Читать книгу Robin Van Persie - Andy Williams - Страница 6

Robin van Persie was born in the Kralingen district of eastern Rotterdam on 6 August 1983. His father Bob raised Robin and sisters Lilly and Kiki as a single parent. Both Bob and Robin’s mother José Ras were artists – a strong link to his creativity on the football field. Pushy parents have a reputation of ruining their children’s football matches so perhaps coming from a less football-intense home allowed Robin to concentrate on developing his skills without the extra pressure some football-mad parents can put on their offspring.

He told Arsenal TV that it was a very different household to those of his friends as he was granted a bit more freedom than the average kid. Arranging sleepovers for pals was a lot easier for van Persie to do because his parents were so relaxed: ‘We were free! The weekend is for yourself – enjoy yourself!’

Indeed, his parents attempted to persuade van Persie to join the family trade but he always found football much more of a draw than painting and sculpting. Bob was a famous artist in the Dutch cultural scene but despite some early forays into the world of art, the lure of a football always proved too strong for van Persie to resist. After his parents divorced, Robin lived with Bob in an artistic den and was continually encouraged to be creative. He told The Independent: ‘When I was younger my parents encouraged me to be creative, to draw and play games to expand my mind. They wanted me to be an individual. But it turned out I’m rubbish with my hands.’

Instead a young van Persie headed to the city streets where he would play football for up to eight hours a day with other youngsters. He did a lot of growing up on the streets as they showed what the real world was like – for better and for worse. In his early teens young Robin didn’t have a lot of money but playing was free so long as somebody had brought a ball.

In fact it was van Persie’s grandfather, who had himself played football professionally, who encouraged him in those early years. The pair used to play for hours on an area of grass behind his grandparents’ home.

He would go on to marry a Dutch-Moroccan girl and it was his time on the streets that introduced van Persie to Moroccan and Surinamese communities. An upbringing encompassing different communities would make him a well-balanced, worldly adult.

He may not have become the artist his parents wanted but the fact he was raised by creatives is clear for all to see. Van Persie has a very distinctive style on the pitch, clearly thinking outside of the box and, in his early days at least, possessed something of a temper.

Van Persie’s first club, SBV Excelsior, saw great potential in van Persie and played a great part in his development as a footballer. The Rotterdam outfit acted as a ‘satellite club’ for its more illustrious neighbours Feyenoord – providing stars of the future for the team up the road. They have played a part in the development of a host of future Premier League stars including Winston Bogarde, George Boateng and Salomon Kalou.

Roughly translated from Latin, ‘Excelsior’ means ‘onward and upward’ and it was certainly the case for van Persie after he learned his trade there. Excelsior’s ground has a tiny capacity of 3,531 people and the club is known for providing a relaxed environment in which players can properly focus on their development and hone their skills. Van Persie joined the youth setup at his hometown club at the age of four and grew up playing for the club until he was 16.

A fiery temper saw him regularly in trouble at school – in his early teenage years little Robin found himself in hot water pretty much every day. So routine was his dismissal from the classroom that a friendship was struck up with the school janitor, who was Dutch-Moroccan – like van Persie’s future wife Bouchra. When van Persie was 14, school caretaker Sietje Moush became a valuable friend as he provided sound advice. Such was the respect between the pair that Moush would go on to act as van Persie’s unofficial agent.

Van Persie told The Independent: ‘If you’re 15, 16, 17, it’s a difficult age. You start wanting to go out, to clubs or whatever, but my friend made sure I never did. He’d say, ‘Those places are rubbish,’ and I believed it. When I was sent out it was never because I yelled at the teacher or used bad words. I was more the wise guy, taking the piss. I always had something to say back to the teacher, which I’m sure was frustrating for them, but I always had respect.’

That wise-guy type trouble spilled over onto the football field, which led to his departure from Excelsior. Truth be told, he had probably already outgrown the club and it would have been time to move on anyway but the reason van Persie left was disagreements with coaching staff. Coaches were not willing to put up with a sometimes petulant attitude and van Persie was soon sent packing. He moved down the road to Feyenoord, where he would make his debut at just 17.

Those old wounds have since been forgotten – people say a lot of things they don’t really mean when they’re young. The club have been keen to keep ties with van Persie in subsequent years and in a ceremony in October 2010 appointed him an Ambassador of the club and named one of the Stadion Woudestein stands after him. The honour put him in the company of luminaries such as Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, Jimmy McIlroy at Burnley and Steve Fletcher at Bournemouth – despite the fact that he had not even played a game for the club’s first team!

He may have only been 27 at the time but van Persie told Dutch reporters he was already hatching plans to return to the club at the end of his career. It looked as though van Persie meant what he said when he attended a celebratory evening at Stadion Woudestein. Most footballers simply ‘turn up’ at events like this, look slightly awkward, smile, perform whatever duties are demanded of them and make a sharp exit. Robin van Persie is not most footballers. Not only did he avoid making that sharp exit, he also led a conga line in the supporters’ bar and belted out a joyfully tuneless version of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in a karaoke session. Not many big-name footballers would be willing to get this hands-on with supporters but van Persie didn’t seem to have a problem with it. Indeed, he appeared to be thoroughly enjoying himself.

