”Ruud,” said the lady at Wentworth Golf Club, “is on the driving range.”
You walk behind the elevated and manicured 1st tee, past the bronze statue
of Bernard Gallacher, and you find him with an iron in his hand, golf balls
at his feet, beads of perspiration on his forehead. You apologise for the
interruption. “But the interview is tomorrow?” he says.
“Actually, it was for today. Half an hour ago.” This is a pivotal moment in a
relationship that now has a life expectancy of 35 seconds. Perhaps we have
caught him on a good day because, almost immediately, his Dutch coolness
takes over. “I can be ready by four, if that’s okay. I’ll have time then.”
The sky is blue, the weather wonderfully warm and this little part of Surrey
seems the most civilised and pleasant corner of the planet. Yet at this very
moment, there are crisis meetings at Stamford Bridge as Chelsea’s owner,
Roman Abramovich, chairman Bruce Buck and the chief executive, Peter Kenyon,
decide how best to end the managerial reign of Jose Mourinho.
Although Gullit knows little of what is happening at his former club, he will
find out and immediately know what Mourinho is feeling. On February 12,
1998, at a time when Chelsea sat second in the Premier League table and were
in the quarter-finals of two cups, Chelsea’s then chairman Ken Bates sacked
Gullit. The previous season, Gullit’s first in charge, the club claimed its
first trophy for 26 years when winning the FA Cup.
“During my life, that [the sacking] had the biggest impact. As a human being,
I had never been treated like that. I was shell-shocked for almost three
months. I couldn't believe that people I worked with every day could do
that. Bates sacked me, that was his right, but the information he based it
on came from other people.
“He didn’t know what was happening because he was always busy with Chelsea
Village, so I didn’t really blame him. But the people I worked with every
day, people I played golf with, people I exchanged gifts with, these people
were doing things behind my back . . . that was the worst thing.”
“Who are you talking about?” “Colin Hutchinson, Graham Rix, and who was the
other guy? I can’t remember. Oh, Glyn Williams. I realise I’m not perfect. I
make mistakes, I think to myself, ‘Ruud, couldn’t you have done that in a
different way?’ But after being sacked, I couldn’t understand it. Nobody
could.
“I was invited over to the Centenary of Chelsea two years ago and at the City
Airport I met a fan. ‘Ruud,’ he said, ‘you must never think bad of Chelsea.
It was not Chelsea. It was just some people at Chelsea at that time. Always
love Chelsea’. He then gave me the club’s centenary badge, I still have it
and I do love Chelsea. It’s my happy place – I was incredibly happy there.
The memories are too good to be ruined by those who mistreated me.”
HE CAME to London for the first time in the summer of 1995. Tired of the
unrelenting demands of Italian football and wishing to escape the turmoil
caused by the failure of his marriage to Cristina Pensa, he didn’t need much
persuading when Chelsea offered. London, he thought, would be a fresh start,
a chance to find what he had not had in Italy – a life beyond football.
At first the club put him in a hotel in Ealing. They gave him a car, a Toyota
hatchback and one afternoon in July, on a beautifully sunny and clear-skied
day, he got into his little Toyota, tuned the radio to Kiss FM and followed
signs to the West End. “I drove until I got to Piccadilly Circus, taking in
all the sights, and for the first time for a long, long time, I felt truly
happy. It was like, ‘Ah, this is it. This is what I want’. I had a good
feeling about London.”
He had spent the best years of his football life in Italy and was a central
figure in a Milan team that won three Serie A championships and two European
Cups. The tifosi loved him but, by the end, it was suffocating love. “One
evening at a restaurant, the owner said, ‘Ruud, can you do me a favour? Can
you come outside for a second?’ I said I’d prefer to just continue my meal.
He insisted. So he dragged me outside and there were hundreds of fans just
standing there, blocking the street and waiting for me to come and wave. I
smiled and waved and they went away. That kind of thing happened a lot.”
There is a subtlety here that must not be glossed over and he explains that as
a player he wanted the fans to laud him and when the applause came, he liked
it as much as the next player. “Italians want to touch you, they want to
feel you. It’s beautiful but you end up feeling like you are the prey,
always being hunted. You look over your shoulder, you hear everything, and
your eyes are wide-screen all the time.
