RUUD GULLIT: AN ORANGE ODYSSEY

On the afternoon of June 25, 1988, I don’t remember that I was looking for a new hero, but I do know that I was nine years and eleven months old and was sat in the front room of 55 Innage Lane, Bridgnorth, Shropshire, watching the replacement telly for the one I had broken with a massive magnet nicked from school.

I loved Michael J. Fox, ice pops, Barnes, Beardsley, Aldridge and Steve Bull, Michael Jackson’s Bad album, cricket, toast at my nan’s, reading Match, Shoot! and books about the adventurers Hal and Roger Hunt, and perhaps most of all, watching Rocky IV on repeat with my best mate from down the road at 16 Richmond Gardens. 

And then, the man born Rudi Dil leapt onto a ball that seemed suspended on a string in the middle of the box and smashed that header into the net to put The Netherlands 1–0 up in the final, and I had a new hero. Off he ran towards the fans and into my heart, captain's armband catching the sun and dreadlocks dancing as he roared past Marty McFly and Apollo Creed into my episodic memory, all 6’3” of him. He was, of course, clad in a curious orange armour, what many think of as THE greatest shirt of all time, and what was briefly known as The Goldfish Shirt—which doesn’t really work as you are never gonna forget it, are you?

Yeah, Van Basten’s goal in the second half was iconic, but for whatever reason, it didn’t have the same impact. Gullit was in, and he has stayed in. As time has passed and others have come and gone, he’s there at the top table with the big lads. Strummer and Stoichkov, Maradona and McGowan, Baggio, The Man in Black and a buck-toothed Brazilian who changed everything. 

Longtime lurkers will know that I have written about him fleetingly in MUNDIAL before, but talking about him on our Reminding You Why You Love Football podcast inadvertently got me thinking about doing something longer. Perhaps naively, I sort of thought that the narrative of Ruud Gullit, in the UK especially, was basically sweeper, sexy football, Shearer, shit manager. I felt that there had been a collective shrug about him and that younger generations who rave about Jude and Yaya and Scholes and Gerrard needed reminding about the big number 10, who was cool as fuck and dedicated his Ballon d’Or to Nelson Mandela and could play as a six and a four and just about anywhere else you asked him and still be the best player on the pitch. 

Then I saw these comments on a TikTok clip of me talking about him.