Euro 2008 Player Profile: Ruud van Nistelrooy

Name: Ruud van Nistelrooy
Team: Netherlands
Group: “of Death”; Italy, France, Romania
Caps (Goals): 59 (30) – as of May 26th, 2008
DOB: July 1st, 1976 (31 years old)
Position: Striker
Club Team: Real Madrid

Ruud van Nistelrooy scores goals. That’s pretty much all he does. No tackling, no dribbling, not a great deal of creating for others. But he scores a lot of goals. So he doesn’t have to do much else.

Actually that’s not quite true. The one other thing he does apart from scoring goals is fall out with managers.

The story goes that while at Man Utd RvN got into a training ground argument with Cristiano Ronaldo, who RvN felt wasn’t passing the ball enough (which was probably true back in the 2005/6 season). After the fight, RvbN told C-Ron to “Go crying to your daddy”, which was a bit rough as C-Ron’s father had passed away that year. RvN claims he was referring to Carlos Queiroz, and both players now claim the whole thing never happened.

Whatever happened (or didn’t happen) RvN was benched for the next game and so stormed off home before kick off. And that was how he fell out with Alex Ferguson and was sold to Real Madrid. If you’re being got rif of by Man Utd, there are definitely worse places to go.

In two seasons at the Bernabéu, RvN has bagged 41 goals in 61 La Liga appearances and getting two titles for his trouble. Not too shabby, eh?

Ruud also fell out with Netherlands boss Marco van Basten, mostly because MvB either substituted the RvN or left him on the bench during World Cup 2006. RvN even retired from international football in 2007 and refused a call-up, but later returned to the fold. Still his international record of better than a goal every two games (30 in 59 at time of writing) is impossible to argue with.

I’ll be honest, I don’t like pure goalscorers. Their stats are always impressive and they have great highlight reels, but they’re ultimately selfish selfish players who rely on everyone else to do all the hard work while they take all the glory. But goalscoring is a skill, and arguably the most important skill in the game. So sit back and watch 50 finishes from one of the finest practitioners of the art of ball in net, set to the theme from Edward Scissorhands, which seems somehow appropriate:

And, since that was mostly Man Utd goals, here are all 25 of RvN’s La Liga goals for Real Madrid in 2006/7:

And finally: Yes, he looks a bit like a horse. But no, it’s not particularly funny.

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