Rafael van der Vaart

About

Rafael van der Vaart came through the Ajax academy and made his first-team debut at seventeen, quickly establishing himself as one of the most technically accomplished midfielders the club had produced in years. The Ajax home shirt from 2000/01 in the collection carries #23, the number he wore during his early appearances before cementing a starting place and taking a more prominent squad number. The Adidas shirts used by Ajax in that period, with the red and white vertical stripe and the ABN AMRO sponsor, is one of the more recognisable shirts from Dutch football at the turn of the millennium. A Van der Vaart Ajax shirt from that era represents the starting point of a career that would take him to the top of European football. Netherlands : a decade of tournament football Van der Vaart was a consistent presence in the Netherlands squad across more than a decade of international football, and the orange home shirt from 2006/7 with #10 sits in a period that included two major tournaments. The Nike template from that cycle was worn at the 2006 World Cup in Germany and Euro 2008, where the Netherlands reached the quarter-finals. He wore #10 for the national team throughout the peak years of his career, and the orange Nike home shirt with the black name set in the Dutch font is one of the cleaner international templates from that generation. For collectors following his career across clubs and country, the Netherlands shirt is an essential part of the picture. Real Madrid , Tottenham, HSV and the clubs still to come Van der Vaart's club career beyond Ajax took him to Hamburg, Real Madrid, Tottenham , back to Hamburg, and eventually Betis and Midtjylland. His spell at Tottenham between 2010 and 2012 under Harry Redknapp is where many Premier League supporters came to know him best, arriving on deadline day from Real Madrid and immediately becoming one of the most technically impressive players in the league that season. A Van der Vaart Tottenham shirt from that period si