WORLD CUP ‘94: 26 Days and Counting : Dutch Treat : After Up-and-Down Years, Ruud Gullit Is Up for the Cup

Sun-splashed and star-studded, the training center for the Sampdoria football club is nestled in the green hills high above Genoa and the blue, blue Ligurian Sea of the Italian Riviera. The dirt trail to the training center can be found by following the dust of cars driven by ardent fans who soon will be watching the team practice.

This beautiful setting has, until recently, been the turf of one of soccer’s most volatile and brilliant players, Ruud Gullit of the Netherlands. In Genoa, Gullit began his third incarnation as a soccer player, having moved from superstar to has-been and back to superstar, all with a stubborn style and rigorous adherence to a personal code.

Reviled by some coaches as headstrong but loved by fans for his tenacity, Gullit, 31, is now, again, a player who can win games for teams. But the road back has been circuitous. A star in the Dutch league, Gullit was lured to the lucrative but tempestuous Italian league, where he spent six years on one of the most powerful soccer teams in the world, AC Milan. In his first season, the club won the Italian championship and Gullit was named the best player in Europe. That was his first life.

The next year, 1988, Gullit injured his right knee in preseason training and missed most of the season. Pushing his rehab to the limit, he returned to the lineup near the end of the season’s European Cup semifinals. He scored two goals and Milan won, but he reinjured his knee and had to miss the next season.

Despite the injuries--it wasn’t only the right knee; he has had four operations on his left--Gullit was one of the sport’s superstars and a regular on the Dutch national team. Until last year, when he moved on to his second life.

Gullit’s career is lined with difficult and unpopular decisions. In his time with Milan he changed from star to highly paid bench sitter, falling victim to Milan’s policy of stockpiling talented foreigners--the team had six in Gullit’s last season--even though only three could play.

Gullit publicly asked to be transferred, and Milan’s flamboyant owner, Silvio Berlusconi, obliged, sending Gullit from the caldron of soccer fanaticism to the relative calm of Sampdoria.

Later, Berlusconi, now the Prime Minister of Italy, acknowledged that selling Gullit was a mistake.

“For a man of his status to admit he made a mistake, that makes him, as a person, richer,” Gullit said.

And Berlusconi was willing to do more than say he had made a mistake. He was willing to rectify it. Next season in the Italian league, Gullit will be back with AC Milan.

Leaving Milan for Sampdoria was difficult, and Gullit’s situation was closely monitored by the soccer-loving Italian public. And during that unsettled period, Gullit was also having a public battle with Dick Advocaat, the coach of the Dutch national team. For a long time, until early this year, it appeared that Gullit would not be a part of the 1994 World Cup.

“I’m proud of what I’ve achieved,” he said recently. “Last year (at Milan) my status as a football player was not good. Everyone said, ‘He has knees of glass. He has no career. He can’t play two matches in one week. He can’t do this, he can’t do that. He’s finished.’

“I couldn’t do anything--they wouldn’t let me play. That was the politics of Milan. I said, ‘OK, now I take everything into my hands.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much, now I am going away.’ Same with the Dutch team.”

Gullit’s problems with Advocaat can be traced to World Cup qualifying and a match against England. In that game at Wembley, Advocaat chose to play Gullit on the right side. Accustomed to operating from the middle of the field, Gullit kept drifting to his more natural position and the Dutch coach took him out of the game, which ended in a 2-2 tie.

Gullit publicly questioned Advocaat’s tactics and his overall philosophy for the team.

That Advocaat would bench one of the world’s best players was a surprise surpassed only by Gullit’s subsequent announcement that he would not play for the Dutch team as long as Advocaat was the coach.

It was a bold but, at the time, well-calculated promise. The terms of Advocaat’s contract called for him to coach the Dutch team only through qualifying. If the team qualified, player-favorite Johan Cruyff was to coach the team in the World Cup finals. Gullit liked and respected Cruyff and planned to rejoin the team at the World Cup.

Advocaat did his part, but Cruyff and the Dutch federation could not come to terms on a contract. Soon, Advocaat was back as coach and Gullit was left to deal with the fallout of his own words.

The soccer world watched and waited to see how or if the impasse would be broken. The matter became even more pressing when Gullit enjoyed a successful season at Sampdoria and Dutch fans clamored for his inclusion on the World Cup team.

Both men were allowed to save face. Advocaat traveled to Italy and met with Gullit.

“We weren’t enemies because we could understand each other very well,” Gullit said. “We only had different opinions about things. (Like) my position. In my opinion, the Dutch team didn’t play well because of tactical reasons. He understands why I was not happy.”

