The big interview: Edwin van der Sar - "After I'd pushed away Anelka's penalty, I felt like I was separated from the world for a couple of seconds"

Photography:Pim Hendriksen

It’s not often a club CEO is the subject of a FourFourTwo One-on-One – but it’s not often that a CEO also happens to have won eight league titles and two European Cups. “The way I try to make the club more successful, in terms of raising revenue and winning trophies, is similar to how I captained teams as a keeper,” Ajax’s Edwin van der Sar says, before outlining the similarities between dominating an 18-yard box and a boardroom.

For the first one-and-a-half years I was an outfield player. But then one day our keeper didn’t show up for a game and the coach said to me: “Edwin, you’re the tallest, so you go in goal.” That went so well that I just ended up staying there. For many years I’d played for a small amateur side called VV Noordwijk, and I didn't expect my dream of becoming a professional to ever come true. When I was around 19, I was approached by Sparta Rotterdam to be the third-choice goalkeeper. However, they only offered to cover my travel expenses, so I chose to stay where I was at Noordwijk. Then a few days later Ajax phoned and asked me to go and sign for them, which I did.

During the 1990s we deployed a system at Ajax where I was indeed involved in the build-up play, and it can be an asset if you want to use a certain style of play. Sometimes I believe that people attach too much importance to it. A goalkeeper is there mainly to stop the ball going in.

Louis van Gaal occasionally appeared a bit eccentric when he was managing in England. Was he like that at Ajax?
Laura Matthews, via Facebook

He hasn’t really changed very much, in terms of how he deals with the press or how he is with people in private – like at a dinner party, for example. I visited one of his training sessions when he was at Manchester United and I still saw a very driven man who is continuously focused on improving his players. The way that he dealt with players, the key elements of his training sessions and his general rules – it was all still very recognisable to me, even after so many years away.

That will be very, very difficult. Even in my time, like 20 years ago, it was still a massive achievement, but back in those days you had only one club per country and perhaps 16 teams overall in the final stages of the competition. With the new model the romance has somewhat gone, I believe. Even if they implement some new rules, I think the bigger teams will always dominate the tournament as they will overtake all of the other clubs with their huge budgets.

When I left Ajax in 1999, I travelled to Liverpool and spoke to Gerard Houllier. I was shown around Anfield and also met with the chairman and a couple of the players. I thought about it properly, but when Juventus came to the table I came to the conclusion that it would be a bigger challenge to go and play in Italy. But just as I was about to sign for them, Manchester United approached me as well! At that time I talked to the brother of Alex Ferguson, though I was already at an advanced stage with Juve. I liked the thought of going somewhere that had a completely different culture and playing style, but it was a leap into the unknown to move to a Serie A club.

Later, I found out that Ferguson had always been really keen on signing me, but the chairman of United had a deal to sign Mark Bosnich on a free instead. So the idea had always been for me to succeed Peter Schmeichel, but it ended up taking six years longer than planned and they tried out some other keepers in that period. While I was with Fulham I also heard about vague interest from Arsenal but that never materialised into anything concrete, which was a pity at the time. That made it pretty nice when I won a few times against Arsenal with United later on in my career...

He was a really normal guy. In Italy you also have those flashy boys, with nice cars and expensive clothes, but Zidane was always very casual. You would just see him in jeans and a white t-shirt. He was down to earth but he had incredible quality. If you ever passed or threw the ball out to him and the ball was slightly inaccurate, he would control it in such a way that it was instantly playable. He knew exactly what was going on around him and could pass the ball everywhere. Sometimes it seemed as if he was even quicker with a football than without it.

The chipped penalty wasn’t the hardest part to handle – a goal is a goal, whether it’s done with a chip or not. No, if I had any nightmares about that one game, they would’ve more likely been about all of those penalties we missed. We missed two spot-kicks during normal time, then another three in the penalty shootout. Francesco Toldo saved three – two of them from Frank de Boer – and Patrick Kluivert hit a post with one. The other one from Jaap Stam is probably still somewhere in that top tier behind the goal! We managed to miss five out of six penalties, which is probably a few too many if you want to reach a final...

It didn’t happen in particularly pleasant circumstances, although I must admit I didn’t reach the level at Juventus that I had reached before in Holland. In that summer [2001] I had actually requested a meeting to hear about their ideas for the forthcoming season. They said they were looking to bring in one or two new players, but assured me I didn’t have to worry. Then, probably a week later, they brought in Buffon for about £30 million. Obviously that deal must have been in the pipeline for some time, though they decided not to tell me anything about it when I went for that meeting. So, yeah, it took me by surprise and I had to start looking at my options to find a new club.

Around that time, there was quite a lot of movement among keepers in Italy, with Buffon signing for Juve, Francesco Toldo going to Inter Milan and Sebastien Frey moving to Parma. It was a kind of jostle between goalies at the top clubs, but I was left out. I then spoke to Ajax, to Liverpool and to Dortmund. The latter two wanted to wait until the end of the summer transfer window. I didn't want to be hanging on for that long. Fulham had some big ambitions – they had just won the First Division title to go into the Premier League and were signing a lot of new players. I just wanted to play some football. I consulted Louis van Gaal, who was the Netherlands’ national coach at the time, and he was really positive about the move. I saw it as maybe taking one small step back in order to then try to make several steps forward further down the line.

