Read Soccer Men for Free Online Page A

his sweeper is the European Player of the Year from 1987, still only thirty-seven years old and not given to Maradonaesque dietary excesses. But having Gullit on your park’s side is apparently a mixed blessing.

    “AFC 5 is not AFC 5 anymore,” one player told me. “Now the boys are nervous in the changing room. No one dares to sit next to him.”
    The former manager of Chelsea and Newcastle, and probable future manager of Fulham, made his AFC debut in September, soon after getting kicked out of St. James’s Park. A couple of his friends, fifth-team regulars, got him to play in a friendly against ABN-Amro sixth XI, which had been threatening to field a ringer named Marco van Basten.
    That game kicked off with Gullit but without his former teammate at Holland and Milan, who had fallen asleep on the sofa at home. However, woken by a phone call, Van Basten tore to the ground, where he was immediately brought on as a substitute. Eleven seconds later he had scored. He got another later, but Gullit’s team won 6–2.
    Gullit also scored twice, enjoyed the game, and decided to join AFC. He paid the membership fee of nearly two hundred dollars a year, high by Dutch standards, because this is a chic club. Chelsea, the last team he played for, consented to the transfer.
    And so he became the sweeper of AFC fifths, much to the delight of a friend of mine who plays for the AFC fourth team and had always known that he was a better player than Gullit.
    He could be right. Against OSDO, the AFC defense marshaled by Gullit concedes two goals in the first five minutes. Gullit, who for several games had maintained an uncharacteristic silence, has recently begun expressing his views.
    “Inside! Inside! Inside!” he tells one of his defenders. Then, sighing: “I said inside.” One of his enduring themes is that his teammates must learn to mark opponents on the inside.
    It is to no avail. The AFC defense is what Johan Cruijff would call “goat’s cheese,” and when an OSDO forward next sweeps into the penalty area, an exasperated Gullit stands aside and lets him score.
    “The cream has gone,” comments the confused old man.
    It would be wrong to say that Gullit is playing, as he would phrase it, “like a turd.” Several times he sweeps a fifty-yard pass onto his outside-left’s left toe, an eerie sight in this setting. “Good ball!” the AFC coach shouts reflexively.

    However, the winger can never control the ball. Several times Gullit overhits. If you had to guess which of today’s players had played sixty-five times for Holland, you would probably pick one of the OSDO forwards.
    A spectator tells his son that Ruud Gullit is playing. “Does he play for OSDO?” the boy asks.
    The father is shocked. “Ruud Gullit, who played in Italy and for the Dutch team! You know him, don’t you?”
    “Yeah, yeah, you’re kidding me,” says the boy.
    Finally, AFC get a cross into the box, and Gullit, hurtling in, almost heads it into the top corner. Except that he misses the ball. The coach turns to me, beaming hugely, “It almost makes you think of old times!”
    OSDO makes it 4–0. By now AFC has begun the running commentary of mutual criticism traditional in a losing Dutch soccer team.
    “Goddammit! What was that?” shouts a forward.
    “Well, do something up front!” suggests a defender.
    “Referee, that man always has his flag up!” says another forward.
    Gullit tries to be positive. He does not want to destroy anyone’s confidence for life. After an AFC shot sails twenty yards over the bar, and some OSDO players joke about going home early, he laughs and shouts, “They’re getting tired!”
    Halftime comes with the score 5–0, and an OSDO striker walks up to shake Gullit’s hand. “I was thanking him for all the pleasure he’s given me,” forty-year-old Thieu Heuijerjans reveals later. “That man meant so much for Dutch soccer.”
    Heuijerjans and Gullit walk off arm in arm, chatting. Like Cruijff, Van Basten,