![]() After that? “It’s going well and I’m enjoying it, so I decided in December to do another year, then make a decision. Plus I’d been playing for four years in the Premier League so it was easier than when I went to Italy.”Īnd for how much longer will any Premier League players who manage to negotiate a way past Rio Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic find their path blocked by the man with the cleanest sheets in football? He has a contract until the end of next season. It was the people, the way the team play and the quality of players. “I came here and within two days I felt I’d been here five years. If Fulham were not to become the Manchester United of the south, as the incorrigible Mohamed Al Fayed trumpeted at the time, then Van der Sar felt it necessary to join the real thing, which he duly did in the summer of 2005. But yes, I’d want to know why we were doing something and not something else. A goalkeeping coach needs to improve you but I think a lot of things he mentioned I already had in my bag. I think he spoke a lot for himself about how he made me better and so on. “He took a lot of credit for things I already did. Van der Sar admits to this almost stereotypically Dutch trait, though he was not pleased with the article. This is a man of ambition, who according to a newspaper interview last week with his former goalkeeping coach at Fulham, Dave Beasant, was forever demanding to know why he was being asked to do something. So I was a bit disappointed with that because I wanted to play in Europe again and the furthest I came was playing Chelsea in the FA Cup semi-final.” “The first year they invested a lot of money and had plans for a big stadium, then they understood it was going to take more time and decided to take a slower route. “When I went there they said a lot about creating a new big London team,” he recalled. It looks a quite stable club, which is good. And it’s nice to see them halfway up the table. “Craven Cottage is a great stadium, really traditional, going through the rows of houses until a stadium suddenly appears. In between the two Inter games and after Wembley comes the FA Cup and possibly another reunion with Fulham, where he played for four seasons after Juventus. So a lot of respect to the people who have to take them.” It’s easier to try to save one than to score one. Walking from the halfway line to the spot, 80,000 people watching and television and all the cameras behind the goal. “It’s about luck, accuracy, mental strength. It’s always nice if you see your team knocking them in at the other end, then you take some courage out of that and think ‘I want to contribute also’. It’s also down to the quality of the strikes from your own penalty-takers. “If you win, everyone asks what’s your secret, when most of the time you did exactly the same in the ones you lost. Having lost so many possible medals on penalties, he might be expected to differ, though he is typically philosophical. It is said that the goalkeeper has nothing to lose in these situations. Then we’ll miss another game again on 1 March so we’re not taking anything for granted.” For Chelsea, I think it’s a little bit too far and it will be hard for Aston Villa with the Uefa Cup as well. “The lead is not that much, other teams have quality players as well. For now, however, Van der Sar is an old enough head – he will be 39 in October – not to be counting trophies quite yet. If a single match this season comes to be seen as a defining moment, that one on Boxing Day may be it. There were a lot of balls in the box and I came for a lot of crosses and throw-ins, but we put a little pressure on after their red card and we got the goal.” When you shake their hands before kick-off and see six or seven players the same height as yourself, you know you’re in for a tough game. We went to the Stoke game, which was quite hard. But on the way back everybody was straight into their rhythm. You’d go to bed at one o’clock, you slept four hours, wake up for two hours and sleep another two hours. ![]() ![]() “None of the squad slept properly in Japan. ![]()
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