Ruud van Nistelrooy names the unlikely figures behind his rise to the top
Manchester United legend Ruud van Nistelrooy credits Dutch master Ruud Gullit and basketball legend Michael Jordan for helping to make him a goalscorer supreme.
Van Nistelrooy, 47, finished as top scorer in three different European leagues and remains the sixth-highest Champions League goalscorer, with 56, following his time with PSV Eindhoven, United and Real Madrid.
His ability was of such a high standard that current United centre-forward Rasmus Hojlund, and all the game’s other young strikers, should still be watching him on YouTube and taking notes.
Although he might never have been so clinical had Oranje great Gullit not given him the benefit of his wisdom or had he not learned of a practice used by Jordan.
Van Nistelrooy said: “I had been signed by Heerenveen, a club in the north of the Netherlands. And one day Ruud Gullit was coming over to watch our team in training. I was a young striker and obviously, I wanted to make a bit of an impression, so I started to do all fancy tricks, scoring with a back-heel, with a chip and all sorts.
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“But Gullit said, 'What on earth are you doing in the box? Just bang it in. You receive the ball and you hit it, straight and fast. Don’t try to do all this difficult stuff. Apart from that, you are not a bad little player’. The day Gullit pulled me aside, I thought, ‘If Gullit tells me this, I’d better bang every ball near my feet in the net.”
Van Nistelrooy also credits Jordan with an indirect piece of advice that helped shape his life. He added: “I played at a small club in the Netherlands, called FC Den Bosch, in the south of the country.
Michael Jordan helped Ruud Van Nistelrooy (Press Association)"As a young player, I wrote down in a notebook the things I wanted to achieve in my life. You can play at a small club, but if you have goals or targets, you know you can go far in your career. People used to tell me, ‘You’d better work hard at school and try your best because with your football, it's not going to work’.
"But I had read that Michael Jordan had said that there is a much bigger chance that your goals in life become real when you write them down. Apparently, it worked, because I started at the small amateur club in my village of Geffen and I ended up at Manchester United and Real Madrid."
Van Nistelrooy is out of work since quitting as PSV boss at the end of last season and has spent his time travelling the world to watch other coaches at work. He is also enjoying a theatre tour in Holland, talking to crowds of around 1,000 people about his life and career.
He said: “I just returned from Argentina and had a wonderful football trip. I focused on big matches, such as Boca Juniors versus River Plate. And I like to talk to other managers.
"My former colleague Martin Demichelis, with whom I played at Malaga, is now manager of River Plate. I have watched his training sessions, and spoken to him, I also had meetings with Marcelo Gallardo, who played for Argentina for almost a decade and played for River Plate, Monaco and PSG. I spent many hours talking to them about football. It was fantastic.”
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