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Ajax legend Johnny Bosman to end professional career

27 April: Ajax legend Johnny Bosman, has announced that he will stop playing professional football at season's end. This Sunday's home game of his current club AZ against NEC will be the official goodbye to the 37 year-old striker.

Bosman's departure from professional football does not only mark the end of his own career. Bosman is the last active player from the 'Golden Generation' of the late 1980s. With team-mates such as Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, the Koeman brothers and Gerald Vanenburg, Bosman won the European championship with Holland in 1988.

Coming from amateur clubs Roda '23 and RKAVIC, John Bosman (01 Feb 1965) joined the Ajax youth and became a typical Ajax-1 débutant: he was young (18) and scored immediately, against Roda JC, on 20 November 1983 (5-2). In total, he was to play 165 league games for Ajax, in which he scored an impressive total of 105 goals. Until 1987, he formed a notorious duo with Marco van Basten. In the 1986-1987 Eredivisie, for example, Bosman and Van Basten scored 56 goals together.

With Ajax, Bosman won the 1985 championship, the national cups of 1986 and 1987 and the European Cup Winners Cup of 1987. After having won Euro 88 with Holland, he joined Belgian side KV Mechelen, with which he won the Belgian championship of 1989.

Much to may Ajax fans' dismay, he then went on to play for PSV for one year, winning the Dutch championship of 1991. He then signed with Belgian giants Anderlecht, from Brussels. Wearing the purple and white of the Brussels club, he won three more Belgian titles, as well as one Belgian cup.

In 1996 he decided to move back to Holland, spending three season at FC Twente, followed by three at AZ, near his native village of Bovenkerk.

Today, Johnny Bosman has played 520 league games. A goal in his farewell game would be the perfect end to his career, since he now scored exactly 249 league goals in total. He played 30 games for Oranje, in which he netted 17 times.

Bosman will unfortunately remember his last season of professional football as a disastrous year. On a sporting level -- Bosman suffered from various injuries and had to undergo surgery for the first time in his career -- and particularly on a personal level. In October of last year, the worst nightmare for a human being became reality for Bosman: his 5 year-old son Devin was fatally hit by a speeding car, while riding his bicycle in front of Bosman's residence. Fans from all over Holland and Belgium observed minutes of silence and extended their condolences to the Bosman family.

Despite playing for five different clubs after Ajax, there is no club he played so many games and scored so many goals for as for Ajax. Amsterdam fans nicknamed him 'The Stork', because of his long, apparently flexible neck, with which he seemed to add such amazing power to his feared headers. Ajax fans are already thinking about a way to say goodbye to Johnny Bosman, on behalf of the club that will always be his first love. (MP)