This season, Prostate Cancer UK is the Official Charity Partner of The Football League. To celebrate this partnership, and in recognition of the fact that prostate cancer affects one in nine men in the UK, we've asked some of the some of the country's most acclaimed football writers to tell us about their favourite No9 in the history of the beautiful game.

This week, Michael Cox of Zonal Marking tells us why former Leeds, Chelsea, Middlesbrough, Charlton and Cardiff star Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink is his top centre-forward.

Earlier this season, Hasselbaink – now a coach at Nottingham Forest – took part in Rowan Staszkiewicz’s bid to run to Forest's away games in aid of Prostate Cancer UK. To find out more about Rowan's challenge or to donate, click here.

Read on for Michael’s ode to Jimmy Floyd and tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

Powerhouse: Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink could score from anywhere. Photo courtesy of Action Images

 

No one has played more Premier League matches than David James, and when the ex-England goalkeeper was asked to name the player he’d faced with the most powerful shot, he responded immediately. “Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink,” he said. “Unbelievable – he scored with a two-step run-up [against me] from 35 yards, it went like an absolute bullet.” As anyone who remembers Middlesbrough’s game at Man City in 2005 will tell you, this is no exaggeration.

Hasselbaink arrived in England when relative unknowns could be overnight success stories. He was already 25 when he joined Leeds, but had played just one good season in the relatively obscure Portuguese league. These days, in the era of the internet, we can read detailed scouting reports as soon as transfers are first rumoured –back then, Hasselbaink was something of a mystery.

I remember watching him on his debut against Arsenal at Elland Road, laughing with friends because he was the first footballer we’d seen who wore his first name on the back of his shirt, rather than his surname. And what a name to have on your shirt. Not Hasselbaink, nor Jerrel – his actual first name – simply Jimmy, No9. He scored in that game, and couldn’t stop scoring, winning the Golden Boot in his second season.

There was more to Hasselbaink than a hard shot – he simply had an unnerving ability to score from any angle, from any distance. His incredible hat-trick for Chelsea against Tottenham in March 2002 demonstrated his all-round ability – brilliant curlers with either foot were combined with a diving header to complete a ‘perfect’ hat-trick, which must challenge Dennis Bergkamp’s against Leicester in August 1997 as the Premier League’s greatest treble.

Sadly, Hasselbaink never won the trophies his talent deserved. He played in four major finals – in the Copa del Rey in 2000, the Uefa Cup in 2006 and the FA Cup in 2002 and 2008, and was on the losing side in each. His medal haul consists simply of a Portuguese Cup from 1997, and a Community Shield in 2000. He scored nine goals in 23 appearances for the Dutch national team but his level of recognition could surely have been greater, had Holland not been choosing from the likes of Bergkamp, Patrick Kluivert, Roy Maakay and Ruud van Nistelrooy. Hasselbaink never played in the Eredivisie, and was handicapped by his lack of profile within Holland.

Perhaps he wouldn’t be as useful today – he preferred playing with another forward, as his excellent partnership with Eidur Gudjohnsen showed, and his link-up play was unspectacular. He was a pure finisher.

But if he only had one trick, he could perform it with incredible regularity. Only four other players – Alan Shearer, Michael Owen, Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba –  have also won the Premier League Golden Boot multiple times, underlining Hasselbaink’s quality. He was both a great goalscorer, and a scorer of great goals, which makes him one of the great No9s.

For more in our Best No9s series, check out our definitive list of the best (and worst!) strikers from Leeds, Middlesbrough, Charlton and Cardiff.

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