60 CLARENCE SEEDORF
He’s the only player to win the Champions League with three clubs, but his genius was too inconspicuous for his own good. By Paul Simpson
Michel Platini once said that, “a player can make an entire career out of one game – if it’s the right game in front of the TV cameras.” Clarence Seedorf never really had that career-defining match which may be why, despite being the only player to have won the Champions League with three different clubs – Ajax in 1995, Real Madrid in 1998, and Milan in 2003 and 2007 – his quality is often overlooked.
The Dutch star’s genius was too inconspicuous for his own good. In person and on the pitch, Seedorf exuded calmness, eschewing the theatrics with which so many players endear themselves to fans. He was shown a red card only twice, and given his laid-back demeanour in interviews, it’s a surprise that he was ever sent off at all.
He was also gifted and intelligent enough to prosper as a central playmaker, attacking midfielder, wideman and box-to-box midfielder. All at the highest level.
In 1995, Ajax coach Louis van Gaal had no hesitation about fielding a 19-year-old Seedorf in the Champions League final against Milan.
“Already then, he played with more experience than a bought-in older player,” beamed Van Gaal post-game. Even in 2011-12, in his last unsatisfactory season with the Rossoneri, the worst insult fans could think of was to nickname him, ‘Slowdorf’.
The nearest Seedorf came to Platini’s career-defining game was probably Milan’s 3-0 rout of Manchester United in the 2007 Champions League semi-final second leg. He set up Kaka’s goal, scored one himself – showing trademark composure as he waited for the ball to drop so he could volley it past Edwin van de Sar – and was so dominant in midfield, he made Darren Fletcher and Michael Carrick look like the walking dead.
Yet there’s a paradox at the heart of Seedorf’s career that may explain why he’s underrated. “He is kind, well-meaning and intelligent,” football writer Simon Kuper observed, “and he gets up everybody’s nose.”
At Euro 96, he was one of the so-called cabal of young black players – alongside Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert and Michael Reiziger – in Guus Hiddink’s Netherlands squad. Seedorf’s resentment against Ronald de Boer, who’d been picked ahead of him for the right-midfield role at Ajax, was compounded by the realisation that Ajax’s young black players were being paid a fifth as much as experienced white team-mates. He was also motivated by the sense that Hiddink wasn’t listening to them. In Hiddink’s defence, as Seedorf is one of the most prolific speechmakers since Winston Churchill, he may have felt he couldn’t spare the time.
Although Seedorf publicly sparred with skipper Danny Blind, it was Davids who was sent home after telling a Dutch paper that the coach, “should stop sticking his head up other players’ arses”.
Seedorf and Hiddink reconciled and the midfielder was an integral part of the brilliant Oranje side that reached the 1998 World Cup semi-finals. Yet 10 years later, after winning 87 caps, he quit the international game aged 32, blaming coach Marco van Basten. “Why did he have perceptions about me that influenced the way he valued me as a player?” he publicly opined. “Once he called me a ‘Hollywood star’.”
In truth, the only Hollywood thing about Seedorf was that, like movie stars, he loved to be listened to. Even in the combative, discursive, nonconformist culture of Dutch dressing rooms, he stood out as a free thinker.
“In football, if the coach asked his players to relieve themselves on the field, most of them would obey automatically,” said Bruno Demichelis, the psychologist at Milan. “A few brave souls might ask, ‘Certainly mister, but what colour should our shit be?’ Only Seedorf would debate the principle.”
“HE’S INTELLIGENT AND KIND, AND HE GETS UP EVERYBODY’S NOSE”