Dutch radio reporters managed to grab van Persie in a brief quiet moment and he said: ‘It may only be a small ground but I do not know when, whether I’m 33 or 38 I do not know, but I would like to return as a player at Excelsior. I started here so I feel it would complete the circle for me. Many people forget that for me it all started with Excelsior. I had already been playing football for some time before I could be seen on TV playing for Feyenoord. From the age of five onwards I was to be found almost daily at Excelsior. That time was great.’

As with every moment in van Persie’s career, disaster was only just around the corner. But surely nothing could go wrong at the unveiling of a stand! The injury curse that plagued various stages of his career struck again but this time it was an unfortunate child who was in the firing line. As he led a line of kids along the side of the pitch, a camera crew was in hot pursuit.

Curiosity got the better of one of the youngsters as he looked back towards the camera and not the direction he was walking in. As he turned to look the way he was walking, the unfortunate child walked straight into a pole and fell to the ground in tears. Van Persie looked concerned and did his best to console the bawling boy after helping him to his feet.

Van Persie made a fresh start at Feyenoord, one of the ‘big three’ of Dutch football along with PSV Eindhoven and Ajax. A spate of injuries in the first-team squad allowed van Persie a chance sooner than he might have hoped and he made his debut in the 2001/2002 season at just 17 years old. It was ‘sink or swim’ as he was thrown in at the deep end, but some young players can enter the highest level playing with no fear and that can be a breath of fresh air. This was the case for van Persie as he shot to prominence in a season that culminated with him winning the KNVB Best Young Talent award.

That early rise to prominence may have been, in a roundabout kind of way, to his detriment. Coach Bert van Marwijk thought he needed to be brought back down to earth and, as at Excelsior, van Persie fell out with the boss. Feyenoord was the wrong club to play for if you are a bit cocky – which he might have been back then. ‘The Sleeping Giants’, or ‘Slapende Reus’ in Dutch, think arrogance belongs at their Amsterdam rivals Ajax and look to snuff out such behaviour from their players.

In the youth setup he played alongside Civard Sprockel, who would go on to join Vitesse, and Said Boutaha, who has played for a string of Eredivisie clubs. It soon became clear van Persie was going to be a decent proposition and by the time he reached 18 the club awarded him a three-and-a-half year contract. The long-term contract was part of Feyenoord’s policy of nurturing local talent and also meant they would be in a strong bargaining position if he were to attract the attentions of a club with money to spend. Arsenal would eventually come calling but van Persie was still a few years away from his dream move to North London.

As a headstrong young man, van Persie was unable to handle a relentless stream of criticism coming from his coaches. Things were clearly starting to get to him and soon the young hopeful was not only challenging van Marwijk but also backchatting not only to his Netherlands Under-21 manager Foppe de Haan but also Dutch footballing icon Pierre van Hooijdonk, who starred as the side won the UEFA Cup in 2002.

A few years later van Persie said he understood why some people had come to think that he was an over-confident, arrogant player. He told the Daily Express: ‘I can understand it if people say I am arrogant. Recently I saw myself on TV and I thought, “Well, well, well Robin, you have a nasty swagger.” A little less would be better. But that attitude says nothing about my personality, but more about my image. I don’t blame anybody who thinks I am arrogant because I think it also myself.’

That image might have been ‘part of the package’ when he played in Arsenal’s galaxy of stars but it was different at Feyenoord. Van Marwijk was a hard coach who liked his players to be modest and quiet working machines that he could easily control, not expressive free-thinkers who were always off doing their own thing.

Pierre van Hooijdonk was the star of the show but young upstart van Persie was extremely confident in his own ability and at times ignored the great. In a game against RKC Waalwijk, van Hooijdonk set himself to take a free-kick but van Persie nipped in and took it first, his effort flying over the crossbar.

Van Persie told The Independent: ‘The shot did not go in but I was feeling good at the time. I still think he could have been a bit more polite, he could have said “OK take it.” Now I can say, “Robin, maybe you should have let that free-kick go.” It was a fantastic position for me. The position of the ball was for a left-footed player but he was the free-kick taker and he made a big problem out of it. That’s OK… I think it would have been the smart thing to let him take it. For me it was no big problem, those kinds of things happen. I learnt from that moment.’

It was actions like that which would see van Marwijk relegate him to the bench and reserves after he initially impressed. It was fair to say the coach did not quite understand or agree with the way van Persie went about his business. After he had joined Arsenal and found himself better understood by Arsène Wenger, van Persie complained that his relationship with van Marwijk had never been quite right and he had been misunderstood.

Indeed it would have been easy to mistake this youthful hunger for arrogance when in fact it was a youth spent playing street football that had made him this way. When the kids of Kralingen played their intense ‘winner stays on’ games, if they did not go out of their way to showcase skills, they would very quickly be watching from the sidelines.