If that sounds like something short of full resolution, Gullit said only that he will rejoin the Dutch team when it assembles Monday.

“I will see what happens,” he added.

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In 1987, when Gullit was European player of the year, he dedicated his award to new South African President Nelson Mandela. He said he was moved that Mandela’s fight for human rights in South Africa had brought him imprisonment that, at the time, matched Gullit’s life span.

“I could not imagine how that must feel,” he said.

Word of Gullit’s gesture reached Mandela in prison. After Mandela’s release in 1990, Gullit said: “This is the happiest day of my life--and I am not on the soccer field.”

Gullit’s off-field passions have always been more intense than those of many of his contemporaries. He was raised in Amsterdam by a white mother and black father, whose strict lessons taught Gullit self-sufficiency.

“As a youngster, I was a black guy and I played with all the white guys,” Gullit said. “I knew that people noticed me. It is the same as (if) the team of Nigeria had a white guy. I said to myself, ‘I must do my best. I have to work harder because everyone will notice me.’ So, I worked harder.

“My father came from Suriname (a former Dutch territory in South America). During the day he worked to pay for his studies--he wanted to be a teacher. He became a teacher, but he said, ‘I have to be better.’ So, he worked hard. It was an attitude for him to work harder. Later on, it becomes a habit.

“It becomes a habit and you are used to doing it in everything you do. You work hard for it. Nothing comes by itself. You don’t win the lottery and win $2 million. No, you have to work hard for it. Of course, sometimes you have bad moments. But to admire and enjoy the good moments, you have to have the bad ones so that you can see the difference.”

Gullit’s parents insisted that their son never resort to self-pity. When young Ruud announced he wanted to join a soccer club in Haarlem, outside Amsterdam, George and Ria Gullit gave him enough money for bus fare and a bicycle. While other children left practice in car pools, Gullit rode his bike home, often in the rain.

Gullit’s father, who had played on the national team of Suriname, attended Ruud’s games but always left early. At night, father and son would discuss Ruud’s play, especially his work ethic and discipline.

“Both my parents worked, but the nice thing I now understand is that they gave me a lot of responsibility,” Gullit said. “Because they had to work every day, I went to school by myself. Sometimes, when my father or mother came home late, I had to cook for myself. If I wanted to go out, I had to iron my own shirt. That gave me a lot of responsibility. I’m very, very glad they gave me that responsibility.”

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Gullit walks the line between confidence and arrogance well. He is engaging and bright in conversation and would prefer to discuss music or politics to soccer. But he understands and accepts his responsibilities. He is not an adherent of the I’m-not-a-role-model philosophy of some pro athletes.

“I hope in my life to give something to life,” he said. “People go to a match and want for one moment to forget their misery, or during the week, their boss shouting.

“I also hope to reach a lot of young people. Maybe you can use your popularity to talk about other things that aren’t only about scoring goals, but just about life itself. It’s very hard in the moment. There is a lot of intolerance. It’s because of the economy. If the economy doesn’t go well, people always point their fingers to those who are less fortunate.”

A father of four, Gullit has always spent time with causes that seek to improve the children’s lives. He said he doesn’t know if his efforts to reach children or speak out against racism have had impact, but that will not prevent him from continuing. As long as he has a voice, the message will be heard.

“You get a lot of letters, but you don’t know (about impact),” he said. “You can’t measure it. I think that people who have a certain popularity can reach people with a certain statement. You are not obliged to do it, but if you feel like it, why not?

“People always (interpret) everything like they want: ‘He says it because he’s black. He says it for his popularity.’ It’s always something. But I, as a person, don’t care what they say. If I say something, they already know that I have said something, and I have accomplished what I want. They know exactly what I said--that’s already important. Then they can (take) any meaning they want.”

Take him or leave him--soccer has done both to Ruud Gullit--but don’t ignore him, don’t patronize him and don’t fail to treat him with the courtesy he extends to you. Now, in his third life, Gullit doesn’t have any time to waste.

World Cup Player at a Glance

Name--Ruud Gullit.

Birth date--Sept. 1, 1962.

Place--Amsterdam.

Height--6-feet-1.

Weight--183 pounds.

Position--Midfielder.

Club--Sampdoria (transferred two weeks ago to AC Milan (Serie A, Italy) for next season.

Debut with national team--Sept. 1, 1981.

Debut opponent--Switzerland.

Caps (international games)--64.

Goals--16.

Little-known fact--Is one of two player representatives on FIFA’s “Task Force 2000” committee created to look at ways to improve the game.

Honors--In six years in the Italian league, Gullit has helped his clubs win three Italian championships, two Champions’ Cups and one world club championship. European player of the year in 1987.