Have you ever come up against a mountain of a man who looks like he could bench press your car? A scary 6-foot-3 bald Dutchman, Jaap Stam’s intimidating appearance and presence frightened opponents. Now, most players wisely steered clear of him.
But a few brave souls, a handful of absolute mad lads, dared to challenge the Dutch giant and went toe-to-toe with him. Did they survive the encounter? Let's find out.
A few seasons after Sir Alex Ferguson made the biggest mistake of his managerial career by selling the defender to Lazio, Ancona Pietro Parente felt the wrath of Jaap Stam in December 2003. After evading Stam's tackle, Parente decided it was best to step on the defender, and let’s just say it didn’t turn out well for him. Stam grabbed the midfielder’s neck, leaving the player helpless and out of breath.
With a look of terror in his eyes, Parente tried to beckon Stam to let him go giving him a gentle pat on the back but the Dutchman was having none of it. It took the intervention of Stam’s teammates to defuse the situation. Just by watching the action unfold, many of us fans were out of breath.
But Parente wasn’t just the only one who had to face the cold-blooded monster. In the 2005/2006 season when the Serie A was on fire, we witnessed a moment that we might never see again. Juventus faced AC Milan and in a game that had so many legends; Vieira, Nedved, Nesta, Gattuso, Seedorf, Kaka, Del Piero, Buffon, and a couple of others, Jaap Stam clashed with Ibrahimovic in a mammoth fight that even Gattuso of all people tried to stop.
Ibra was 22 years old at the time and playing for Juventus while Stam, almost a decade older than him, had moved from Lazio to AC Milan. Following an aerial clash between two of the opposing team players, Stam and Zlatan joined in on the action but the pair decided to start their own confrontation, taking focus away from the main action. Even as a young player, Zlatan didn’t back down from Stam as their heads clashed.
With their confrontation ending in a stalemate, fans were left to argue it out on who would have come out on top if both players fought with each other. A 22-year-old Zlatan or a 31-year-old Jaap Stam? I’ll leave that to you guys.
But back in the year 2000, Stam faced someone who many consider to be the scariest footballer in history. While playing for Manchester United Jaap Stam had the impossible job of stopping Newcastle’s Duncan Ferguson. In what was a genuine physical contest for the ball, two of football’s hardest men collided as Stam tried to muscle Ferguson off the ball after the striker tried to run through on goal.
Butttttt Big Dunc wasn't just going to roll over and play dead. The action ended with both beasts on the turf and you could tell that both of them were ready to do it all over again. Unlike today’s football where we now have modern players falling to the ground at the slightest contact, begging referees to brandish cards, both players just moved on like nothing happened.
No arguments with each other; just two hardmen who relished the challenge of facing each other. Despite Ferguson fouling him, the stone-faced Stam appealed for nothing. He would not be intimidated by any mortal.
Big Dunc must have felt fired up by the confrontation because he would later escape Stam to net in an insane swiveling volley from outside of the box to open the scoring soon afterward. Two other hard men were involved in the game. Roy Keane would later be sent off in the second half as Alan Shearer scored a double to give the Magpies a 3-0 victory but it didn’t stop Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United from winning the league that season by 18 points.
But just a year earlier, Jaap Stam produced another moment that would be etched in our memories forever. In the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final between Manchester United and Inter Milan in 1999, Chilean striker Ivan Zamorano was stepping backward when he encountered an immovable object in the person of Stam. To his surprise, Zamorano bounced off the stationary Stam and he had no idea of what had just happened to him so he turned around, expecting to be given more space only to be bounced off once again by the Big Dutchman who simply refused to move an inch.
At this point, Zamora got the message. There was no getting past Jaap Stam and that was exactly how it played out for the rest of the match as United progressed and ultimately won the Champions League as Stam won the UEFA Defender of the Year for his performances. Still in the good old days when Manchester United and Arsenal were the best teams in the Premier League, both teams faced each other in August 1999 at Highbury.
Two seasons earlier, The Gunners had been double winners and United ran out as Treble winners the following season. With the game tied at 1-1 in the final five minutes of the early-season blockbuster clash, Vieira dispossessed David Beckham and the 50-50 challenge that ensued saw Keane and an onrushing Vieira tussle for a loose ball as both players left off some interest on each other. With the pressure at an all-time high, Keane kicked out at Patrick Vieira, prompting a face-off and although the ref tried to defuse the situation, Vieira was having none of it.
Both players were ready to come to blows as Vieira swung at Keane and the United midfielder grabbed his rival's neck. A 22-man brawl was ready to break out at this point and before we knew it, it was our man Jaap Stam rushing over to support Keane. The Dutchman went nose-to-nose with Vieira following some choice words and immediately grabbed Vieira by the throat like a man possessed.
With both players knocking their heads, it took almost everybody on the pitch to separate them. Vieira to his credit, being a monster as well, would not be intimidated despite having to face two hardmen. Following his retirement in October 2007, Stam got involved with Soccer Aid, which puts celebrities and football legends together in two teams.
But in 2019 when Manchester United faced Bayern Munich in one of those matches in the 1999 Treble reunion, it appears that no one told Stam that it was a friendly match because he came out with guns blazing. Man United would end up trashing Bayern 5-0 with Sir Alex Ferguson in the dugout at Old Trafford. But the highlight of the match was seeing 46-year-old Jaap Stam handle three challenges from the opposition.
At this point, it becomes clear that the Dutchman doesn’t know the difference between a friendly match and serious football. Ready to take on the entire team on his own, Stam sent multiple Bayern players flying all over the pitch in a 10-second cameo with some hard-nosed defending that left us all feeling nostalgic about his playing days for the Red Devils. And at that point, some United fans joked about signing the former defender back saying that even at that age, he was better than some of their defenders.
It’s been more than 2 decades since the Dutchman left the Premier League and still, only a few defenders have come close to what the defender achieved in just 3 seasons with United. Back-to-back UEFA Best Defender of the Year awards, 3 Premier League medals, and PFA Team of the Year awards, and the unforgettable 1999 treble. Always committed to the game and giving it his 100%, Stam was a solid presence in arguably one of the greatest sides in English football history, providing vital defensive security.
Man United legend Peter Schmeichel chose the Dutchman as the best defender he had ever played behind and Ryan Giggs called him a beast of a man. Stam was the complete defender; tall, fast, powerful, and could also instinctively read. You could literally count the number of times you saw him lose a sprint but it wasn’t just about his toughness and tenacity, Stam was incredibly graceful too, and comfortable on the ball.
And for a man as proud as Sir Alex Ferguson to admit that he made a mistake by selling the 1997 Dutch Footballer of the Year tells you just how good he was. Fergie said that he thought a recent Achilles injury that the defender had might have cost him some of his mobility. For the next 5 to 6 years, United struggled to replace Jaap Stam while the Dutchman excelled in Italy, playing alongside legends like Cafu, Paolo Maldini, and Alessandro Nesta.
Is Jaap Stam still the greatest defender that Manchester United had or would you rank someone else ahead of him?
