Since Ruud van Nistelrooy’s retirement from the Dutch international team at the end of Euro 2008, the former Manchester United striker has played a grand total of sixteen games (and twenty three minutes total this season) for his club, Real Madrid. Under normal circumstances, we would be writing a eulogy for the 33-year old striker’s career; between a series of injuries and his inevitable replacement by newer and younger players (Gonzalo Higuain and Karim Benzema) usually signalls the death knoll for an aging striker’s career.
This year, however, is anything but a normal circumstance. It’s a World Cup year, and the Dutch team – who may end up being without Robin van Persie – might be in need of a proven striker with international experience. Funny enough, van Nistelrooy happens to be a Dutch striker with international experience and interest; all he needs now is a place to play.
Fortunately for him, it appears that pretty much everyone who has a fleeting need at the striker position is interested. It’s easy to see why; while his fragility has been fairly noticeable lately, it’s his goal scoring record that’s made him known. Case in point: in those sixteen games, van Nistelrooy scored eleven goals. Any team with a goal scoring problem (or a striker fetish) would love to have the former PFA Player of the Year on their team.
After the jump, let’s take a look at the possible ending points for the storied career of Ruud van Nistelrooy.
Chelsea
Let’s start big, then, shall we? Following Pepe’s ACL tear over the weekend, Real Madrid are suddenly in the market for a centerback. Chelsea, in turn, are looking ahead to the African Cup of Nations, where they’ll lose Didier Drogba and Solomon Kalou.
The Independent is reporting that Real Madrid’s plan to replace Pepe is to buy up Ricardo Carvalho from Chelsea, with Ruud van Nistelrooy being thrown in as a possible makeweight. The deal makes tons of sense for Real Madrid (they’d unload a high earner they don’t need in favor of a proven player they really need), but it makes a lot less sense for Chelsea (Carvalho and Terry have been pretty good this season, and this deal would leave them pretty light on centerbacks.
Plus, this ignores the other big Chelsea story: Sergio Aguero’s supposed to be all-but-signed at Stamford Bridge. You can only bring in so many players to replace Drogba and Kalou; van Nistelrooy and Aguero might be one too many.
Personally, I don’t see it happening, but it’s possible.
Liverpool
Setting aside the completely surreal idea of seeing van Nistelrooy playing for Liverpool while Michael Owen plays for Manchester United, this move makes a little more sense. Real Madrid are only asking for £3 million for van Nistelrooy, and since they likely owe Liverpool that much from the Xabi Alonso deal Liverpool could “buy” the Dutchman without spending any actual cash out of pocket. Rafa Benitez has indicated that he’d like to see van Nistelrooy at Anfield, and van Nistelrooy seems interested in coming; so what’s the problem, right?
The problem (according to The Daily Mirror) is that van Nistelrooy wants to play for the World Cup…but he also wants to keep his £100,000/week paycheck. That’s a LOT of money for a 33 year old striker coming back from injury who’s only played one game all season. Liverpool would like to see him come in on a “pay as you play” basis, with a low weekly salary and a high appearance fee; van Nistelrooy probably isn’t interested in that arrangement.
Blackburn
Blackburn has a problem. Benni McCarthy is a winter transfer target of West Ham’s; Franco di Santo, currently their best player, is a loanee from Chelsea who returns in January. If they were to lost both players, they’d be a little screwed.
Enter van Nistelrooy and his £3 million price tag; that’s insanely affordable for a team like Blackburn, and they could probably make the high wages work. For his part, van Nistelrooy will get to play for a club that needs him, which means a lot of playing time and a lot of chances to score goals.
It also means a lot of wear and tear, however, which is why Sam Allardyce told Sky Sports that it’s not going to happen. It’s not a question of money as much a question of durability; Blackburn doesn’t care about the World Cup, they care about not getting relegated…which makes signing injured srikers a bad idea.
That being said, it’s still an interesting possibility and just because Big Sam says he isn’t doing it doesn’t mean he isn’t doing it.
