Ruud van Nistelrooy: 150 goals, 219 appearances, five magnificent seasons, but ended his illustrious career at Manchester United after a series of fights.
The Dutchman is one of the greatest finishers to grace the Old Trafford turf, but his last season was tarnished by fights with fellow players and manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
Only Tommy Taylor, who lost his life in the Munich disaster, outstrips Van Nistelrooy (0.68) at Old Trafford, with a strike rate of 0.69 after scoring 131 times in 191 appearances.
However, at the beginning of May 2006, Van Nistelrooy walked out of Old Trafford three hours before kick off against Charlton, having been omitted from Ferguson’s 16-man squad for the game. Afterwards, the manager explained his decision as resulting from “a couple of incidents in training that concerned me in terms of the spirit of the club.”
Years on, we know a particular fight with Cristiano Ronaldo was among the reasons behind Van Nistelrooy’s departure. The pair had not go along for some time, with the Dutchman accusing his teammate of not releasing the ball quickly enough, a habit which was costing the former PSV Eindhoven striker. This was a feud which consisted of several training ground bust-ups involving fisticuffs.
In Ronaldo’s biography, Rio Ferdinand recalls one of the incidents involving both players:
“They had a couple of arguments. Ruud van Nistelrooy kicked him one time and after that, I kicked Ruud just to protect Ronnie a little bit and Ruud swung a punch at me and he missed.”
The former Netherlands international was already in deep waters due to his behaviour at United throughout the season, and this argument proved to be the final nail in his coffin as far as Ferguson was concerned.
A disgruntled Van Nistelrooy would eventually fly back to his native Netherlands. He was totally out of favour and had even discovered that he had not been invited to play in Roy Keane’s testimonial against the Irishman’s former club, Celtic.
To the contrary, it a shame how the relationship between Ferguson and Van Nistelrooy soured over the years. Particularly after the Scot kept interest in him after he ruptured cruciate knee ligaments in 2000. A move to United looked dead and buried that summer, but Van Nistelrooy telephoned Ferguson to explain the seriousness of the injury. The striker was told not to worry and that he would still become a United player.
And that’s what happened.
Moreover, when he departed there was a feeling among United supporters that Van Nistelrooy left the club under a grey cloud. It was July 28, 2006, when he would join Real Madrid for a fee of £10.5million. The fans never got to say goodbye to one of their favourites, and even though there was a number of feuds in the camp involving the Dutchman, some still accuse Ferguson of flexing his muscles by getting rid of a star player. Yet in hindsight Ferguson went on to build a team around Ronaldo, who immediately took the spotlight from Van Nistelrooy by spearheading the club onto domestic and continental supremacy.
Van Nistelrooy scored all sorts: volleys, headers, tap-ins, penalties and wonderful solo goals. A memorable shout for one of his greatest United goals came against Fulham at Old Trafford in 2003. He picked up the ball in the centre-circle before impressively shrugging off two challenges and setting off on a run where he proved to be untouchable. Then he left several defenders for dead and finished in style, scoring a goal that would be the start of a historic run — one where he’d score in each of the following nine games.
But it wasn’t just domestically that Van Nistelrooy would prove prolific. He was as good in Europe, scoring 56 goals for four different sides despite never reaching the Champions League final, let alone win the prestigious competition which he was top scorer in the 2001-02, 2002-03 and 2004-05 seasons.
During his five years in Manchester, he won just three major honours, but he did not even get off the bench for the last of those — the 2006 League Cup final victory over Wigan — after being dropped by Ferguson in favour of Louis Saha.
Van Nistelrooy’s spell at the club also saw increased competition from Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, who went one entire Premier League campaign unbeaten, and the start of Jose Mourinho’s brief dominance as Chelsea manager.
United had fallen from the summit, so Van Nistelrooy ultimately missed out on the acclaim reserved for the like of Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp, Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard.
Within a year of moving to Real Madrid, Van Nistelrooy helped the club to a La Liga title and was the league’s highest goalscorer with 25 goals. There he enjoyed a successful four-year stint at the Bernabeu before continuing his goalscoring with Hamburg and Malaga.
Casting our minds back to Van Nistelrooy’s time at United — between 2001-2005 — he was one of the most complete forwards. He didn’t win all the trophies his goals deserved and he should have had a longer career at United, but his exit lead to the formation of one of United’s greatest sides (2007-08) — built around his old nemesis.
