Known for his strength on the ball, his tactical awareness and spectacular strikes and volleys, Van Basten was named European Footballer of the Year three times ( 1988, ' 89 and ' 92 ) and FIFA World Player of the Year in 1992.

Van Basten was voted eighth in a poll organised by the French weekly magazine France Football consulting their former Ballon d ' Or winners to elect the Football Player of the Century.

In 2004, a nationwide poll was held for the 100 greatest Dutch people ( De Grootste Nederlander ) and Van Basten was number 25, the second highest for a football player.

In March 2007, Sky Sports ranked Van Basten first on its list of great athletes who had their careers cut short.

Van Basten was born on 31 October 1964 in Utrecht.

Van Basten with the KNVB Cup.

AFC Ajax signed Van Basten for the 1981 – 82 season.

After Kieft left for Serie A club Pisa the next season, Van Basten solidified his position as the team's main attacker.

In 1987, Silvio Berlusconi signed Van Basten for Milan, with fellow countrymen Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard joining in 1988.

In his first season, Milan won their first Scudetto in eight years, but Van Basten played only 11 games and was constantly troubled by an ankle injury.

In 1988 – 89, Van Basten won the Ballon d ' Or as Europe's top footballer.

After Van Basten fell out with Arrigo Sacchi, Berlusconi sacked the manager.

Van Basten scored 25 league goals, and became Capocannoniere again.

Van Basten played exceptionally well in the early part of the season.

At the UEFA Euro 1988, Van Basten scored a total of five goals, including a hat trick against England, the winning goal in the semi-final against West Germany, and a spectacular volley in the final against the Soviet Union.

Van Basten never scored in the World Cup Finals.

The Netherlands reached the semi-final of UEFA Euro 1992 when they lost to Denmark in a penalty shootout, with Peter Schmeichel saving a penalty shot from Van Basten.

Van Basten while manager of the Netherlands.

Van Basten officially left Milan in 1995 and retired from football, stating he would never try management.

On 29 July 2004, Van Basten was named the new manager of the Dutch national team, with van't Schip as his assistant.

There were also calls for Van Basten to call up Dennis Bergkamp, who had retired from the national team six years earlier for a final " hurrah " as he was retiring that season.

Van Basten then revealed to the media that he never intended to do so despite Bergkamp's own willingness.

Van Basten had also wanted to include Ivorian forward Salomon Kalou, but was thwarted when Kalou was denied Dutch citizenship by the immigration authorities headed by Rita Verdonk.

Van Basten ( left ) with Klaas-Jan Huntelaar during training prior to Euro 2008.

The band's sound was to a large extent inspired by the " old, weird America " famously chased by Bob Dylan and The Band during their Basement Tapes period, but other prominent influences included Ray Charles, Randy Newman, and Van Morrison.

Ayn Ali records similar independent or semi-independent districts in the eyalet of Çıldır in north-eastern Turkey and, most famously, in the eyalet of Van where the Khans of Bitlis ruled independently until the 19th century.

Van Mander was famously influential on the art writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The doctor's " sensitive face ", which Van Gogh famously wrote to Paul Gauguin carried " the heartbroken expression of our time ", is described by Robert Wallace as the portrait's focus.

These included covers of songs by Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and, most famously, Van Morrison: in the talked-about centrepiece of the film, Sadie drunkenly performs a raw, gruelling 8½-minute version of Morrison's " Take Me Back " in a ragged Janis Joplin-style gut howl at an AIDS benefit concert.

It also featured a popular exercise section, hosted in the early days by Michael Van Straten and Jackie Genova, and then more famously by " Mad Lizzie " Webb.

The film included appearances by guitarist Adrian Belew, author William S. Burroughs ( who famously briefly dances a slow tango with Anderson during one song ), keyboardist Joy Askew, and percussionist David Van Tieghem.

The two-year period the Frank family spent in hiding with four other people ( their neighbours Hermann van Pels, his wife Auguste Van Pels and his son Peter Van Pels, and Miep Gies's dentist Fritz Pfeffer ) was famously chronicled in Anne Frank's posthumously published diary, which ended three days before they were anonymously betrayed and arrested on 4 August 1944.

After the lost election, Van Buren dropped Crawford, and instead supported Andrew Jackson to be the next presidential candidate.

The song includes a reference to Van Diemen's land " subtracting till my fingers dropped ; into Van Diemen's Land ".

* From " The Potato Factory " by Bryce Courtenay ( 1995 ): "... subtracting till my fingers dropped ; into Van Diemen's Land.

Calhoun resigned because he had been dropped from the ticket by President Andrew Jackson in favor of Martin Van Buren.

After MGM dropped Iwerks they hired Harman and Ising from Van Beuren Studios and appointed them heads of the studio.

Other notable songs that are played at almost all shows, but have been dropped on occasion, are " Son of a Son of a Sailor ", Van Morrison's " Brown Eyed Girl " and Crosby, Stills and Nash's " Southern Cross ".

The film began as a television film that Van Sant had intended to make about the Columbine High School massacre ; eventually, the idea of a factual account was dropped.

For the role, Leigh dropped to and sang all her songs live, including a rambling 8½-minute version of Van Morrison's " Take Me Back " performed as her character is under the influence of alcohol and drugs.

Van Doren was dropped from NBC and resigned from his post of assistant professor at Columbia University.

After Styles dropped the World Heavyweight Championship to Rob Van Dam, then failed to regain it in a rematch and later was pinned by Jay Lethal, Flair adopted Kazarian as his newest protégé, seemingly replacing Styles as his number one wrestler.

Van Nistelrooy was dropped to the bench by Van Basten without an explanation for the Netherlands ' second round match, which saw them eliminated by Portugal.

It was first observed on the early Internet in October 1986, when the NSFnet phase-I backbone dropped three orders of magnitude from its capacity of 32 kbit / s to 40 bit / s, and this continued to occur until end nodes started implementing Van Jacobson's congestion control between 1987 and 1988.

Immediately after starting ( being dropped off by the Van ), one could continue driving on the side of the road without any enemy cars being able to damage the spy car.

Hardy was defeated a few weeks later by Rob Van Dam in a match to unify the European Championship and the Intercontinental Championship, and the European Championship was dropped.

Styles dropped the World Heavyweight Championship to Rob Van Dam, ending his reign at 211 days.

However, Udrih's playing time dropped significantly in the 2005 – 06 season with the Spurs signing Nick Van Exel during the off-season, but increased again after the All-Star break due to an injury to Van Exel's elbow.

* North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho dropped demands that South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu be removed from office as a condition for ending the Vietnam War, a breakthrough in peace negotiations.

( Van Vliet later claimed the label dropped them after hearing the song " Electricity " and declaring it " too negative.

Van Seters retained the idea of source documents but dropped the idea of a redactor, which meant dropping the documentary model itself.

Van was born in Toronto, Ontario and dropped out of Bloor Collegiate Institute in Grade 11 to pursue a career as an entertainer.

He dropped out of Seward Park High School at the age of 16 to become a singing waiter at the Van Cortlandt Inn in the Bronx.