“Then I come to London, and I could sit on a restaurant terrace and watch
other people. I could go to Soho with friends, go to a Chinese restaurant
and afterwards we would all go to the cinema.”
London became the most joyful time in his football life. He played beautifully
in the Chelsea team managed by Glenn Hoddle. At first he played sweeper,
majestically but not very effectively. “I would take a difficult ball,
control it, make space and play a good ball in front of the right back,
except that he didn’t want that pass. Eventually Glenn said to me, ‘Ruud, it
would be better if you do these things in midfield’.”
At the end of the 1995-96 season, he was second to Eric Cantona for the
Footballer of the Year award. In 1996 Hoddle accepted the England job and
Gullit became player-coach at Stamford Bridge. Responsibility came easily to
a man who captained PSV Eindhoven to a Dutch championship at the age of 23.
Nine months later, after taking the reins at Chelsea, the team won the FA
Cup. Nine months after that he got the sack.
At the time Chelsea were playing well and standing second in the Premiership.
People at the club suggested he wanted too much money, they hinted team
morale was low and immediately promoted Gianluca Vialli from within. It took
Gullit months to stop asking himself why but the sense of injustice
remained. Six months after Chelsea, he became manager of Newcastle United.
It was a strange marriage and one he wasn’t ready for. He accepted Newcastle
because he thought it would be a way to show Chelsea how wrong they had
been. He loved the club, the city, and the passionate fans who wanted
success almost too much. They went together to the 1999 FA Cup but lost to
Manchester United’s treble-winning team.
That was hardly a sacking offence, but at the beginning of the next season he
left Alan Shearer on the bench for a northeast derby against Sunderland, and
that was. He feels he never had a chance with Shearer. “I was coming in
after his mate Kenny Dalglish was sacked. I don’t have to tell you anymore.
“Everyone tried to leave Alan out of the team at times. Souness tried it.
Bobby Robson tried it, they all tried but Alan’s bigger than the club. I
mean he was a good player and I think I was seen as the city guy, ‘who’s
going to tell us how to play football’. But I really did like the club and
the people. They’re very nice people. I said to the board, ‘I love this club
but I give you my contract’. I didn’t want any money, ‘You don’t have to pay
me to go’. I was too uptight during my time at Newcastle . . .”
And the relationship with Newcastle’s favourite son ended badly. “I don’t
think we ever had a relationship. I felt he was a great player but that he
could do better. He said to me, ‘I’m doing my best’, and I knew exactly what
he meant.”
Which was? “Well, if you say, ‘I’m doing my best’, you’ve said everything. You
don’t need to say anymore. It’s like you’re saying, ‘That’s it. That’s all
you’re getting from me’.”
FOUR years ago he went back for the first time to Rose Street in the Jordaan
area of Amsterdam where he and his mother, Ria Dil, spent the early years of
his life. Ria was the buitenvrouw (outside wife) of George Gullit, who came
from Surinam and studied in Amsterdam to become a teacher. George had his
own family but would visit his buitenvrouw and their young son every
evening.
“I was just strolling around my old neighbourhood and this guy came up to me
and said, ‘You used to live here?’ ‘Yeah, on the other side of that
building’, I said. ‘No’, he said, ‘not on the other side. There’s only one
room there’.
“But that’s where my mother and I lived, in that one room, 6.5 metres by 4
metres. We lived there for 10 years before we got a bigger place on the west
wide of Amsterdam. I would like to have seen the room again but I didn’t
think it was right to ring the bell.”
Ria worked at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam and although she brought her boy
many times and showed him all the famous Rembrandts, he was more taken by
the suits of armour and the swords. He needed to take care of himself
because Ria left for work at seven in the morning and George was busy with
his teaching. Ruud’s colour set him apart from most kids in the Jordaan.
“When you’re very young, you’re the lovely little black boy with the curly
hair. ‘Oh, look at you, you are so beautiful’. I never felt I was different
to anyone else. When you get older, it becomes an issue. When I was 12 or
13, there was a fight that I was trying to break up, because a friend was
involved. The police picked us up, I had my school books and this policeman
said, ‘Ah, the nigger is studying. This nigger can count’.
“I went home and told my mother. She went out and found this police officer
and started swearing at him. And because my mother was white, he was really
surprised and embarrassed. He didn’t mean to abuse a black boy who had a
white mother.”
