Marcel van Basten

Marcel van Basten is a Dutch football coach and former football striker. He is football’s ambassador for UEFA, having already served as Chief Officer for Technical Development for FIFA.

Considered one of the best footballers of all time in his career he scored 314 goals (of which 277 with club teams, 24 with the Dutch national team and 13 with the Under-21 national team), which ended prematurely at the age of only 28 due to some injuries, although officially the announcement of his retirement was made in 1995, when the player was 30. Emblem of Ajax and Milan, in the Rossoneri shirt he composed an exceptional trio together with compatriots Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard, a symbol of numerous successes of the team coached by Arrigo Sacchi and then Fabio Capello.
European champion with the Netherlands in 1988, in which he was also top scorer, van Basten won three Ballons d’Or, in 1988, 1989 and 1992. He was elected FIFA World Player in 1992 and occupies 9th place in the special ranking of the best players of the 20th century published by World Soccer magazine  and 12th place in the ranking of the same name drawn up by IFFHS.

He was the first of ten players to score a fourth in a single UEFA Champions League game, as well as the only one (along with Silvio Piola) to score at least one goal for every Serie A team he faced.
During Milan’s centenary celebrations in December 1999, Van Basten was elected as “Milan striker of the century”.