RvP: My Dream Season

Golden Boot frontrunner Robin van Persie has scored more goals than any other player in their first season for Manchester United. In Sunday’s United Review, the Dutchman reflected on a sensational campaign in which he finally became a league champion…

Robin, you’re a champion. Does it feel as good as you imagined?
It’s even nicer. I’ve waited for this for a long time. Even with Feyenoord I was close but never a champion. As a youth player, though, I was used to winning trophies, right through from U12s to U18s. We won the UEFA Cup at Feyenoord three months after I started and I remember thinking: “Okay, this will happen every year – winning trophies is part of being a footballer.” But I’ve realised since then it’s not that simple. I had to wait a long time to be a champion but it tastes lovely. I feel like I’m floating on a cloud.

Any doubts about whether you made the right choice by joining United must be gone now?
I wouldn’t have moved if I’d had doubts. Instead, from day one I was almost certain we’d win trophies – not in a couple of years but this year. I saw the players training, I saw the way they behaved, the way they lived, their mentality, the way the staff worked, the way the manager and the staff acted... When all those elements combine you end up with a team of champions. It also helps when you have so many players who know how to win. After Manchester City lost at Tottenham I noticed a real focus in the squad. Suddenly the Villa game was like a final: win the match and you get a trophy. I could see in everybody’s faces how determined they were.

Why do you think you adapted so quickly to life at United?
Everybody was so nice to me, everybody wanted to help me and everybody told me they wanted to share the success with me. Playing with team-mates who want to help you and are happy for you if you score is a key ingredient. I also have to say that the fans have been great with me from the beginning. They gave me a lot of confidence. I guess it helped that I scored on my home debut, but I felt like we had a great connection straight away. I love the United fans.

And you must be determined to pick up the Golden Boot?
It would be nice, but the main thing for me was to win the league. Even if I’d have scored half the number of goals and we’d won the league I’d still have been happy. The Golden Boot would be like a bonus. In a way it’s not an honest award – even if you end up with the most goals in a season, those goals are the team’s goals and many will have been made possible by other players. They should make a Golden Boot for the whole team.

Have you improved as a player since joining United?
I try to improve every day, every month, every game. That’s my aim. You get spells that don’t go so well, when you don’t score so many goals. And I had one of those this season. Even so, I kept clearing headers from corner kicks, I cleared balls off the goal-line, I set up team-mates to score goals. I was never worried that I’d never score a goal again in my life. That 10-game streak where I didn’t score seemed a bigger issue for the media than it was for me.

You mention your defensive duties – clearing corner kicks, making goal-line clearances...
That’s part of my job. I’m not judged on that by outsiders but, I can assure you, I’m judged on that by my team-mates and the manager. That’s something I’ve agreed to do for the team, so it’s just as important as scoring goals. I have a very important role when it comes to defending corners, free-kicks and set-pieces. I love to do it, too. It gives me a buzz when I clear a corner with a nice header and then we launch a counter-attack. I’m not a player who only thinks about scoring goals – I want to give football more than that. Football has so much more to offer than just goals.

You’ve scored a lot of goals this season and a lot of goals at Old Trafford, but only one down at the Stretford End...
I know! But I don’t know why. I’ve also scored quite a few goals in the second half at Old Trafford, but in those games it’s just so happened that we’d changed ends and we were attacking the Stretford End in the first half. I don’t understand it. I want to score more goals there, though. In fact, I promise I will score more goals at the Stretford End. I’m aware of the statistic and it’s time to change it!

Finally, you might be a champion already but you’ve not got your hands on the trophy yet. How do you think that will feel?
This is the feeling you dream of. Everything is about lifting the trophy. There were some great pictures taken after the Aston Villa game, on the pitch and inside the dressing room, but there was one thing missing from them all: the trophy. That’s the picture that will be framed in my house: me, lifting the Barclays Premier League trophy. I can’t wait for that moment.