One must never forget how dominant Ruud Gullit actually was for a few years.
The traveling midfielder charmed all football lovers by mastering, well, just about everything on the pitch.
Today, he has started an odd venture – towards a different type of “football”.
At the beginning of the 2000s, FIFA, to celebrate its 100th anniversary, selected the 125 best players of all time. To no one’s surprise, Ruud Gullit was a given name on the list. During the 80s and 90s he was one of the world’s absolute best players, and that was proven not least in 1987 when he was awarded the Ballon d’Or.
Incredible career
Ruud Gullit was primarily an attacking midfielder, but what set him apart from many others was his incredible flexibility. Gullit had the physique to play just about anywhere, and he did. He could be a deep-lying midfielder when he wanted to, but was at his best when filled in offensively in the penalty area, and during his career he enjoyed enormous success at some of the world’s biggest clubs.
Gullit broke through at Feyenoord but his career reached its absolute height during his years at Milan, where he was part of the incredible team that won Serie A three times, and the European Cup twice. Gullit also managed to play at Chelsea before his career ended, and he could then look back on 66 international matches with the Netherlands, where he was also captain when they won European Championship gold in 1988.
The new venture
After his career, Gullit was also a coach for, among others, Chelsea and Newcastle, and during the 10th century he was also an assistant coach for the Dutch national team. Today, however, the legend has left that side of football behind. Gullit has instead worked in television for giant television channels such as Sky Sports, BeIN Sports and the BBC. But it is also a slightly different venture that takes up a lot of his time.
Ruud Gullit has become a bit of a legend among younger football lovers, who really shouldn’t have a clue what he was like on the pitch. Namely, Gullit is, year after year, one of the most expensive icons on the video game Fifa, where he constantly has one of the game’s absolute best cards. This, in turn, has led to Gullit himself starting an E-sports organisation, with the name “Team Gullit”. Talented Fifa players are recruited there, who in turn participate in the world’s biggest tournaments. And yes, Gullit is of course the face of the team, and for him it was an obvious choice.
– I ended up in the world that is Fifa thanks to my sons. My one son plays professional football, and my other son likes the video game more than the actual sport. When I was at my first Fifa World Cup, I realized how big this world is. The strategies and choices you make as a Fifa player are very similar to what happens on the real pitch, he said at the launch.
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