by Ruud Gullit
The orange shirt and Feyenoord
At the age of eighteen, two years a professional, I was selected for the Dutch national side. A huge step at a totally new level. Those players were older, more experienced, they knew more about life, they appeared for major clubs that regularly played in Europe. And there was I, the new kid from Haarlem, a tiny outfit by comparison.
Ruud Krol, already a record-breaking international, and his Ajax teammate Tscheu La Ling formed the backbone of the national side and ran the show. Ling tested me out straight away, the way older players do in teams. Being from Amsterdam, I wasn’t going to let him get the better of me and I gave as good as I got. They were supposed to supply me with a suit for my first international. Me and Frank Rijkaard were together and I came into the dressing room wearing my trainers. There were no shoes to go with the suit, so I kept my trainers on. Krol and Ling both tried baiting me, but I danced out of the room, way ahead of my time.
So I passed their test. Ling and Krol were smart; they realized I had quality and thought: we won’t get the better of him—nothing gets past him. Gradually I was learning how things worked at the top in the soccer world. I began to get it.
I was a forward in the Dutch team, like I was at Haarlem. I was doing pretty well, although without being a real team player. So it was a logical move when I transferred from Haarlem to Feyenoord, my first real top club.
At Rotterdam, my free-and-easy days came to an end. Here it was all about performance. Now I was no longer a talented newcomer; I was a fixed asset. Even so, my first season at Feyenoord in 1982, aged twenty, was more of a warm-up. I mainly played on the far right, sometimes as a midfielder and sometimes as an outside right in a 4-3-3 formation.
Cruijff
The following season, the legendary Johan Cruijff moved from his beloved Ajax in Amsterdam to archrivals Feyenoord in Rotterdam. It was not the manager (Thijs Libregts) but Cruijff the player who dictated tactics and positions. My place in his ideal Feyenoord lineup was as a pure outside right. The winger’s job was to keep the game wide, to create chances and supply passes. To get some chalk on your boots, as they say. Once again a whole new situation to adapt to, because I had been used to a lot more space as a striker, but Cruijff’s will was law.
We had a good option on the left: Pierre Vermeulen. He could beat defenders, pass the ball and score regularly: a superb player on the ball, but the demands were too much for him and he was dropped from the squad (later he appeared for Paris Saint-Germain). Cruijff replaced him with the defender Stanley Brard. As a left back, Brard’s job was to keep things organized whenever we lost possession. When we had the ball, he hardly needed to do anything; but when we lost it, it was Brard who had to clean up for Cruijff. That gave Johan a moment to rest, until we regained possession.
Johan Cruijff knew where to place players and was always talking, on and off the pitch. Johan was full of ideas, about my position as an outside right and how to combine with right midfielder André Hoekstra. Hoekstra had amazing stamina: he kept on running, constantly turning up in front of goal to meet passes. He scored plenty of goals, yet some said he wasn’t good enough for the top. However, with the tactics that Cruijff developed, Hoekstra came into his own. Cruijff gave me a new insight into tactics through his coaching and his way of talking about soccer. He showed there was more to it than knowing your own position on the pitch.
With Cruijff as player, the 1983/84 season finished with Feyenoord winning the Dutch championship and the cup. After the season ended, Cruijff opened my eyes to my own personal role in soccer, in the clubs and squads I would come to play in. It was on a trip with the squad. We happened to get into the elevator together and started talking. We carried on for hours in our hotel room and that prepared me for the rest of my career.
“Ruud, if you get a transfer to another club now, they’ll expect far more from you. You’ll be arriving as someone special, the great footballer with a huge personality. Take a striker like Ruud Geels—a goal machine at Feyenoord, Ajax, PSV, Anderlecht, Club Brugge—no one bats an eyelid when he transfers, as long as he scores goals. But you, you’re going to get a pile of shit dumped on you if you change clubs now. Like the shit I got when I left Ajax for FC Barcelona in 1973. They’ll accuse you of all kinds of things—filling your pockets, betrayal—and they’ll call you all sorts of names. Just because you have more qualities than the average player.”
According to Cruijff, there was only one way to tackle that problem: by putting other players where they would perform better. As an inexperienced 22-year-old, I had trouble understanding what Cruijff was telling me. I still had no real idea how things worked. The wisdom of his words became apparent the following season. When I transferred from Feyenoord to PSV, it caused a furor, as did the move from PSV to AC Milan. Many resented those transfers and the epithet money-grubber was perhaps one of the more flattering.
Cruijff’s words set me thinking and for a long time I tried to understand what they really meant: he had shown me a completely different approach to the game. Since each manager I’d played under had played me in a different position and had forced me to adapt my game, I had been able to focus only on myself.
From Feyenoord to PSV
When I got to PSV, I instantly understood the importance of what Cruijff had said. It wasn’t that PSV wanted to become champions; no, it was imperative that they won the championship. There was no other option. And the responsibility for that mission lay with me. They made that publicly clear at the start. How I handled the pressure was up to me.