Intelligence allowed the boy to see beyond his youth. He had taken his
mother’s name Dil, but after he signed for his first proper schoolboy
football team he went to see his dad. “Papa,” he said, “is it okay for me to
use your name on my football form. A great footballer is not going to be
called Ruud Dil.” With a vision of what he could become, he changed his name
to Ruud Gullit.
“In some of the teams, I was the only black player and I realised that if you
were different in any way, people noticed you. They pay special attention to
you. It wasn’t discrimination, just human nature, and I knew if I worked
hard and was one of the better players, being black would help me to stand
out. That’s how it turned out.”
He played at all underage levels for the Dutch national side and a coach from
the famed Ajax academy invited him to join. “With your parents, come to see
us,” he said. “I live in west Amsterdam,” the kid replied, “both my parents
work and it would be easier if you came to see us.”
“No, no,” the Ajax coach said, “you must come and see us.”
Gullit laughs now at the recollection. “People say I hated Ajax from that day,
but I never did. It was just that they were incredibly arrogant. They wanted
me and I had to go with my parents to see them. I’d never heard anything so
stupid.”
He joined Feyenoord and then PSV Eindhoven before being transferred for a then
world record £6m fee to AC Milan. He was a key player in the greatest Milan
side and what he remembers especially are the games of tennis football that
began each morning at 9.15, 45 minutes before the start of training.
“Technically, they were unbelievably tough. Van Basten and Rijkaard weren’t
able to play in those games. It took me time to learn but, years later at
Chelsea, I would take a ball on my chest, volley a pass to a guy 10 yards
away, the crowd would go mad and I would think, ‘But that’s nothing’. Those
years at Milan were hard, all the time hard.”
He remembers the sound of Silvio Berlusconi’s helicopter landing at the club’s
training ground, Milanello. “Che, che, che, che, and he would be there. He
was a good motivator, very charismatic. He would say, ‘Okay, we have Inter
on Sunday, the European Cup next week, then Palermo, another European Cup,
then Juventus, after that Roma. Now if we can win these six games, we’ll be
in a good position’.
“It wasn’t enjoyable because it was so pressurised. The fun came when you won
but it was only for a brief moment because you had to do it again and again,
the next week, the following season.”
Milan had a profound effect on him because he had never experienced anything
remotely near the culture that existed at Berlusconi’s club. What
distinguishes it from all other clubs, he believes, is the compulsion to
win. So ingrained that each individual victory seemed as nothing, except as
a forerunner to the next.
He talks about a club that refused to do “hallelujahs”. “When Clarence Seedorf
left Inter and went to Milan, I said, ‘You will experience something very
different’. He went there and we then spoke. ‘Oh, Ruud. It’s incredible. You
walk into this club and everything you breathe is about winning, and you
know that you want to be part of it’.”
He talks more about Milan and I ask why he doesn’t mention the managers he
worked under. “Sacchi and Capello,” he says, matter-of-factly. There is no
warmth. Why? “Because there was no fun. There was no laughing. You were just
being drilled by them, drilled, drilled, drilled. The fun came later when I
went to Sampdoria, and especially when I went to Chelsea. Every time I
played for Chelsea, I thought, ‘Nice game, beautiful stadium, great crowd,
I’m playing well’. It was the only time I really had fun.”
When he was named European Footballer of the Year in 1987, Gullit dedicated
the award to the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Italians raised their
eyebrows, “Nelson who?” He tried to explain and they said, ‘Oh, a footballer
with political beliefs’.
He says lots of footballers have interesting things to say but no one asks
them anything interesting. “I met Nelson Mandela after he was released and
he said, ‘Ruud, I have lots of friends now. When I was on the inside, you
were one of the few’. I’d grown up in the Amsterdam of the early 80s,
singing reggae songs about Mandela and Steve Biko.
“Four months ago I visited Robben Island and met three guys who were
cell-mates of Nelson Mandela. They remembered my dedicating my award in 1987
to Mandela and they said they couldn’t believe what I had done, and
were sure the football authorities would withdraw the award. That’s what
apartheid did to them, it made them believe injustice was a normal part of
life.”
After Milan, he joined Sven-Göran Eriksson at Sampdoria and enjoyed a
wonderful autumn to his career in Italy. He scored 15 goals for Sampdoria
and much praise for how he played.
