Van Basten: I’d have a better career than Cristiano Ronaldo if I could play that long

Marco van Basten had to end his career guilty of injuries prematurely. Cristiano Ronaldo in his final years of football kicking in Saudi Arabia, the Dutch legend has spoken out about the juxtaposition.

The whole thing actually started innocently enough. Marco van Basten talked about players who are similar to him. “Players like me nowadays? Maybe Lewandowski, then Cristiano Ronaldo, but he’s physically stronger than I was, he’s still active even though he’s 38 years old,” Sportskeeda quotes him as saying.

Although van Basten ended his career much earlier than footballers do nowadays, he has managed so much that most players would envy him. Especially, then, footballers who play in the era of Ronaldo and Messi and thus couldn’t win any Ballon d’Or.

The Dutchman has won the Ballon d’Or twice in a row, something few can really say apart from the two stars mentioned above. To make matters worse, he has won the same trophy once more, so he is a three-time Ballon d’Or winner in total.

In triumphs on the club scene, van Basten has registered two Champions League wins, three titles with AC Milan, three more with Ajax, two European Super Cups, and to these club successes he added winning Euro 1988, where he scored one of his most iconic goals. He also won the goalscorers crown at the Euros with nine goals.

Club stats? 125 goals and 49 assists in 201 games for AC Milan and 152 goals with 33 assists for Ajax. These are stats that no one should be ashamed of.

Van Basten added: “If you compare my career and his career before I got injured, I think I am close to him. Maybe even my career was better, but unfortunately I was not able to continue my career.”

These may seem like very self-centred words, but when you look at all the Dutch former striker has achieved, they don’t sound at all meaningless.

Just for comparison, Ronaldo has five Ballon d’Ors, van Basten three. However, the Dutchman has been limited by injuries that forced him to end his career at the age of 31. But what if he had never been injured? Would it still be Lionel Messi who has the most Ballons d’Or in history?

Source: Sportskeeda, TheEuropeanLad, Ajax