Marco Van Basten was one of the finest players to ever grace a football field. His ability to score every which way imaginable elevated the sport to new heights and made his name synonymous with goals. But to fully appreciate Van Basten’s greatness one has to look beyond goals.
In a career cut too short at age 28 due to an injury-prone ankle, Van Basten scored a lot of goals, 300 to be exact. Several of those were masterpieces for the ages, such as the volley scored from an impossible angle in the 1988 European Nations Cup final, or the freakishly elastic header executed on a low flying ball near the 18-yard line against Real Madrid in 1989. Both goals should not have happened because they defy the laws of gravity and disregard the rules of geometry. The fact that they did happen though is the very reason why Marco Van Basten is forever engraved in our collective memory as an all-time great.
What we may not remember however are subtle acts of greatness that demonstrate genius way more than goals could ever do.
One such act took place in minute 72 of the Netherland vs Germany matchup during the 1992 European Nations’ Cup. Aron Winter, on the receiving end of a long and bouncy pass from Frank Rijkaard, spins away from the German defender and orients the ball deeper into the final third. As he regained his balance from the opponent's vain attempt to trip his progression, he pushed deeper and made one quick glance to his left in search of teammates in the box. What he saw in that fraction of a second is barely perceptible on video, but perceptible enough to the keen eye to note that Winter had picked out Van Basten, along with Van Basten’s right arm pointing backwards towards Dennis Bergkamp (shown starting from second 40 of this video). Begkamp, the other Dutch forward, was catching up from way behind and was nowhere near Aron Winter’s visual field.
As Van Basten attacked the box, he drew two German defenders with him – one to his right and another to his lift. In doing so, he was setting up an opening for Bergkamp who was now finally making his way to the box unchallenged and with a better opportunity to score. Van Basten’s three-dimensional chess doesn’t end here: as he knows Winter will look left as soon as he regained balance, he instantly calculated that Begkamp was too far behind to fall within Winter’s visual field. In anticipation of all these variables unfolding at high speed, Van Basten’s arm starts pointing backwards to instruct Winter about what to do, doing so assertively both with his arm and a backward nod of his head toward Bergkamp (better illustrated in the slow motion replay starting at second 54 of the same video).
The rest is history: Winter gets the message and serves up a cross on a plate for Bergkamp’s winning header, sealing Germany’s fate.Surely Van Basten did not score this goal. However, the only thing that’s worth remembering about this goal was Van Basten. That is true greatness.