“Since Eriksson came to England, the guy who has been portrayed in the
newspapers is not the guy I know. Sven is a gentleman, very likeable, very
passionate and one who knows his football. My feeling was, ‘When someone
treats you with kindness, why would you not treat him the same?’ ” We talk
about his personal life; three wives, two children by each, a trail of
emotional turmoil in his wake. He says he has not been the best father
because difficulties in his first two marriages meant he saw his first four
children less than he should. His marriage to Johan Cruyff’s niece, Estelle,
is now in its eighth year.
“Because of personal difficulties in my relationships, I could never be with
all my children every day and that’s something I regret. But it was also
something that was out of my hands. Because of circumstances, I couldn’t be
there for them. My two oldest kids are now 21 and 18 [Felicity and Charmayne
from his first marriage to Yvonne de Vries] and understand why I took the
decisions I took and they can live with that. They can see it’s different to
what they were told. The middle two [Quincy and Sheyenne from his second
marriage to Cristina Pensa] won’t understand yet because they are still too
young.” Maxim and Joelle are the children from his marriage to Estelle.
The interview ends and he disappears, only to return a few minutes later.
Something has struck him and he believes it should be written. “I have had a
lot of personal troubles, but I ask myself have I been so good at football
because I have not been happy in my personal life?”
I ask what he means. “Football was my outlet. I could express myself in the
best way. But I couldn’t have both, a good private life and a good football
career.”
What was it about his character that made his private life the opposite to his
professional life? “Wrong choices,” he says. “Bad choices. Bad decisions.
Can happen. The funny thing is that when I was in this situation, I thought,
‘I’m the only one. Typical black guy, goes there, makes mistakes’.
“Then you look at people in normal life and all of a sudden you realise you’re
not the only one. You are not the only one. Maybe the difference is that I
can’t hide it.”
But he and Estelle have been together for 12 years. That gives him a shot at
long-term stability. “I’m not doing everything right, but I’m pleased about
that.”
Gullit’s career in the spotlight from world-class player to chat-show host
- Ruud Gullit is one of the best players to come out of Holland, where he is
ranked alongside Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff in the pantheon of Dutch
footballing greats
- Versatile and powerful, the dreadlocked Gullit could play virtually anywhere
in midfi eld or attack and made a huge impression at Feyenoord, PSV
Eindhoven, Milan, Sampdoria and Chelsea, scoring 175 goals in 465 games
- Gullit won 66 caps for his country, scoring 17 international goals
- In a playing career laden with trophies, Gullit won Italy’s Serie A three
times, the Dutch title three times, the Champions League/European Cup twice
and a host of domestic cups. He also helped Holland to win the European
Championship in 1988
- Gullit was named European Footballer of the Year in 1987 and World Player of
the Year in 1987 and 1989. He was only the third player to receive both
awards in the same year after Paolo Rossi and Michel Platini
- His first coaching job came when he was appointed player-manager of
Chelsea in 1996, winning the FA Cup in his fi rst season with a 2-0
win over Middlesbrough, far right. It was Chelsea’s fi rst
trophy for 26 years and Gullit was the fi st nonBritish manager to win
a major trophy with an English club
- The following season, with Chelsea second in the league and in the quarterfi
nals of two cup competitions, Gullit was sacked
- In 1998 he was named manager of Newcastle United, promising to bring ‘sexy
football’ to the northeast. He guided the club to the FA Cup final
in his fi rst season, but then fell out with, and dropped, crowd
favourite Alan Shearer. He also refused to give captain Rob Lee a squad
number. The fans turned against him and he left fi ve games into the
1999-2000 season
- In 2004 he became manager of Feyenoord but quit after just one season
- Last year he was given his own talk show on Dutch TV, left, where he
interviewed Nelson Mandela. He also appeared as a pundit for ITV during the
2006 Fifa World Cup, and is a regular Champions League analyst on Sky
- Now 45, Gullit has been married three times and has six children. His
present wife is Estelle Cruyff, niece of football legend Johan
Gullit hasn’t hung up his boots for good just yet. He will be playing in
the Premier League All Stars starting tonight at 8pm on Sky One along with
veteran players such as Peter Beardsley and celebrities Angus Deayton and
Gareth Gates
