11 February 2024 , 14:22
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It has been over 20 years since Chelsea icon Ed de Goey left the club to join Stoke.
De Goey started his career at Sparta Rotterdam in his native Netherlands before moving to Feyenoord in 1990. After seven years, the goalkeeper decided to move to Chelsea for £2.25million.
He was the first choice stopper for the opening three years of his time at Stamford Bridge and was a member of the side that won the League Cup and Cup Winners' Cup in 1998. During the 1999/00 campaign, De Goey made 59 appearances and kept the most clean sheets in the Premier League.
However, De Goey later dropped down to No.2 following the signing of Carlo Cudicini and played just 25 times in his final three years before being released in 2003. The Dutchman signed for second-tier Stoke and cemented himself as a regular in the side, making 38 appearances in his first season.
He lost his place completely to Steve Simonsen in the 2005/06 campaign and was released at the end of the year. De Goey decided to hang up his boots and moved to QPR as a first-team coach in July 2007. He left the west London club before the end of the season.
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De Goey moved to Eredivisie side RKC Waalwijk as a goalkeeping coach in July 2010 and he held that position for four years before parting ways. The former Chelsea No.1 arrived at Dutch fifth-tier side VOC Rotterdam in 2018 and he has been at the club ever since.
Former Chelsea goalkeeper Ed De Goey (Getty Images)However, pictures have emerged on social media of De Goey now and Chelsea fans have been left stunned. During his time at Stamford Bridge, De Goey often donned a beard and had long stripped back hair. Speaking in a recent interview, De Goey appeared without the facial hair and a much shorter trim.
De Goey will go down as a Chelsea cult hero, but he had no idea he was leaving the Blues. "No, I didn't know at all. The strange thing was, in a meeting with [Claudio] Ranieri he told me I was getting older and he wanted more young keepers," he told the club's website in 2020.
"But then straight after my meeting he called the young goalkeeper [Rhys Evans], who played for England Under-21s too, and told him to leave as well! If you go for the youth, why let him go? I had mixed feelings to leave. But I couldn't do anything about it, he was the manager and what he decided goes."
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