Patrick Kluivert
He was a raw 18-year-old prodigy when Ajax coach Louis van Gaal handed him a chance to play in the biggest game in European club football, yet Patrick Kluivert was ready to embrace the challenge. Some 26 years on from the night that changed his life, his memories of scoring the winning goal against Italian giants Milan are still vivid…
When you are 18 years old, you don’t have any fear.
You just want to play, to experience everything as quickly as possible, even if it is the biggest game in European club football.
That is how I felt when Ajax reached the Champions League final in 1995.
I just wanted to play, even if it was for one minute, because you never know when you will get another chance in a game of that importance.
We knew what we were doing and we knew it could work against Milan. They were an amazing team with Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta, and they had beaten Barcelona very easily [4-0] in the Champions League final the year before, but this was not our concern.
We went into the match feeling confident because we had beaten Milan twice in the group stage. But then you play in a final and it feels different somehow. Winning in the group was exciting for us and showed that we were good enough to compete with them, but winning the Champions League is bigger than we imagined.
You won’t be surprised when I say I remember the final like it was yesterday. When you have a moment in your life that changes everything, even the small details remain with you.
I was on the bench and I remember feeling very nervous. I could see this amazing trophy on the side of the pitch and it was hard to believe how close we were to winning it.
Then the coach Louis van Gaal told me to go and warm up and I came on for Jari Litmanen.
Now we can talk about my goal! Marc Overmars had the ball on the left side, he played it to Edgar Davids, then it went to Frank Rijkaard and I was thinking: “Play me in, play me in”.
I had to beat their goalkeeper and suddenly it felt like I had done something amazing. The team ran after me, I turned my shirt around and everyone piled on top of me.
Maybe I was in shock because for a moment, I could not breathe
Maybe I was in shock because for a moment, I could not breathe. You see me on the video pushing the guys to get off me because I couldn’t get my breath and it was a strange feeling. Even when I got back to the halfway line and we started the match again, I was struggling to get my breath. I was thinking about what I had just done and maybe it was too much to understand. There were just five minutes left in the game and all I could think about was that maybe I’d just scored the goal to win the Champions League. I just hoped they couldn’t come back because I knew what it would mean to both me and Ajax.
Then the whistle went and everything changed for me in that moment.
I stayed at Ajax for a couple more years and then went to Milan before Van Gaal took me to Barcelona. Everything that happened in my career started with that night in the Champions League final. It was all my dreams becoming reality.