A tribute to Ruud van Nistelrooy and the playground art of goalhanging

Ruud van Nistelrooy was often called a one-trick pony during his time at Manchester United, but to write off his goal poaching as simple would be to misunderstand his brilliance.
Goalhangers. You ’ ll find one in every game of Wembley knockouts, standing angstrom stopping point as they can to goal, waiting for a loose ball they can scuff or toe-poke past the goalkeeper to advance to the following round .
That child is universally loathed : the more nice and dedicate players have to do all the run and chase, alone to see the ball put away by some faineant casual – or “ scavving it ”, as we called it at my school in the northwest of England.

Reading: A tribute to Ruud van Nistelrooy and the playground art of goalhanging – Planet Football

I ’ m not surely whether it ’ s out of remainder hatred from the resort area games where the offside principle doesn ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate put on, or merely because they are prone to contributing nothing until the ball finds its direction into the box, but we seem not to appreciate these players in the professional game .
We tend not to call them goalhangers at that horizontal surface, of course ; upon graduating from the academy they are formally upgrade to ‘ poacher ’, and then once they have 50 or so goals under their belts they get promoted again to ‘ absolute striker ’ status .
Think Gary Lineker. Think Miroslav Klose. Think Javier Hernandez. Think Ruud van Nistelrooy .

Watching back through footage of Van Nistelrooy ’ randomness performances leaves you questioning whether he even knew there was another 80 yards or so available for him to play in .
For many of his goals he plays absolutely no part in the build-up and international relations and security network ’ thyroxine even visible in injection until the very last second, when he pounces with a simple stopping point .
If he had been playing 10 years later, Van Nistelrooy would be the post horse son for xG fanatics. The way he dealt with through balls, for case, is fascinating .
When running onto a ball in what appears to be a perfective strickle position – the kind of territory from which Alan Shearer would unleash a top-corner blast or Thierry Henry would open up his body to curl to the far corner – Van Nistelrooy would take one, two, three more touches, pushing himself as close to the byline as he can get .
sometimes this means he seems to be heading nowhere, driving advancing to what seems like an impossible angle, alone to surprise the goalkeeper with a sudden toe-poke across goal or a little inswinger to the about mail with the external of his foot .

Some men are destined to score goals for fun. Ruud van Nistelrooy was one of them ? # MUFC @ RvN1776 pic.twitter.com/vgbSN7lHPp
— Manchester United ( @ ManUtd ) June 13, 2020

More much, though, Van Nistelrooy ’ south goals for Manchester United were the result of Ryan Giggs or David Beckham just looking up for any space around 10 yards from goal and sticking it there .
It hardly seemed to matter where Van Nistelrooy was at the time they played the cross, or how many defenders were around him. If they put it there, he would get to it first.
It ’ s such a laughably elementary method acting that it seems like it can ’ thymine possibly work : get a close as you possibly can to goal and poke it in. It ’ s a 12-year-old ’ s concept of good ahead play. But damn it was effective .

A record to beat the best

As the most successful side in England over the past 25 years, Manchester United has been home to some of the finest strikers this country has seen in recent decades, but Van Nistelrooy ’ s goalscoring record trumps all of them .
The Dutchman scored more Premier League goals ( 95 ) than any United actor except all-time record goalscorer Wayne Rooney, and has a better goals-per-game proportion than any other player ( 0.63 ) .
Van Nistelrooy ’ s first three seasons saw him score at least 30 goals in all competitions, and he scored at least 20 goals in each of his five Premier League seasons except 2004-05 when he only played 17 games ascribable to injury.

Hard to warm to

Another gene is that he ’ mho plainly a difficult man to warm to. He developed a repute among equal fans for play-acting and complain to the referee, best exemplified in the ill-famed scoreless draw with Arsenal towards the get down of the Gunners ’ 2003-04 Invincibles season .
Van Nistelrooy thus antagonised the Arsenal players throughout the game – particularly with the histrionics that resulted in Patrick Vieira being sent off – that his punishment miss in injury clock prompted Martin Keown to go absolutely banana with mocking hilarity .

His proclivity for winding people up besides reared its head on the discipline ground. Towards the end of the 2005-06 season, the Dutchman was continually frustrated by Cristiano Ronaldo ’ mho delays in crossing the ball as it left him second-guessing his runs .
After Van Nistelrooy kicked out at Ronaldo following one of their frequent prepare reason arguments, Rio Ferdinand retaliated in kind on the young Portuguese ’ s behalf, causing Van Nistelrooy to swing a contrary punch in Ferdinand ’ randomness management. Van Nistelrooy was sold to Real Madrid barely weeks late .
The biggest gene, though, may plainly be that for all his magnificence, Van Nistelrooy was fair around at the incorrectly fourth dimension. He arrived fair besides deep to be part of the treble-winning Cole-Yorke-Solskjaer-Sheringham jazz band, but just excessively soon for the arresting Rooney-Ronaldo-Tevez front occupation .
The five years either side of Van Nistelrooy ’ s time at Old Trafford yielded eight league titles in total, but during the Dutchman ’ s own five-year spell, they won it good once .
If merely Van Nistelrooy were 15 years younger…
By Steven Chicken

Can you name Man Utd’s top 30 goalscorers of the Premier League era?