Rafael Van der Vaart is a Dutch International footballer whois currently playing with Tottenham Hotspur. He made his professional footballdebut at the age of 17 with the club AFC Ajax and was named Dutch FootballTalent of the Year and was also given the Golden Boy Award. His career hasspanned across many clubs and he moved to Hamburger after Ajax then to RealMadrid, before finally coming to Tottenham Hotspur.
He is an attacking midfielder who is well known for his superb passing ability and being adept atusing both the feet. He was nominated for the award of PFA Players’ Player ofthe Year award for his superb performance for Tottenham Hotspurs in the seasonof 2010/11.
Rafael Van der Vaart was born on 11th February 1983. He started his career with Ajax at the age of10. He was signed by Tottenham Hotspurs on 31st August 2010 justhours before the transfer window closed. It was another genius move by HarryRedknapp who anticipated that Van der Vaart would be available for a much lowertransfer fees after the deal of Real Madrid with Bayern Munich had fellthrough.
Real Madrid was trying to sell van der Vaart at a price of £18 millionand Harry Redknapp bought him for £8 million. There were bitter talks relatingto van der Vaart that he had been sold off because of his low level performanceat Real Madrid and van der Vaart was determined to show his mettle with his newclub. He performed remarkably in the season and become a real crowd puller forthe club. Tottenham Hotspur Tickets sales improved as they marched on with their superperformance. Van der Vaart jumpstarted his career with the spurs by scoringfive goals and making two assists in six matches. He was named the World Playerof the Week by Goal.com and went on to win the award of Player of the month forOctober. For his overall performance forthe season, he was named nominated for the award of PFA Players’ Player of theYear award.
In a match against Arsenal where both Tottenham Hotspur Tickets and Arsenal Ticketswere very hard to get, Van der Vaart scored the crucial goal which led to themwinning the match 2-1 and it was also the 10,000th goal in thehistory of the club. He scored on a penalty in the next match against NewcastleUnited and then, scored twice against Blackburn Rovers. He scored again on 30thOctober in match against Queens Park Rangers which meant that he had made theTottenham record of scoring six goals in five matches. He shares this recordwith greats like Teddy Sheringham and Robbie Keane. What a way to answers thespeculation of him being sold by the Real Madrid because he wasn’t performing.
It was a big scare for the club when Van der Vaart suffered from an injury in the internationalduty friendly against Switzerland. It was a crucial injury as the next game ofHolland was against Germany and as fans lined up to buy the Holland Ticketsand Germany Tickets, it was definitely a blow to them to know that van der Vaart won’t be playing.Germany defeated Holland 3-0.