Marco van Basten grew into a club icon of Ajax in the eighties, but the former striker’s glorious football career could also have turned out completely differently. On March 19, 1981, exactly forty years ago today, the then sixteen-year-old Van Basten was approached by PSV to play a test match.
Van Basten had put himself in the spotlight at the PSV scouting department at his amateur association VV Elinkwijk, according to the letter signed by Kees Ploegsma, the then secretary of the Eindhoven residents. “In order to be able to assess your football capacities more easily, we invite you to a test match,” writes Ploegsma. “We will reimburse any travel expenses.”
Marco van Basten as PSV icon instead of Ajax icon. It could have been just like that.
On March 19, 1981 – exactly forty years ago today – PSV made an attempt by letter to bind the then 16-year-old youth player from Elinkwijk. https://t.co/RfyfKuayWg pic.twitter.com/8CZDIUiMEs
– NOS Sport (@NOSsport) March 19, 2021
At the moment the letter from PSV hit the mat, Van Basten already had offers from Ajax and FC Utrecht in his possession. The former attacker thanked for the test match in Eindhoven and started working at Ajax a few weeks later. The contract that Van Basten signed in Amsterdam was according to the NOS handwritten, which may indicate that Ajax was in a hurry to capture the talented striker.
A year later, the then seventeen-year-old Van Basten made his official debut for Ajax against NEC on April 3, 1982. At that time he had only played five matches for Ajax 2 and the striker was only an A-junior. Van Basten came in for Johan Cruijff as a substitute and scored on his debut. In the end he would play 172 official matches for Ajax, scoring 152 times. In 1987 Van Basten made the switch to AC Milan.
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