He was an eccentric man – he definitely did a few unusual things. Before games, he would turn up pitchside and walk on the pitch waving a scarf. Usually he’d make sure he came round to say hello to me while I was doing my warm-up. He would often talk to players – on matchdays he would come inside the dressing room to see us, and sometimes he even turned up at training in his helicopter. On more than one occasion, after a good run of results, he would treat all of the players to a big hamper from his Harrods store.

I really enjoyed my time in London, but I hadn’t anticipated that I’d be playing for Fulham for four years. I was thinking it would probably be about one or two years, then I would take the next step. Towards the end of my Fulham career, I even signed a little contract extension so the club could get a transfer fee for me. I was told I wouldn’t be playing if I didn't agree to extend my contract! I found out that United were going to sign me when I discovered a voicemail from Alex Ferguson. That was a special day. That was the moment I thought: ‘This is why I came over to London – to eventually make this next step forward.’ Ferguson told me he needed someone who could lead and give guidance to the defence. He said he knew I wouldn’t get flustered if the side was under pressure.

I remember studying a lot of Chelsea’s penalties on DVD before the match. So, for example, I think I probably analysed about 40 that Frank Lampard had taken in the past. I had made plenty of notes and noticed that Nicolas Anelka would almost always take his penalties to the goalkeeper’s right. Later on, I heard that Chelsea had also done their homework on me and learned that I usually dived to my right. So I think their players were told to shoot to my left, which most of them did. I’d anticipated Anelka would choose to shoot the other side, though, and thankfully that is what happened. After I'd pushed away his penalty, I felt like I was separated from the world for a couple of seconds. I don’t think I’ll ever experience a more ecstatic moment than when I realised we’d just won the Champions League final and noticed all of my team-mates running towards me. It was the highlight of my whole career.

I wouldn’t say that I was the one who managed to bring them together again. I just expressed my own opinion, as the captain of the team, about what I felt would be good for the squad. I pointed to the value of Van Nistelrooy – that he could be important to the team during the tournament. I think they are quite stubborn characters, really. I generally empathise quite well between different people and groups, so I expressed my thoughts. But it wasn’t like I organised a meeting or anything and demanded they put their differences behind them.

They both worked incredibly hard on the pitch, but Cristiano took it up a level. Off the field, he was also focusing on everything extensively, such as resting up properly and strengthening his body. After training sessions he would often work on his free-kicks and then come to me and say: “Edwin, can you go in goal?” I’d say I was old so he would be better off using one of the youth-team keepers, but he would insist I went in goal as he wanted to score past me. I would tease him a lot and say things like: “You won’t score against me, Ronnie, you know it. Ask the reserve goalie, that’s better for your confidence.” He’d get agitated and reply: “No, no. You’ve got to go in goal!” Cristiano is a really good guy, however, and the common perception of him is not a true reflection of his personality.

Well, if we wanted to be a really great team, then we should have won two of those three Champions League finals we played in that period. For example, if we had won in 2009, we would have been Europe’s best for two seasons and also the first team ever to win consecutive Champions League titles. So if we’d won the final against Barcelona in Rome, we would have been a great team. But of course, if you look at the players we had back then, we were certainly very good.

No, I didn’t find the criticism too harsh at the time. He didn’t play very well and made some errors, which is maybe to be expected if you go to such a huge club like United at such a young age. It’s a new country where the people speak a different language and the style of football is very different. But since then he has worked very hard and been able to turn things around. He has developed into a really good goalkeeper now.

In those situations I didn't really have time to pass on much advice! Against Portsmouth, I sustained a groin injury and my replacement Tomasz Kuszczak got a red card later on in the match, so by the time Ferdinand was going in goal I was already sat high up in the stands. In the match against Spurs I broke my nose after a collision with Robbie Keane and went down the tunnel to get some treatment. A few minutes later I heard a massive roar, and it turned out O’Shea had actually made a pretty good save!

The West Ham fans weren't that nice. Let’s just say they all seemed to have quite a, er, limited vocabulary... but the kind of abuse you would receive at an away ground usually depended on whether your side were winning or losing the game. When you were in front, you didn't need to rush the goal-kicks and the fans would all get angry. When you were behind, and you had to rush to collect a ball from behind the goal, then everybody would be jeering in the stands. But on the whole, the atmosphere with English fans was great and I felt at home when I was living in England.

A few years before, a friend of mine had told me he was going to be running that marathon. The idea really appealed to me so I said to him: “Why don’t you just wait for a little while and I will join you when I retire from football.” But it then took a few more years as I extended my United deal a couple of times. In the end, I had about two-and-a-half months to prepare for it. It was a huge burden on my body and it needed quite some time to recover, but eventually my time was four hours and 19 minutes.

Thank you for reading 5 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access

Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription

Join now for unlimited access

Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1

Arthur Renard has been writing for FourFourTwo since 2013, when Ronald Koeman hosted him for a Readers interview in a small room in stadium De Kuip. Two years later Arthur moved to London, where he still lives and from where he covers English football, while he has also been travelling the world to cover events like the World Cup and Copa America.

Latest

Chris WIlder manager of Sheffield United dejected during the Premier League match between Brentford FC and Sheffield United at Gtech Community Stadium on April 13, 2024 in Brentford, England. (Photo by SportImage/Getty Images)

Sheffield United on course to set ridiculous Premier League record - having already secured one unwanted achievement

See more latest ►

Get FourFourTwo Newsletter

Most Popular