Cultural Relatives: Ruud Gullit & the Brains of the Nineties
Illustration by Dan Evans

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Cultural Relatives: Ruud Gullit & the Brains of the Nineties

English footballers are not cool, so the Premier League needed some imported charisma to bolster its ranks. Ruud Gullit epitomised this, but his significance goes far beyond mere cool.

Here is the least compelling lineup in the history of televised sport: Kharine; Clarke, Johnsen, Kjeldbjerg, Sinclair; Burley, Newton, Peacock, Wise; Spencer, Stein. No wonder they lost the 1994 FA Cup final 4-0 to Manchester United. When you look at your teammate and the only emotion he rouses is, god, you're boring, trophies are likely to elude you.

Fast-forward three years to the 1997 FA Cup final – which you may remember as the one where you'd barely finished the hand-rubbing little shiver of anticipation at football on the carpet of the old Wembley when Roberto Di Matteo pinged it from about 30 yards – and the Chelsea side that faced Middlesbrough had been transformed. There was the equal-greatest player in the club's history in Zola; a Champions League winner a year previously in Vialli; Di Matteo and Petrescu, who played with culture and elegance; and Frank 'The Beef' Leboeuf, who did not, but still won the World Cup the following year and eventually appeared as a doctor in an arthouse film about the physicist Steven Hawking, an ambition I'd imagine he struggled to explain to Dennis Wise.

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Then shit got real. If by 'real' you mean a lot of legendary players just the right side of past-it decided to have a spell at Stamford Bridge: Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps, George Weah, Brian Laudrup, Albert Ferrer (of Barca's Dream Team, before you snigger).

But the most legendary player they'd ever had in terms of the status he arrived with – and the catalyst of it all, from that day to the charming 'money and racism' of this – was by then in the process of removing the skin of ice cool that coated his every move at Chelsea by relocating to Newcastle and using the word 'sexy' to describe the potential behaviour of Temuri Ketsbaia. It began a journey, which later included a spell managing the plaything of a Chechen warlord, that brought him to where he is today: a generally abrasive and sometimes pig-headed pundit, who will occasionally give a look that reminds you that this is Ruud Gullit we're talking about.

It's a wonder Sky didn't save some money and roll this same footage out in 2015

English footballers are not cool. During the Premier League's pubescent years they fumbled earnestly with cool at the NSPCC disco, putting on white suits made by Armani and going hard on the gel and the curtains and copping off with Posh Spice and Dani Behr and Ulrika Jonsson to the eternal sound of Gina G's Ooh Aah (Just A Little Bit). And there, gazing upon all this with manly disdain, were two actual exemplars of cool: Cantona, and Gullit. Both, unsurprisingly, of a maverick persuasion – I think one of the reasons English footballers seem so goony is how keen they are to say what everyone else says. It's a pity, now, to hear Gullit lapsing into pundit-speak, but the extended company of Jamie Redknapp and Danny Murphy would destroy most people. They, the mavericks, made an elegant one-two combination in the 1995-96 Footballer of the Year award.

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And as Premier League football began its ascent to what you'd now class as this planet's second most-popular form of entertainment after Hollywood, it was lucky to arrive at puberty with some charisma in its ranks, as opposed to merely goony sportsmen, plus the hitherto-appointed 'characters': guys like Neil Ruddock and Julian Dicks who weren't great at football but would stamp on you if they felt that was what the game needed.

That one of the mavericks was black was – in the only way that counts as a real victory – utterly irrelevant. I'd defy anyone of a similar age to me at the time to say they really noticed. He was Ruud Gullit. Then he was black.

The Relative

This isn't a naïve column. Gullit did nothing tangible for advancing the cause of black managers; the world remains, in its depressing money-orientated motive, anxious of the untried. But he did do something, for my forming mind, in seeing the person first and being so taken by his overall game that him being a different race was about as noticeable as his eyes being a different colour to mine.

He was not, though, the coolest guy on the block. That guy, as it happened, was also black. Not to labour the point too much, but in the first incarnation with which he took the number one spot in my mind, he was in black. Talking big Willie style baby. Bienvenido a Miami. The best of the best of the best, sir – with honours.

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Racism, we know, doesn't hold doors open for anyone. The only racist doors that open are the ones that get kicked in. Fortunately in the '90s some big feet appeared. So let's pick a random year… 1998. BOOM! What a pick. Denzel Washington in The Siege, Will Smith in Enemy of the State, Samuel L. Jackson in The Negotiator.

READ MORE: Cultural Relatives – Alan Shearer & Space Jam

Again, I was totally unaware I was watching the new casting of black men as the brains, and not at best the street smarts, of the operation. These films were all too excellent as mainstream Hollywood thrillers to care for anything but how thrilling they were. (But if anything, as far as racial profiling goes, I think if you ask people of our generation they're more likely to say that this kind of full-blooded, full-drama urban action is more a black thing than a white one).

Again, naiveté calls. They didn't shore up any glorious future for black actors; as Hollywood wormed itself ever deeper into the pockets of anxious groups of tin-eared shareholders, so they've taken what I'm sure they politely describe to each other as 'the safe bets'. White superheroes, on repeat. It's cruel that it takes a collection of actors so head-spinningly charismatic as those three to make it impossible for Hollywood to resist. Perhaps the real naiveté is in thinking that there will be a catalyst to improve every generation.

But, in the '90s, we got ours: the guys who made you unaware. I feel like the movie stars would care deeply about this achievement; I'd love to know if Gullit cared too. Having learnt in the course of writing this that he recalls having racist abuse thrown at him by some trampy little provincials in St Mirren as 'the saddest night of my life', I'd like to think he does. I'd like to think that knowing what he did to me and undoubtedly other British kids growing up in the '90s might do its bit to cheer up a feeling that, we should never forget, lasts.

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The Hand Of History: Denzel in the showers, The Siege

There's a tragedy to this speech, shot in 1998, when the idea of extremist Islamic terrorists waging guerrilla war on New York City was just that: an idea. When what Denzel talks about – torturing suspects, bending the rules, shredding the constitution just a little – could still have a righteous air to it, when uttered in disgust by an American. Every time I watch it another piece of my heart breaks at how he says 'what are you talking about'; the strength of his naivety in believing that America never would be like that. And a little P.S. that I'll leave to the end, so as not to distract you.

A Little Cultural Context

Whoop-whoop, that's the sound (one day after Gullit signed for Chelsea) of Ross, Chandler and Joey having one of my favourite conversations, regarding, in Joey's eyes, the correct way for a tailor to address a man's genitals while measuring him up for suit trousers. 'Yes, yes it is… in PRISON!' (add Ross emphasis to taste).

Elsewhere, in the greatest league in the world – Serie A, obviously – the season was just beginning for a man who would go on to finish as top goalscorer, ahead of Batistuta, Chiesa, and Bierhoff. The number 10 shirt was retired by Livorno, in honour of 108 goals in 192 games at his final club. He is the one and only… Igor Protti. Nope? Me neither. Anyway, he scored for Bari, who were still relegated at the season's end. Doesn't even get a picture on his Wikipedia page.

P.S. Aware of anything about race during that speech?

Words: @tobysprigings / Illustration: @dan_draws