In a Dutch dressing room packed with powerful personalities, Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Ruud van Nistelrooy were not the ones minutely analysing every element of the team’s tactics.
They played. They often won. And then they moved on to the next game. That’s how it was over a dozen years as Holland team-mates, a period interrupted by Van Nistelrooy twice making temporary retirements from international football.
Van Bronckhorst never imagined the supreme centre-forward who became his friend would move into management. And he felt exactly the same way about himself.
van Nistelrooy and van Bronckhorst will face off in the dugout when Rangers take on PSV
But the bug got them both in the end.