Happily, PSV is a quiet, friendly club, and so I had little difficulty making my presence felt; in fact I may have been a little overzealous at times. I piled all the pressure on my shoulders and took on the weight of responsibility of winning the league. I wanted to win so much, to be champion, to fulfil the expectations, that I involved myself in every minute detail.
I even got them to change the kit. PSV used to play in red shirt, black shorts and red socks. To me it looked ugly: so depressing, so dark, it radiated none of the strength and freshness I wanted. So we switched to a new kit: red shirt, white shorts and white socks. It sent a powerful signal to ourselves and the opposing side. We felt bigger and stronger.
I also got involved with the players and persuaded them that they needed to improve their team performance: that we had to work on this together. For example the right back, Erik Gerets, had no love for the outside right, René van der Gijp. Van der Gijp was always larking about, a fun guy and a good player, though you had to keep him under control. Gerets was really serious, always put soccer first and had no time for Van der Gijp’s practical jokes. Gerets depended on his work ethic—he never gave up—while René would sometimes lean on his talent.
René was always causing controversy, while Gerets was the captain of Belgium’s national team. I needed them both if PSV were going to win the championship, so I started working with the two players away from the manager, to get the most I could out of them. Even though their personalities were completely different their soccer qualities were an excellent match, because Gerets could close the defensive gap that Van der Gijp left open, while René would create space whenever Erik ran up along the touchline and would pass perfectly timed balls that Erik would cross beautifully.
It was against Cruijff’s Ajax that the pieces of the puzzle came together. Cruijff had just been appointed manager, and Ajax had made a dream start to the season with a string of victories. The sky was the limit. Ajax were on a roll, winning competitions, everything. PSV arrived in Amsterdam like lambs to the slaughter. We were lagging behind in the league and bookmakers were doing well with 4–0 and 5–0 scorelines. Moreover, Ajax had always been the favorites, while PSV were still looked on as multinational Philips’s glorified factory club. It was a real motivation for me that everyone had already written us off before we even arrived at Amsterdam’s Olympic Stadium.
In the end, we turned out to h
ave progressed a lot further, and we were much more mature as a team even that early in the season. We won 4–2. I scored twice. A wonderful game, which I played with great clarity, consciously keeping an eye on the team. It confirmed for me that I was on the right path in my development as a player. The lessons I had learned at Feyenoord under Johan Cruijff were beginning to bear fruit.
It was not just my proactive approach that made a difference, it was also the space the manager, Hans Kraay Senior, gave me to influence the players. I used that space because I had begun to realize my responsibility. They looked to me. I would get the blame if it all went wrong for PSV and if we failed to win the championship. Fine, but at least it would be my way. Having a tight grip on the team’s tactics felt good.
Every corner of the pitch
I started that season at the back and scored fifteen goals. In the last ten matches I moved up front and in the final five games I scored ten goals. I never stayed in my comfort zone, even though that would have been safer. I put my own interests after those of the team. Adaptation is a theme that runs through my career. In the Netherlands, later in Italy and England, and in the Dutch national side too.
If you’re able to adapt to different positions and systems at the highest level then you can develop quickly as a player. I was used to playing 4-3-3 at Haarlem and Feyenoord—Cruijff stuck to that formation rigidly—then at PSV I switched to 4-4-2. As a central defender I could move into midfield and would often dash from there into an attacking position. Willy van de Kerkhof, a Dutch international and part of the country’s first team at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, immediately filled the gap. So the balance in midfield was preserved, as too in the team as a whole.
In the Dutch national side I switched back to 4-3-3. These tactical changes made me a more mature player as I learned what was going on in my opponent’s head. As a defender you can read the striker’s thoughts, and as a striker you understand how a defender thinks.
To Italy
When PSV met AC Milan in the Gamper Trophy in Barcelona, I was playing in defense. I must have made quite an impression because, after the game, the Italian technical manager, Ariedo Braida, looked me up in the dressing room. “Next season. You, play Milan? You play Milan?” Naturally I felt flattered. “Si, si,” I answered and in the months that followed we spoke regularly, until Braida and the club’s president, Silvio Berlusconi, submitted an official request to PSV. Hans Kraay Senior, the manager, didn’t want to let me go, but PSV’s board settled on a transfer sum of 16.5 million guilders (7.5 million euros), a record at the time. At Milan they asked me what I thought of Marco van Basten, with whom I’d played in the Dutch squad. A few weeks later, the club snatched up Marco from Ajax.
At AC Milan—just as Cruijff had predicted, the entire Netherlands had turned against me—the manager, Arrigo Sacchi, put me on the right wing in a 4-3-3 formation. Pietro-Paolo Virdis was the center forward and Marco van Basten was on the left. Our success with Milan came when we moved to a 4-4-2 formation, but that came about quite by accident, as it often does in great teams.
The Milan puzzle
Marco van Basten, one of our best players, injured his ankle in a game against Fiorentina. The next week we met Milan’s archrivals, Verona, without Marco. With Virdis and me up front together, we demolished Verona. So Sacchi switched permanently to a 4-4-2 formation, with Virdis and me in the attack. In the end Van Basten’s ankle injury forced him to remain on the sidelines for most of the season.
