Dutch great played on until, aged 28, he could stand the pain from his damaged ankle no more. ‘I went from football’s highest level down to the lowest level of personal unhappiness’
In 1994, in the middle of the night, Marco van Basten would often crawl from his bed to the bathroom. The pain in his damaged ankle was so bad that, to divert his attention, he would count the seconds it took him to cover the short but agonising distance. He remembers: “Whispering, I never reach the toilet before I get to 120. The door sills are the most challenging part because my ankle has to go over them without touching them. Even the slightest touch makes me bite my lip to prevent a scream.”
Two years earlier, Van Basten had won the Ballon D’Or for the third time while also being named Fifa’s world player of the year. “It was very difficult because I went from the highest level in football down to the lowest level of personal unhappiness,” he says. “It was a very big fall and a really dark time.”
