United may well miss Van Nistelrooy. Part of him misses them, too, and will do until, as he puts it, he has had his chance to say a proper goodbye. What he is missing regularly is penalties. When the Lyon goalkeeper Gregory Coupet pushed out his late spot-kick, it brought to three the failures from 12 yards the Dutchman has had for Madrid this season. Had they all gone in, he would be arguably the most in-form goalscorer at work among the continent’s elite.
His figures are still fetching, and firmly recorded in a mind that has always attended to such details. “I’ve scored 14 now in 17, no, 18 games,” he says, updating his sums after Madrid’s 2-2 draw with Lyon. These, of course, represent his first 14 goals for Madrid following a summer transfer from United. By any standards, it is prolific. By Van Nistelrooy’s standards, it counts as just better than par. But he has been surprised by the impact he has made in Spanish football. “It’ s a great start,” he says. “I didn’t expect it, coming to a club that hasn’t won anything in three years, with new players, a new coach. It’s not easy.”
Nor has Van Nistelrooy’s 30th year — he reached the milestone in July — been his easiest. The background to his transfer to Real Madrid from United spread doubts about his status among the game’s most effective centre-forwards. Between April and June, two very good managers concluded that he was expendable. He was dropped by Sir Alex Ferguson, and at the World Cup was left out of the starting XI by Marco van Basten, head coach of Holland. Both decisions damaged the relationship between player and manager. Badly. From spring to summer, the principal storylines around his career centred on Ruud’s Feuds.
Had he come to Madrid with a sense of something to prove? “Of course,” he answers, “after what happened at United and after the World Cup. And having to prove myself in a new club, in a new country and in new surroundings. You start all over again. But the experience I gained in England was massive, and I used that here to settle in.”
His quick command of Spanish made an immediate impression and Van Nistelrooy is happy to have an old friend to assist with other relocation challenges. David Beckham, says Van Nistelrooy, “really helped me settle in” although he’d have liked Beckham’s companionship to have extended beyond advice on where to buy furniture or baby clothes — the Van Nistelrooys celebrated the arrival of a daughter in September — and to the creation of goals.
Advertisement
It hardly needs mentioning how profitable the Beckham-Van Nistelrooy axis, the crosser par excellence and the poacher supreme, used to be in United’s colours: Van Nistelrooy’s most prolific seasons for United were when they played together. “It just needs a look from him, and he puts the ball in just the right place,” Van Nistelrooy announced on joining Madrid.
Commentators anticipated stringing together the words “Beckham, Van Nistelrooy, Golgolgolgol!” at least half-a-dozen times by Christmas.
In fact, it has happened just twice, Beckham providing a header that Van Nistelrooy finished on the way to a hat-trick in the Dutchman’s second league game and contributing a cross earlier this month that Van Nistelrooy volleyed in after Raul had headed it on. They connect rarely because they share the same pitch so seldom. While Van Nistelrooy has played almost uninterrupted in Madrid coach Fabio Capello’s first XI, Beckham has started only four games this season.
When I put it to Capello that such a fruitful pairing must be a treasured thing for a coach to inherit, he answers a little gruffly: “What’s most important is form, not looking for a system that players have had.”
Suggesting to Van Nistelrooy that his statistics might look even smarter if Beckham had been more often arrowing in centres from the right, he responds with a wide grin: “That could be the case, yes. Unfortunately, he’s not there right now, so I’m missing him. When we play in the same team, it’s wonderful.
Advertisement
“One player doesn’t change a whole team but he’s a player who always looks forward, always looks for other people, and his crossing of the ball is so much his speciality.”
Alas for Beckham, the double-act looks unlikely to be resumed imminently. The former England captain has been troubled by a knee injury that could further restrict his opportunities in tonight’s La Liga fixture at Valencia, one of the tougher assignments on the domestic calendar. A win could move Madrid into second place, and if that represents respectability, Capello’s team have yet to consistently thrill madridistas, or honour the club’s supposed commitment to football with panache.
Take Van Nistelrooy’s goals. They have been accumulated in binges — three in one go at Levante, four at Osasuna — rather than by clockwork and there have been evenings where his job has looked rather lonely. He seems to think so, too: “Sometimes it is difficult when you don’t get a lot of balls, but you have to be there at the right time, keep focused. And we are a side that’s changed a lot in the last year. Before that, it was a team that conceded loads and loads of goals. Now that’s stopped. Next we want to build on the forward play, which we want to be similar to how it used to be. The balance needs to be right. For now it’s important that I’m up there where it hurts.”
Was he still hurting about the interruption — he refused his most recent Dutch call-up — to his international career? “I never said I’m not going to play for him [Van Basten] again, but things in our previous conversations didn’t work out and they would need to before I go back.”
Was he still hurting about his departure from Old Trafford, and a messy ending that had him taking no part in the last home game of what was clearly his final season and leaving the ground before kick-off? “It would be nice,” says Van Nistelrooy, “to go back. Let’s see what happens in the Champions League draw and take it from there. If we meet United, I’ve got a big thank you to say to the fans, so it would be great.”