineups.
The Eredivisie championship was out of reach as Ajax dropped 11 points in four games.
After the 2008–09 campaign, Van Basten made the decision to leave his position as Ajax manager. In 45 games, he concluded his reign with a record of 26 victories, 8 draws, and 11 defeats.
FIFA Technical Director
Van Basten made the decision to accept an open assistant coaching position under Danny Blind, the new head coach of the Netherlands national team, after spending a year at AZ.
When he was the head coach of the Netherlands, Van Basten first dismissed Ruud van Nistelrooy; now, the two would collaborate as an assistant coach. Van Basten made the decision to leave the position and join FIFA as the technical director in August 2016.
Following their meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, they were greeted at the Tehran Olympic Hotel by Mehdi Taj, the head of the Iranian Football Federation. Van Basten, who attended the Tehran Derby, demanded that the restriction on women joining sporting events be abolished for future events.
Legacy
The Ajax legend is now a father and grandfather who spends most of his recent years in quiet wilderness of contemplation.