Van der Vaart: “Ronaldo was completely mad about Drenthe”

Royston Drenthe and Rafael van der Vaart were guests on Ziggo Sport’s Kick ‘t Met programme and the talk show was a tribute to Drenthe, who hung up his boots just a few days before. The two men both played together at Real Madrid and the former Netherlands internationals spoke about their respective spells with Los Blancos.

“One Saturday we were playing at home against Barcelona, but the previous Thursday Drenthe insisted on going to a party. I thought: ‘I shouldn’t do this’,” Van der Vaart laughed. “We lost that game 0-2 (10 April 2010 with Pellegrini in charge) and there was a big stir in the press. I was in the starting eleven for the game against Barcelona.”

Instead of clearing things up, Drenthe added: “It was a party behind closed doors. Gonzalo Higuaín was also there....”. At that point Van der Vaart interrupted him to elaborate on the details of the night out: “All the members of our team were at that party, which is precisely why we lost that game.”

Drenthe, who announced just a few days ago that he was calling time on his career, was also praised by Van der Vaart. “What I think is a pity, and I have also said this to him, is that Royston is the best left-back the Netherlands has ever had. If he had put aside his ego and his street football, he would still have played left-back for the Oranje until four years ago. He liked to play against Cristiano Ronaldo in training. He found that a challenge. He asked himself: ‘Cristiano, who is that?’ Ronaldo was completely mad about him. He was quick, agile and technical.”

“There was no difference between him and Marcelo at the time, they were perfectly matched. The only difference was that Royston preferred to be a left-winger rather than a full-back. He wanted to attack.”

Holidays with Benzema

Drenthe went on to discuss hanging out with Karim Benzema. “Benzema was someone who really fitted into that kind of Real Madrid culture. He quickly felt at home there, but in the beginning, he didn’t speak much because he only spoke French. I was always attracted to the bad boys. That was automatic, you know? I also always met Karim on holidays: Las Vegas, Miami... we were always in the same place.”

Doubting Ronaldo

Both had words of praise for Cristiano Ronaldo, although it wasn’t always so clear to them that he was going to shine. “I saw him hitting free-kicks during training and I thought: ‘Is he that good?’ He wasn’t that good in the first few training sessions. I didn’t think he was that good, but when games started he was very clever and did everything very well,” said Van der Vaart.

“I hung out more with Pepe and Marcelo, who were guys I saw a lot at the time. Cristiano was a very nice guy, but also a great person,” Drenthe concluded.