There are some footballers who just seem like they are born to play for certain clubs.
Those who possess certain qualities – sometimes to do with their approach to the game, sometimes relating to their values or look, sometimes indefinable – which just feel the right fit.
The trick of course is getting them on board at mutually beneficial junctures for both player and club which is not always possible as Liverpool discovered when they were finally able to get Jari Litmanen to Merseyside.
The Finnish attacker had long been on the Anfield radar with his eventual arrival in 2001 a case of third time lucky after two previously unproductive attempts to bring him to the club.
It looked like a marriage made in heaven with Litmanen widely known to have idolised Liverpool as a kid and maintaining an affinity to such an extent he reportedly irritated Ajax players with his constant references to the Reds during his time in Holland but circumstances conspired against making his time in the red shirt the success all involved hoped and expected it to be.
The man who would go on to be regarded as Finland’s greatest ever footballer began his professional career in his homeland with Reipas, making his top flight debut at the age of only 16 in 1987. The son of parents who had both played international football, he would move to the country’s biggest club, HJK Helsinki, four years later and twelve months later would move to MyPa 47 who he helped win the Finnish Cup. It was his goalscoring performance in the final against FF Jaro which alerted Ajax’s scouting network.
A number of European clubs had expressed an interest in the 21-year-old including Barcelona, Leeds United and PSV Eindhoven but the Dutch side’s long-established reputation as a breeding ground where young talent would be nourished and could develop was enough to secure Litmanen’s signature and here it very much was a case of the right place at the right time.
There was an acclimatisation period as the modest youngster found his feet both on and off the field, his first-team path initially blocked by Dennis Bergkamp who played in Litmanen’s preferred number 10 role just behind the strikers and Ajax coach Louis van Gaal was not initially overly impressed with the Finn’s early performances in training and for the reserves. But the future Netherlands and Manchester United manager’s eyes would be opened when – at the suggestion of the team physiotherapist – Litmanen adeptly filled in for the injured Bergkamp and when the Dutch forward left to join Inter Milan in the summer of 1993, the Finn inherited the number 10 shirt as well as his place in the team and truly began to show what he was capable of.
It was the dawning of a golden age for the Amsterdam club with young homegrown talents Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Edwin van der Sar, the de Boer brothers and Patrick Kluivert emerging to blend effectively with shrewd buys like Litmanen, Marc Overmars, Nwankwo Kanu, Finidi George and the returning 80s legend Frank Rijkaard to take Ajax to three successive Eredivisie titles as well as putting them back on the European map they had graced in the 1970s.
Litmanen would finish as the league’s top scorer with 26 goals during the 1993-94 campaign as Ajax won their first championship in four years, his overall tally of 36 in 39 appearances in all competitions also helping him win the Netherlands’ Footballer of the Year award. But it was the following campaign when the Finn and his team-mates wrote themselves into history by embarking on a remarkable run which saw them go the best part of a season and a half undefeated in both the Eredivisie (52 matches) and the Champions League (19).
Van Gaal’s side easily retained their league title by seven points after becoming Holland’s first ‘Invincibles’ but it was in Europe where they captured hearts and minds with their attacking, free-flowing and tactically fluid approach which harked back to the club’s glory days of the early 1970s when stars like Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens and Ruudi Krol led them to three successive European Cup victories. After topping a group containing reigning champions AC Milan who they beat home and away with Litmanen scoring in both matches, Ajax eased past Hadjuk Split to reach the semi-finals where following a goalless draw away to Bayern Munich, they destroyed the German champions 5-2 in the Amsterdam decider with Litmanen scoring twice and pulling the strings to set up another meeting with AC Milan in the Vienna final.
Patrick Kluivert’s 85th minute winner secured an unlikely victory which took the European Cup back to Amsterdam for the first time since 1973 and the following season, having again retained their Eredivisie title, they threatened to emulate their 1970s predecessors by reaching a successive final against Juventus in Rome. Litmanen would get on the scoresheet this time, cancelling out Fabrizio Ravanelli’s early opener with a clinical close-range finish to take his season’s tally in the competition to nine, and notched in the shoot-out after the match went to penalties but the Italians prevailed to take the cup back to Turin.
Van Gaal would leave to manage Barcelona the following year and, although another Eredivisie title followed in 1997/98, the cream of the Champions League winning side inevitably was increasingly being cherry-picked by Europe’s moneyed elite with Litmanen among those being eyed. Roy Evans tried to entice him to Anfield without success during that unusual summer of 1998 when Gerard Houllier was installed alongside him in Liverpool’s ill-conceived flirtation with the idea of joint-managers and 12 months later the Frenchman, now in sole charge, tried again to bring the Finn to Merseyside but the financial package offered by Barcelona and the opportunity to link up with Van Gaal again proved impossible to resist and he was off to Catalonia.
