Andy van der Meijde has in Smoked sausage the Podcast told about his spending pattern during his active playing career. The 42-year-old former player of Ajax, Internazionale and Everton, among others, indicates that during his career he had no idea of the value of money and his expiration date as a football player. Van der Meijde says he has spent eleven million euros during his career.
When asked, Van der Meijde starts in the podcast about the start of his current program In the car with Andy!† “I had no job after my career and then saw James Corden’s program in the car. Working under a boss was really not going to happen, I wanted to build something like that myself. Then I just started the program,” says Van der Meijde. It was also necessary for the former right winger to create a source of income again after his playing career: “I have lived during my career, done a lot of crazy things. That went from buying cars every other week to renting houses with golf courses when I didn’t even play golf. In addition, I no longer had a septum in my nose.”
In his own words, Van der Meijde had no idea of the value of money. “You are young and you suddenly have a lot of money at your disposal. At that moment you think that the money will never run out and that new money will always appear. In addition, I was not used to having money, I used to have no money at home. My father and mother had worked, but they were only just getting by”, explains Van der Meijde. “However, there came a point in my career when clubs didn’t want me anymore. I played less and less as time went on and my value plummeted. I didn’t realize at the start of my career that I had an expiration date.”
The former Ajax player, also good for seventeen international matches for the Dutch national team, says that he spent a huge amount of ‘craziness’ during his playing career: “I think I spent eleven million euros when I was a football player. I bought cars, the latest clothes and jewelry, all craze. I was walking around with a checkbook. For example, I sometimes walked in the city and saw a Rolex for 50,000 euros in a jeweler. I had to have it then. I also once saw a Lamborghini in a magazine at the dentist, two days later I had that car in front of the door.”
Especially at Everton, Van der Meijde was paid a generous salary, something the English club still regrets, according to him. “I was earning 45,000 euros a week for four years. They still regret that they ever gave me that contract. At the time, they calculated that with my 17 appearances for the club, I was the most expensive Premier League player at that time. I was costing 90,000 euros per minute!”, concludes Van der Meijde.