Jari Litmanen

The Association of Football Statisticians' (The AFS) compendium of 'Greatest Ever Footballers' listed Litmanen as the 53rd best footballer ever.

In Finland, he is often called "Litti" (after his own surname), which dates from his early years, and is also known as "Kuningas" ("The King").

During his club career, Litmanen represented Reipas, HJK, MyPa and Lahti in Finland, and Ajax, Barcelona, Liverpool, Hansa Rostock and Malmö FF abroad.

Jari Olavi Litmanen (born 20 February 1971) is a Finnish former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder or a second striker.

Litmanen made his first-team debut for Reipas in Finland's then top division Mestaruussarja at the age of 16 in 1987.

Once considered one of the best attacking midfielders in the world, he became the first Finnish footballing superstar while playing for Ajax in the mid-1990s, winning the Champions League in 1995, the peak year of his career.

His later career was marred by injuries, and he was unable to repeat the success of his Ajax years either at Barcelona or Liverpool, often finding himself on the bench, despite some impressive performances for the latter.

David Endt, who was Ajax team manager in the 1990s, described his first impression of Litmanen to the Finnish broadcasting corporation YLE in 2010:

The press conference is over, and in comes Jari Litmanen, from behind the door.

And I looked at his face and I looked at his eyes, and I recognised something in those eyes.

And I thought, this is a man with a great willpower.

Because he was not shy, not timid, but he was modest.

He is not a man who will raise his voice, or bang with his fist on the table and say, 'We do it this way'.

No, he was more of a diplomat, not wanting to be a leader, but being a leader.

… He wanted to know everything about football, he was interested in every part of The Game, and this gave him the nickname, within the team, we called him the 'Professor', because you could ask anything about football, and he would know the answer.

After four seasons with Reipas, he moved to HJK, Finland's biggest club, in 1991.

A year later, he joined MyPa, where he was coached by Harri Kampman, who later introduced him to his agent, the late Heikki Marttinen.

Litmanen did not win any medals in the Finnish league, but he did win the Finnish Cup with MyPa in July 1992 in a 2–0 win over FF Jaro in the final at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.

His performance in the cup final, including a goal, convinced a scout of Ajax that the club should sign him.

"For me, he was the player," the scout later told Finnish television.

His transfer took place during the same summer, and he did not complete the Finnish football season with MyPa.

Louis van Gaal, the manager of Ajax at the time, later stated that Ajax paid a transfer fee of only £10,000 for Litmanen.

However, the original fax document was later revealed in Finnish media, according to which the transfer fee was 100,000 + 800,000 Dutch guilder, which corresponds roughly to €550,000.

Before his move to Ajax, Litmanen had failed to earn a contract with the Romanian club Dinamo București.

A number of European clubs, including Barcelona, Leeds United and PSV, had shown an interest in him, but in the end it was Ajax that bought him.

During 1992–93, his first season at Ajax, he played mostly in the reserves.

Then Ajax manager Louis van Gaal was apparently not overly impressed with him, but the team physiotherapist suggested using him as a stand-in for Dennis Bergkamp, who was injured at the time.

Van Gaal liked what he saw, and knowing that Bergkamp was about to leave for Inter, he announced that Litmanen would be Bergkamp's successor, something that people in Litmanen's native Finland found difficult to believe.

This turned out to be true, however, and he inherited from Bergkamp the famous number 10 shirt, which is often given to playmakers.

He went on to score 26 goals in the 1993–94 season, becoming the league's top scorer, and leading Ajax to the title.

He was also voted Footballer of the Year in the Netherlands in 1993.

Litmanen was one of the star players of Van Gaal's team that won three consecutive Dutch championships and reached the UEFA Champions League final twice in a row.

From the beginning of the 1994–95 season to the middle of the 1995–96 season, Ajax went undefeated in both the Eredivisie (a run of 52 games) and the Champions League (19 games).

When Ajax beat Milan in the 1995 Champions League final, Litmanen became the first Finnish player to win the Champions League.

In the 1995–96 edition of the Champions League, he was the Champions League top scorer with nine goals, including the equaliser in the final against Juventus, which Ajax lost on penalties.

He was the first-choice captain of the Finland national team between 1996 and 2008 in an international career that ran from 1989 to 2010.

Litmanen is widely considered to be Finland's greatest football player of all time.

He was chosen as the best Finnish player of the last 50 years by the Football Association of Finland in the UEFA Jubilee Awards in November 2003.

He also finished 42nd in the 100 Greatest Finns voting in 2004.

Writing about Litmanen in 2009, Paul Simpson, former FourFourTwo editor, went as far as to assert that "his career has not been worthy of his talent".