Edwin van der Sar

Edwin van der Sar (born October 29, 1970) is a Dutch footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for English club Manchester United. He is the most capped player in the Netherlands national football team's history.

Van der Sar started his senior career at Ajax and remained there for nine years before moving to Italian club Juventus and then to England, first to Fulham and then to Manchester United. He is one of the few footballers to have won the UEFA Champions League with two different teams, having won it with Ajax in 1995 and Manchester United in 2008, the latter where he was named UEFA Man of the match; he also won the UEFA Cup with Ajax in 1992. Van der Sar was named Best European Goalkeeper in 1995 and 2009, spanning the 14-year period between his first and second Champions league victories.

 

In 2008-09, he went 1,311 minutes without conceding in the league - setting a new single-season world record. With a total of 21 clean sheets he won the Best European Goalkeeper award from UEFA and sealed his reputation as one of the best in the world. Ahead of the 2009-10 season many touted Ben Foster as a permanent replacement for Van der Sar but both he and Thomas Kuszczak failed to depose the Dutchman, who remains Ferguson's No.1.

Van der Sar was included in the Netherlands's 1994 World Cup squad but did not play. He had to wait until 7 June 1995 for his international debut, against Belarus. He was in goal for three successive eliminations from major competitions by penalties: Euro 96, France 98 and Euro 2000. The Netherlands failed to qualify for the 2002 World Cup after failing to compete with Portugal and the Republic of Ireland and so during all of his career with the Netherlands, he had missed one tournament. Van der Sar has represented the Dutch national team 130 times, which makes him the country's most capped player. This puts him in the top thirty most capped players of all time. [source : Edwin van der Sar]

Van der Sar Pictures and Wallpapers

Peter Schmeichel

Peter Bolesław Schmeichel MBE (born 18 November 1963) is a retired Danish professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper, and was voted the "World's Best Goalkeeper" in 1992 and 1993. He is best remembered for his most successful years at English club Manchester United, whom he captained to the 1999 UEFA Champions League to complete The Treble. He was a key member of the Denmark national football team that won Euro 92.

Born in Gladsaxe, Copenhagen, Schmeichel is famous for his intimidating physique (he is 1.93 m (6 ft 4 in) tall and wears specially-made size XXXL football shirts) and his attacking threat. During his career, Schmeichel scored 11 goals, including one for the Danish national team, a great feat for a keeper. He is also the most capped player for the Denmark national team, with 129 games between 1987 and 2001. Apart from Euro 92, he played for his country at the 1998 FIFA World Cup and three additional European Championship tournaments. He captained the national team in 30 matches. He was one of only 13 players not from the British Isles to play on the opening weekend of the FA Premier League along with Jan Stejskal, Andrei Kanchelskis, Robert Warzycha, Roland Nilsson, Eric Cantona, Hans Segers, John Faxe Jensen, Anders Limpar, Gunnar Halle, Craig Forrest, Michel Vonk and Ronnie Rosenthal.

Schmeichel is also known for his trademark shouts at his defence. He would often yell out at the defenders in charge of helping him defend the goal for blunders and poor defending and would occasionally single out various individuals in the defence to make his feelings heard.

Today, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest goalkeepers in the history of football. The IFFHS ranked Schmeichel among the top ten keepers of the 20th century in 2000, and in 2001, Schmeichel won a public poll held by Reuters, when the majority of the 200,000 participants voted him as the best goalkeeper ever, ahead of Lev Yashin and Gordon Banks. In 2003, Schmeichel was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in recognition of his impact on the English game. In March 2004, he was named as one of the "125 greatest living footballers", at the FIFA 100 celebrations.

He holds the record for the greatest clean sheets-to-games ratio in the Premier League with 42% of the games he played in the league ending without his team conceding. [source : Peter Schmeichel]

Schmeichel's Pictures