New Reading manager Jaap Stam (yeah, that happened while you were watching the Euros) has selected his best teammates XI in an interview with The Times looking ahead to his first season in charge in English football.
It will be fascinating to see how Stam succeeds. He has been coaching at Ajax since 2011, having previously worked as a scout at Manchester United under Alex Ferguson. If Stam's career aim was to surround himself with people who would prove to be good coaching influences then he has already been a success: Alex Ferguson, Guus Hiddink, Louis Van Gaal and Carlo Ancelotti have all coached Stam, while his involvement at Ajax brought him into day-to-day contact with Frank de Boer, Dennis Bergkamp, and Johan Cruyff.
Stam has also had the added benefit of playing with some of the greatest players in the history of the game across his glittering career, something that becomes abundantly clear upon a reading of his best teammates XI.
Stam assembled them in a 4-2-3-1 formation:
Edwin Van Der Sar; Cafu, Alesandro Nesta, Paolo Maldini, Denis Irwin; Roy Keane, Clarence Seedorf; Dennis Bergkamp, Ryan Giggs, Marc Overmars; Ronaldo
Quite the team, and it is good to see his former AC Milan teammates keeping great company alongside Irwin.
Also, this offers us a marvellous opportunity to remind ourselves of the quintessential Stam clip, in which he stole another man's soul at Lazio, dementor-style:
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