From outside right in a 4-3-3 lineup to striker in a 4-4-2 formation requires a switch in thinking and playing, both for the team and for individual players. We picked it up in no time at AC Milan. The new system fit like a tailor-made Italian suit. As a player I had little trouble with the physical demands of the new system, although it meant more confrontation: confrontation with the other side’s central defense.
Towards the end of the season, Marco returned to the side for the game against Napoli, then Italy’s champions with two stellar players, Diego Maradona and Gianfranco Zola. Van Basten took Virdis’s place up front and scored as well. Two Dutchmen in the attack. On the pitch I had a natural rapport with the striker Van Basten, right back Mauro Tassotti and midfielder Rijkaard. The three of them were always close by and we would pass in triangles. We tuned it so finely that we were almost impossible to defend against, however well the other side prepared.
Later, I moved to the right of midfield at AC Milan. Once again I had to adapt. The advantage for me as a runner was that there was plenty of space to do my thing along the touchline. I still found it difficult to exploit my skills when I was boxed in. With all that space on the right I knew what to do. Although every team invariably played defensively against AC Milan, we still created space by tempting the other side out. Once we had the ball, we surged forward quickly and deep down the touchline, from where I would cross to the advancing Van Basten or Virdis.
Training for crosses
My cross was a trained cross. It hadn’t come naturally. At Feyenoord I had practiced crossing continually, because it’s a key weapon in the 4-3-3 arsenal. Feyenoord aimed to play in the other side’s half, where space was limited, so you often had to cross without having gone past your opponent.
Germans call that kind of curve ball in front of the defender’s stretching leg a Bananenflanke. HSV’s Manfred Kaltz was known as a specialist. Peter Houtman—a superb striker and a great header of the ball—and I would spend hours practicing crosses and finishing. Houtman practiced scoring, me the cross: always at full speed, the full 100 percent, while most players normally train at about 60 percent.
My physical build posed a problem. I run with long strides. That meant it was essential to judge my pace exactly. There was no room for a bit of dribbling in between. Where space was limited, my physique created another problem. I couldn’t correct my stride by taking a quick extra step, like shorter players can. So timing was everything.
If there’s no one to take account of, then it’s fine. But there’s usually someone trying to stop you. And what about the striker, who’s expecting a cross? What’s he doing? Where has he moved to? Which post is he going to choose? That’s why I always practiced with Houtman, our regular center forward, to develop an automatic connection.
When we trained I tried to find the best way to kick the ball, which part of the foot to use, to be able to pass the ball so that it didn’t arrive too close to the goal, and not too high either. I found that striking the ball halfway up the inside of my foot was the most effective, and actually lifted the ball. Moreover, I had to learn to give the ball the perfect weight. If I kicked it too hard, the ball would sail over everyone and everything. If I didn’t give it enough power, then I wouldn’t be able to control where the cross went. It’s a fine line, but with enough practice you soon start to improve.
After a while, I was able to place crosses for Houtman with my eyes shut—I could time them and plant them perfectly, and at full speed. I didn’t even have to look up for him or any of the players. I put my vision into a sort of widescreen mode: I could see the different-colored socks of the players in the penalty box out of the corner of my eye, and knew exactly who to aim for. When you’re crossing you have to take account of the other player’s forward motion. So you have to make sure that the ball arrives just ahead of the striker, so that he meets the ball at precisely the right time for a header.
Forward runs
When you cross, you have to anticipate how your teammates are going to run in. You have to go over these runs in detail with the striker. They have to be automatic. So if the striker makes a dummy run to the near post, you send your cross to the far post, and vice versa. You each need to know what the other is doing, because a cross to the near post requires a different touch to a cross to the far one. The first should be tighter and lower, while the second should have more power and slightly more height. Often there’ll be two tall central defenders in the way so the bal
l has to arrive over their heads.
Strikers use dummy runs to shake off their markers. If you stand still or you run to the front post without dummying, then you make it really easy for the defenders. All they need to do to block the striker is to keep up or run at the player. In that case, if the cross doesn’t reach the striker, then it’s always the striker’s fault, not the player crossing. It’s up to the striker to keep the defender guessing, to wrong-foot the opponent, but without surprising your teammates. Eventually, you no longer need to discuss these things: they work automatically.
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo both score often, and almost always after a run. When their side has possession they are constantly moving around to keep their opponents wondering what they’re going to do. Before they get into a scoring position, they’ve already shaken off their markers with any number of dummies and fake runs. These top players have to evade not one, but sometimes two or three defenders whose job is to mark them, before they find a free position in the box. Once you realize that, you know the answer to the constant complaint of television commentators: “How on earth could they have given Messi (or Ronaldo) so much space?” Then you know: that’s what makes them so special.
It’s fantastic to watch Messi and Ronaldo dummying and faking even as they run with the ball, dribbling at full speed toward a defender. With subtle movements of the body they leave their opponent barely standing, while they continue running, completely balanced. That’s how top players create time and space for themselves to be able to give the ball that decisive touch past the defender, to shoot directly at goal.