Time & Perspective Quote by Ruud van Nistelrooy

Van Nistelrooy is doing two things at once: claiming ownership of a result and reassuring everyone that the old-school striker bargain still holds. He “asked for a big responsibility,” a phrase that makes pressure sound voluntary, almost managerial. That matters in a national-team context where players are rarely framed as petitioners for duty; they’re selected, scrutinized, and blamed. By narrating it as a request granted, he recasts expectation as agency.

The sentence structure is tellingly transactional: responsibility in, performance out. “I got it and I dealt with it” is blunt, almost workmanlike, a little antidote to the romance fans attach to international football. Then comes the classic finisher’s proof: goals. Not “we played beautifully,” not “we dominated,” but the measurable currency that justifies status and silences debate. It’s self-mythmaking, but in a restrained, professional register: the striker as reliable instrument.

The subtext is also about legitimacy inside a Dutch football culture that often prizes style, systems, and total-football ideals as much as outcomes. Van Nistelrooy, sometimes critiqued as too clinical or too centered on the box, frames the night as a referendum he passed: played well, scored, qualified. The line “important moment for Holland” widens a personal triumph into national narrative, but notice the careful balance: he doesn’t drown the team in “I.” He positions himself as the decisive function within the collective machine. That’s the intent: to be remembered not just as a scorer, but as the guy who wanted the weight, carried it, and delivered the ticket to Euro 2004.