30 September: Rijkaard, from Zaragoza to the Champions League in Paris

Frank Rijkaard

Ajax, a row and Zaragoza

He made his Ajax debut at seventeen and grew up there alongside Van Basten, with Cruyff first as a team-mate and then as coach. He won league titles, cups and the 1987 Cup Winners' Cup.

In September 1987 he had an argument with Cruyff at training, walked out and never came back. He signed for Sporting Lisbon, who could not register him, and ended up on loan at Real Zaragoza, where he played part of the 1987-88 season. He is one of the great names to have passed through La Romareda almost on tiptoe.

The Milan of the three Dutchmen

In 1988 Arrigo Sacchi's Milan signed him to join Van Basten and Ruud Gullit, born on 1 September. That summer the three of them had won the European Championship with the Netherlands.

Milan won the 1989 European Cup and the 1990 one. The second, in Vienna against Benfica, he decided himself: he scored the only goal of the game. Rijkaard was the man who held that team together, a midfielder who could play centre-back, win the ball, bring it out and get into the box.

The stain on his career is from that time too: in the last sixteen of the 1990 World Cup against West Germany, at San Siro, he clashed with Rudi Völler and spat at him. Both were sent off.

1995: the European Cup against his own Milan

In 1993 he went back to Ajax to close the circle, and it came out perfectly. In the 1995 Champions League final, in Vienna, Van Gaal's Ajax faced none other than Milan. Five minutes from time Rijkaard set up an eighteen-year-old, Patrick Kluivert, who scored the only goal.

He retired that summer, at the top, with his third European Cup won against the club he had won the other two with.

Ronaldinho's Barcelona

As a coach he started with the Netherlands, taking them to the semi-finals of Euro 2000: they lost to Italy on penalties after missing five of the six they took between the match and the shoot-out. Then he oversaw the first relegation in Sparta Rotterdam's history.

In 2003 Barcelona hired him, almost as a gamble. With Ronaldinho, Eto'o, Deco and a Messi who was just starting, he won the 2005 and 2006 league titles and the 2006 Champions League in Paris against Arsenal, coming from behind in the second half with Henrik Larsson off the bench. It was the second European Cup in Barcelona's history, fourteen years after Wembley.

He left the club in 2008 and was succeeded by Pep Guardiola, who inherited a core that already knew how to win.

Also born on 30 September

Olivier Giroud, world champion without a shot on target

🎂 turns 40

The all-time top scorer for the French national team: he overtook Thierry Henry at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, where France reached the final.

And yet he holds one of the strangest statistics in World Cup history: at Russia 2018 he started for the side that became world champions and did not have a single shot on target in the whole tournament. His job was something else, opening space for Griezmann and Mbappé, and Deschamps never took him out of the side.

He won the Champions League with Chelsea, the Europa League scoring in the final and Serie A with Milan. In 2017 he took the Puskás Award for a scorpion kick against Crystal Palace.

Born30 September 1986

CountryFrance

Positionforward

Clubs

• Grenoble Foot 38 2005-2008 · 2 goals
• Football Club Istres Ouest Provence 2007-2008 · 14 goals
• Tours Football Club 2008-2010 · 24 goals
• Tours Football Club 2010 · 6 goals
• Montpellier Hérault Sport Club 2010-2012 · 33 goals
• Arsenal Fútbol Club 2012-2018 · 73 goals

National teamselección de fútbol de Francia

Honours

World Cup 2018European Cup 2021Europa League 2019Serie A 2022

Other awards

Caballero de la Orden Nacional de la Legión de Honor 2018

↻ Dates, clubs and individual awards come from Wikidata and update themselves

Hervé Renard, the man in the white shirt

🎂 turns 58

A French coach with a unique career in Africa: he won the Africa Cup of Nations with Zambia in 2012 and with Ivory Coast in 2015. He was the first coach to win it with two different countries.

At the World Cup in Qatar he managed Saudi Arabia in the biggest shock of the tournament: the 2-1 win over Argentina in the group opener, the only defeat suffered by the side that went on to become champions. His half-time team talk, with Saudi Arabia losing, went round the world.

Born30 September 1968

CountryFrance

Positiondefender

Clubs

• Association Sportive de Cannes Football 1983-1990
• Stade de Vallauris 1991-1997 · 2 goals
• SC Draguignan 1997-1998 · 1 goals

Honours

Africa Cup of Nations 2012 (Zambia)Africa Cup of Nations 2015 (Ivory Coast)

↻ Dates, clubs and individual awards come from Wikidata and update themselves

🔴⚪ Sporting Gijón players born this day

They played for Sporting Gijón and were born on this same day. There is only their data here: we would rather name them than leave them out, and rather give the bare facts than invent a story.

Another 39 internationally known footballers were born on this day. We do not list them for the sake of it: only those with a story to tell make it here.

Dates, clubs, individual awards and photos come from Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons, under free licences, and update themselves. Ages are not written anywhere: they are calculated the moment you open the page, so this page always shows the right age, this year and twenty years from now. If any of these players signs for another club or wins an award, their profile picks it up on its own. What is written by hand is the story and the judgement: who the day belongs to, and why.