Edwin van der Sar’s wife has shared an update on his condition after the legendary goalkeeper suffered a brain haemorrhage on holiday in Croatia.
On Friday, the 52-year-old was placed in intensive care. Edwin van der Sar will stay in intensive care for the time being, according to a statement made on Saturday by the football team Ajax, where he served as chief executive until the conclusion of the previous season.
“His condition is stable but still concerning. Ajax shares this information on behalf of Annemarie van der Sar, Edwin’s wife.
“The Van der Sar family, along with Ajax, is grateful and deeply touched by the many messages of support.”
Dutch media reported Van der Sar was on vacation in Croatia when he became ill. During his career, he played for Ajax, Juventus and Manchester United – winning the Champions League with the latter in 2008 after a penalty shootout.
He appeared 130 times for the Netherlands and served more than a decade on the Ajax board.
Edwin van der Sar is a Dutch football executive and former professional player who was most recently the chief executive of Ajax, with whom he began his senior playing career in the early 1990s; he is considered to be a member of the club’s golden generation and was part of the Ajax team that won the UEFA Champions League in 1995.
He was a goalkeeper who left Ajax in 1999 for Juventus, where he played for two years before making two moves to England, first to Fulham and then to Manchester United in 2005.
He was one of just eight players at the time to have won the competition with more than one club when he won his second Champions League championship there in 2008.
He ended his career as a professional in 2011, but in 2016, he briefly came out of retirement to participate in a game for the amateur Dutch team VV Noordwijk, for which he had previously played. He made 130 appearances for the Netherlands national team and held the record for most appearances until Wesley Sneijder passed him in 2017.
Van der Sar is regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time by critics and other athletes. He is also one of the greatest players to ever play, with a career total of 26 major trophies, mostly attained while playing for Ajax and Manchester United.
He established a record by going 1,311 minutes without giving up a league goal in the 2008–09 season. He was 40 years and 205 days old when he won the Premier League in 2011, making him the oldest player to accomplish it. Van der Sar has received numerous individual honours, including UEFA Club Goalkeeper of the Year in 2009 and Best European Goalkeeper in 1995 and 2009.
