Striker burnt too brightly

No one laughed when, not so long ago, Patrick Kluivert was described as the ‘greatest number nine in the world”.

After all, elegant and graceful, a supplier as well as a finisher, he had scored the winner in a European Cup final at the age of 18, had become his country’s all-time leading scorer and had hit more than 100 goals in six seasons for Barcelona, the most demanding club on the planet.

And yet there were few tears in Barcelona this week, only relief. Though it has been coming for some time, the 28-year-old’s fall from grace has been as spectacular as his cost: €10-million a year, the best-paid player in the world. Tears? Far from it. Having finally shaken off his predecessor’s most costly legacy, Barcelona’s president Joan Laporta can afford to laugh now.

After Luis Figo eloped to Real Madrid, Barça’s then president Joan Gaspart was terrified of losing his other big star, Kluivert. So he increased the Dutchman’s wages to €6-million a year plus a guaranteed bonus of €4-millliion to be paid every May. If Barça didn’t pay the bonus, Kluivert’s buy-out clause, previously set at €36-million, automatically dropped to €1,8-million for a month; a window of enormous opportunity. Kluivert would be a ‘bargain”.

How times have changed. Now, Kluivert isn’t even worth that. Newcastle have picked him up for free and Barça, even though he had a year to run on his contract, are delighted. Which, rather sadly, says it all.

In six years Kluivert never won over the Camp Nou. Despite an impressive record during his first five seasons, he never scored 20 league goals in any single season and one study showed that only 13 of his goals earned Barça a victory or a draw. He didn’t lead; he only scored when it no longer mattered.

And that was while he was rated; last season was worse, far worse. He scored only eight times; his absence coincided (though it was no coincidence) with Barça’s best form; and the Camp Nou whistled and booed and waved white hankies at him.

His very style made him even more of a target — the effortless grace, the exaggeratedly slow smoothness and the refusal to fly into tackles and shake fists gave the impression of a man cruising his way through games, uninterested.

The perception was largely unfair but Kluivert’s lifestyle hardly helped. He is, wrote one Dutch journalist, ‘a talent with a smell”, and it wasn’t just the financial burden Barça wanted to offload; it was also a man, with attendant entourage, they were tired of.

A man who turned up late for training, with the club briefing the local press that he had been drunk; a man who was turned back by United States immigration from the club’s pre-season tour, because he lacked the necessary visa after his conviction for a car crash in 1995 in which he killed a man. In 1997 he also faced serious sexual allegations in The Netherlands but the case was dropped.

That lifestyle has taken its toll. A little over a year ago Kluivert’s long-term agent Siggi Lenz dropped him, saying he could not take any more. Two of Kluivert’s teammates pleaded with Lenz to reconsider, saying: ‘Don’t do this to Patrick; he needs support.” Lenz refused sadly, describing it as ‘a lost cause”; for 10 years he had been telling Kluivert the same things about his lifestyle, but nothing sunk in.

Former Barcelona coach Louis van Gaal, agreed claiming: ‘Patrick doesn’t live a professional life off the pitch. He needs to manage his entourage better. I have told him lots of times, but …”

But nothing. Although Paul Foortse, a long-standing associate, handled the contract negotiations with Newcastle, these days Kluivert is mainly looked after by a former music and fashion agent. Close friends have also expressed fears about the consequences of his easy-going attitude to money. To life, in fact.

Kluivert owns one of the trendiest nightspots in Barcelona, CDLC, right on the sea front, and revels in his role as host — Barça employees once caught him there very late the night before a match.

That laid-back approach and love of the high life, and the alleged sexual escapades with various women, have inevitably also caused problems with his wife, Angela. Yet when she took part in a bikini-clad photo shoot for FHM he was reportedly very upset. Angela proceeded to do it again.

If that hurt, so did the Camp Nou whistles, hinting at his vulnerability.

‘I am,” he said, ‘a sensitive man. I want to play in a stadium that supports me; where people appreciate me, not where they don’t want me.”

And that’s the point; there should be few fears about Kluivert joining a club with a reputation. The Dutchman is self-indulgent, sure, but he is not self-obsessed; he is more wayward boy than arrogant man. He is likeable, not loathsome. He acts cool, but he just wants to be loved.

Newcastle could be perfect. It is a big club, a second chance, providing the stimulation that Van Gaal always insisted was ‘vital”. The temptations are not so great as in Barcelona or even London; he has a manager who will put an arm around him and fans who will support him where the Camp Nou did not.

If Kluivert is fit and hungry and feels loved he will score goals, lots of them. He may yet prove a bargain. —