Van Persie burst onto the scene at Feyenoord as a raw but exciting centre-forward who had an eye for the spectacular and netted eight goals in his first season. Those disciplinary problems were evident early in his career as he was also sent off in that debut term. He netted his first goal after coming off the bench in a 4-2 victory over FC Twente and, with the club going through a terrible injury crisis, he was given the chance to start against arch-rivals Ajax. Van Persie had really made people sit up and notice as he netted again in the 1-1 draw. That brilliant start to his Feyenoord career continued when he scored in a 4-1 win over AZ Alkmaar.

It was against Rangers that van Persie made his European debut for the Dutch outfit before the side eventually went on to win the competition. As the sides met in the second leg in the Netherlands, van Persie cut in from the flank and crashed a drive against the post. For an unknown he had played a massive part in getting the side to the UEFA Cup final as he set up Pierre van Hooijdonk to score in the semifinal second leg.

Van Persie started that final and showed flashes of brilliance as his team beat Borussia Dortmund 3-2 to lift the trophy on their own patch. It was a fantastic start to his career to lift the UEFA Cup in front of his own supporters and the young star was understandably over the moon.

However, the tensions between van Persie and van Marwijk remained. The coach sent van Persie home before the UEFA Super Cup game against Real Madrid, saying that he did not like van Persie’s body language in the build-up to a UEFA Champions League qualifying game.

After he had joined Arsenal, van Persie looked back at that incident with regret. He told The Independent: ‘Feyenoord took Real Madrid away from me very, very rudely. Imagine you’re 19, you’re only a few months as a professional and they do that to you. Real were the best in the world then, the biggest test for a footballer, and it was my dream to play against Zinedine Zidane. He’s such an amazing footballer, his first touch, his vision. I have big respect for him, more than for Beckham.’

Van Marwijk had taken against the young star and crushed his dream of playing against Zidane. Looking back on his frustrating time at Feyenoord, van Persie said: ‘That’s just not the way – belittling people is just not enjoyable. That is not the way to help a talented youngster on his way.’

A more mature van Persie is able to look back at his Feyenoord years and learn from them rather than just vent his frustrations. He said that the club’s coaches had set bad examples to their up-and-coming young players. He was not the only one to have coaches constantly niggling away at him but whilst players with a more formal football upbringing were used to being treated like this, van Persie simply could not accept being spoken to in such a manner. Rather than put up and shut up as it might have been wiser for him to do, van Persie answered back to van Marwijk in the same way he had done to his teachers at school.

When he was at Arsenal, van Persie was able to admit that he had created his own problems at Feyenoord: ‘I don’t want to make excuses for myself, because I did make some real mistakes. But that was mainly because of the emotions, because I did not have the self-control and could not control the situation.’

That restraint would come in time and eventually van Persie stopped lashing out so much in high-pressure situations.

Van Persie said it was poor communication that led him to fall out with van Marwijk. Perhaps he had been naive to think he could stroll up to the manager and make suggestions about how to conduct training sessions: ‘There were a few misunderstandings with the coach, a few mis-communications. Sometimes I went to him to have a talk but I think he thought I was trying to tell him what to do. I went with good intentions – to say what I thought about the team and my position in it.’

Arsène Wenger would later convert him from a winger to a striker but van Marwijk was not so keen to mix things up. After van Persie had suggested he might do well in a more central role, van Marwijk told reporters he had been demanding a place in the side: ‘He said in the papers afterwards that I was demanding to be in the team as a second striker. It wasn’t like that. I just suggested that he try me in another position some time to see how it worked out. I was unhappy on the left wing, so why stay quiet?’

Bad-mouthing his player to the press would not help anybody. When Wenger had problems with a player he would try to spur them on with a quiet word in the ear rather than having a go at them in public. Wenger would later show van Marwijk how things were done when he listened to his player’s suggestions instead of moaning to reporters.

This harsh treatment seemed to be the way things worked in Rotterdam. Van Persie told The Independent that after constant criticism from van Marwijk, the press had played its part in his descent into notoriety at Feyenoord. Once his manager had turned on him and banished the young star to the reserves, the media tried every trick in the book to blacken his name, including hounding his father. The fickle reporters were soon waxing lyrical about van Persie and, looking back on that period, he said it toughened him up and taught him to ignore what was written.

He said: ‘They took my dad and painted him very black. I was 19, I’d just come into the real world, and it was hard. Then a few months later, when I had a good period again, I thought, “These people who absolutely hammered me are writing great things about me again” and since then I haven’t cared what they say.’

After breaking into the Feyenoord first team as an 18-year-old hero, van Persie quickly fell on hard times after falling out with his manager and was, on reflection, lucky to escape the nightmare and seek a fresh start at Arsenal.

There was a lot of bad blood between Feyenoord, Ajax and PSV Eindhoven and somehow van Persie had managed to get himself caught up in it. He was usually not exactly the shy and retiring type but the marriage of Robin and Bouchra was held in secret in April 2004 for fear of the ceremony attracting the wrong kind of attention.

It later emerged that in a low-key ceremony, only van Persie’s parents, his sister and Bouchra’s family had been present. The Mail on Sunday said the wedding took place because Bouchra was a Muslim and would not have been able to live with her long-term partner if they were not married. Robin was not a Muslim but looked to help Bouchra respect her religion’s traditions and codes of conduct.