Tottenham
In spite of Harry Redknapp saying that he could see van Nistelrooy “going to someplace like Arsenal”, Spurs are really the front runners to sign him. According to Goal.com, Redknapp has even put Roman Pavlyuchenko, Alan Hutton, David Bentley, and captain Robbie Keane up for sale to fund the wage bill for van Nistelrooy. The move sort of makes sense, I guess, although I’m not sure how much van Nistelrooy would really play there (behind Defoe and Crouch). It fits Redknapp’s general transfer policy, though, which seems to be “sign, sign, and sign some more.”
Also, this completely ignores the fact that Harry’s said just yesterday that he’s not planning on signing van Nistelrooy. Given Harry’s past track record, I actually think that the denial just gives more weight to the rumor.
The Also-Rans
There are a couple other teams that have been involved at one point in time. Arsenal was part of the bidding early on, but dropped out when van Nistelrooy seemed to prefer Liverpool. Roma was interested couldn’t meet the wage demands; ditto for Fenerbahce (I really can’t see van Nistelrooy at Fenerbahce, but whatever). By and large, though, the four teams above are the biggest players in the Ruud van Nistelrooy sweepstakes.
Oh, outside one other contender: Real Madrid. While van Nistelrooy’s on a huge wage there, that doesn’t actually mean that Real Madrid need to move him. They’ll probably consider it, but it’s not really imperative to their bottom line that they dump the massive wages, and helping anyone out – whether it’s van Nistelrooy or another club – isn’t really a good business move for them.
The problem van Nistelrooy faces is the simple fact that he wants money. Any club that can afford to pay a £100k a week wage is going to have other strikers to call on ahead of him. If he’s interested in World Cup football then that’s not a valid option for the January window. Being a Liverpool supporter it’d be easy to say he’d do well at Anfield, much like Owen at Old Trafford, but he’s going to have to put the ego that the wage figure hangs on out of his mind if he wants even a sniff at the World Cup.
Real Madrid already have one old striker in Raul who only appears ever so often, keeping Ruud would just burn more money, but Madrid have been known to do such things.
That’s pretty much the rub, yeah. The ironic thing is that the club that has both the money and the need – Arsenal – has repeatedly denied interest. That could be a smokescreen, but it hasn’t seemed like it.
If RVN is healthy, he’s miles better than Crouch, even at 33. I think he and Defoe might make a good pairing, although this would discount the tempting 451 that Spurs might go for when Modric comes back. It would really surprise me if Levy couldn’t cough up the 3 mil, especially after getting the transfer money when Pavs leaves (and lightens the wage load, as well).
I have no idea what sort of contract he’d be looking for, but it seems to me that Spurs could sign him for 18 months and pay him 100K (if he helps them get into the CL, then it’d definitely be worth it).
If he could get Spurs into the Champions League he’s easily worth the 5.2 million pounds worth of wages, but if they don’t it’s kind of a waste. I think an incentive laden contract would be the best way to go. I’d imagine he’d take a low base if it was very easy for him to make more than he would on just the base 100,000/week salary.
If he’s not signing that deal for Liverpool, though, would he sign it for Tottenham? Everything I’ve read seems to indicate the Liverpool were the front runners until the wage reality popped up.
I’m actually leaning towards him not going anywhere, myself; it seems like it fits best.
I doubt it, unless Tottenham’s deal was better (bigger base salary or more bonus potential) both teams have probably an equal chance at making the CL, with a slight edge to Liverpool so I’d imagine he probably wouldn’t. I’d guess he stays put though. It always seems that these big “where is he going?” stories wind up resulting in nothing.
I could almost see something strange like him going to a small lower mid table EPL team that was willing to pay his wages for some reason.
I don’t think he cares about the CL, actually; this is more to get into the “shop window” for the Dutch national team. I think Liverpool was alluring because Torres is chronically injured; he’d almost be guaranteed a starting spot with other “good” players. At Tottenham, he’d have to beat out Defoe and/or Crouch (which he could probably but not definitely do).