Marco’s magical finish the highlight of career cut short
ANY TEENAGER glued to the television for the European soccer championship finals of 1988 will have spent the rest of that summer in their back garden or the nearest playing field trying to replicate Marco van Basten’s wonder goal in the final against the Soviet Union.
If you are too young to have witnessed it at the time, or have forgotten just how good it was, then do yourself a favour and seek it out on YouTube.
The technique was breathtaking, and it was one of the greatest goals of that, or indeed any other, era.
And yet, already Holland’s star striker was beset by a serious problem with his right ankle that would lead to his premature retirement from the game.
‘The strange thing about that goal technically was that I no longer had a full range of movement in my right foot.
‘Since my ankle ligaments had been fixed in that operation in November ’87, I had reduced mobility there and could no longer take on such a ball at full power.
‘With a good ankle I would very probably never have scored that goal.’
His back story in ‘Basta - My life - My truth’ tells us about a quiet boy from
Utrecht whose obvious talent caused friction at home.
His father recognised his potential and brought him everywhere, but it led to accusations that he was neglecting
Marco’s older sister and brother as a result.
By his teenage years, the future star of club and country realised too that his parents’ marriage was all but over.
At that stage, he had managed to cope with a childhood trauma when a neighbour he was playing with drowned after falling through frozen ice while holding a rope that Marco was clinging to at the other end.
Johan Cruyff was his sporting idol, and when he joined Ajax he had the privilege of being mentored and advised by the greatest player from that polished Dutch team of the seventies.
A big money move followed to AC Milan, and he was their bestpaid player and worshipped by fans in the San Siro.
Given what we know about the man now, it’s a little jarring that van Basten heaps lavish praise on Silvio Berlusconi who was the club’s owner and a personal friend.
As well as winning Euro ’88 after scoring that cracker in the final, he was the continent’s footballer of the year three times, and also won the world equivalent on one occasion.
His club honours included three European Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, a UEFA Super Cup, and countless national championships with both Ajax and AC Milan.
However, by the age of 28 it was more or less over, and another two attempts to repair his badly-damaged right ankle failed.
The prologue takes us back to 1995, and an incident in the middle of the night that summed up van Basten’s troubles at the time.
After waking up in need of the toilet, he literally has to crawl from his bed to his destination and back again, because his ankle is giving him such intense pain.
Eventually some comfort arrived after another major operation saw his shinbone fused with his ankle, and it was a welcome release after three years of hell.
A couple of major battles with the tax authorities followed, one in Holland and the other in Italy, while his stint as boss of his county’s national team commenced on a high but started to go wrong after an early exit to Portugal in the 2006 World Cup.
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