Robin Van Persie – the Dutch maestro who created art on the field

Robin Van Persie, the Dutch maestro who spent his best years in England’s Premier League announced that he’d be retiring at the end of the season with Dutch football club Feyenoord.

More than a prolific goal scorer, he had an eye for the spectacular and was one of last major figures of two of English football’s greatest dynasties – Arsenal and Manchester United.

The Dutch maestro’s trophy cabinet will show only two trophies – the FA Cup with Arsenal and Premier League with Manchester United, but any showreel of the last decade will have more than its fair share of Van Persie highlights.

One of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger’s quintessential finds – a player who was honed to perfection before winning trophies for others – his career was littered with moments that were football’s equivalent of post-Impressionist paintings.

Perhaps he was unlucky to have plied his trade at the same time as Messrs Ronaldo and Messi who set the bar so stratospherically high that the efforts of others pale in comparison.

Yet the man from Vincent van Gogh’s land epitomises much of the traits that defined a tortured genius – creative, flawed, mercurial and with a penchant for creating something that gives us immense pleasure.   

The son of a sculptor and painter, the field was his stage to exhibit his creative tendencies as he himself put it: “I don't see things the way my parents do. They can look at a tree and see something amazing, whereas I just see a tree. That's not to say I don't appreciate its beauty. When I watch the sea somewhere like in Sardinia, I see the beauty in that. But I think there is a creative connection with my parents. It's hard to explain in words, hard to put my finger on it. But I think football is where my creativity comes out.”

And boy, he could certainly create something out of nothing, particularly when his magic-wand of a left foot was involved.

A diamond in the rough is how former Arsenal legend Robert Pires used to describe him. In his youth, he started off as a left-sided winger and often clashed his Feyenoord coach Bert Van Marwijk. The legend goes, that Sir Alex Ferguson had sent a scout to view the talented Feyenoord youngster, but he got sent off after blowing a fuse.

Ferguson recalled: “Our assessment of young players is always based on the potential that you see in them. Jim said he was a fantastic talent, but felt that he was a little immature. At 16, we are all immature, but we didn't progress it." 

In other words, he was perfect for the Professor, who always had a knack for spotting diamonds in the rough. And in the same way that he honed the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy, Kolo Toure and Thierry Henry and others who have served the Arsenal cause.

His early career was beset by injuries but between 2010 and 2013, we saw the best of him, scoring goals with abandon and not just tap-ins. He won the Golden Boot in Premier League in 2011-12 with Arsenal and then with Manchester United in 2012-13 when he helped stop the tide from turning in Manchester for one last year.  

Sir Alex Ferguson, after losing out to the ‘noisy neighbours’ on goal difference in the previous season, immortalised forever thanks to Sergio Aguero’s injury-time goal, signed Van Persie from Arsenal – where he refused to sign a new contract. Grudgingly, Wenger sold his best player to his rival and Van Persie didn’t disappoint, helping Manchester United win the title.

The Volley

Even though his career is full of highlights including some volleys that left goalkeepers rooted to their spot, in terms of significance there are two goals that tower over all others. The first was the volley that earned Manchester United the Premier League title and the second was the Supermansque header that heralded the end of the tiki-takaing Spanish Armada in the 2014 World Cup.

The volley for Manchester United against Aston Villa in 2013 which sealed Sir Alex Ferguson’s final title before retirement. It was a piece of art, as Van Persie hit an over-the-shoulder volley from a long Wayne Rooney ball.

It showed Van Persie’s complete mastery of the art, the perfect technique to ensure that the ball didn’t fly into the stands. Most players would manage to hit a ball like that once in 100 times, over the shoulders without looking but RVP could do it regularly.

That was the peak of Robin Van Persie’s career at Old Trafford, after which deteriorated under David Moyes and Louis Van Gaal which saw him depart for Turkey. The same would happen to Manchester United and that remains the last season they won the league. 

The Header That Sunk the Spanish Armada

Then there was that flying header against Spain in the 2014 World Cup which brought to a screeching halt the Spanish tiki-taka armada that had dominated world football.

It was another majestic moment, with the Netherlands losing 0-1 to a team which had beaten them in the last World Cup final and won the Euros in 2008 and 2012, the masters of all that surveyed.

Until Van Persie stepped up. The goal is one of those pristine World Cup moments that lives through the ages.

The header

His future Manchester United teammate Daley Blind played a diagonal cross-field ball which found Iker Casillas stuck in no man’s land – between the goal-line and penalty spot, football’s version of a rock and a hard place. 

For a moment, time seemed to freeze, Van Persie hung in the air like a cape-less Superman before he buried the header that would signal the end of Spain’s dominance of world football.

The Netherlands would score four more times, Arjen Robben running riot and by the end, Spain’s heroes were left shell-shocked and some would say they still haven’t recovered.

These two, among a host of other moments, truly captured Van Persie’s genius and perhaps his paradox as well. Perhaps in a different team, under different circumstances, he would’ve had far more trophies.   Despite all this, true lovers of the sport, whether they support Manchester United or Arsenal, will always remember how magic was in the offing, whenever the ball came near the Dutch maestro’s magical left foot.