FOUR years ago he went back for the first time to Rose Street in the Jordaan area of Amsterdam where he and his mother, Ria Dil, spent the early years of his life. Ria was the buitenvrouw (outside wife) of George Gullit, who came from Surinam and studied in Amsterdam to become a teacher. George had his own family but would visit his buitenvrouw and their young son every evening.

“I was just strolling around my old neighbourhood and this guy came up to me and said, ‘You used to live here?’ ‘Yeah, on the other side of that building’, I said. ‘No’, he said, ‘not on the other side. There’s only one room there’.

“But that’s where my mother and I lived, in that one room, 6.5 metres by 4 metres. We lived there for 10 years before we got a bigger place on the west wide of Amsterdam. I would like to have seen the room again but I didn’t think it was right to ring the bell.”

Ria worked at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam and although she brought her boy many times and showed him all the famous Rembrandts, he was more taken by the suits of armour and the swords. He needed to take care of himself because Ria left for work at seven in the morning and George was busy with his teaching. Ruud’s colour set him apart from most kids in the Jordaan.

“When you’re very young, you’re the lovely little black boy with the curly hair. ‘Oh, look at you, you are so beautiful’. I never felt I was different to anyone else. When you get older, it becomes an issue. When I was 12 or 13, there was a fight that I was trying to break up, because a friend was involved. The police picked us up, I had my school books and this policeman said, ‘Ah, the nigger is studying. This nigger can count’.

“I went home and told my mother. She went out and found this police officer and started swearing at him. And because my mother was white, he was really surprised and embarrassed. He didn’t mean to abuse a black boy who had a white mother.”

Intelligence allowed the boy to see beyond his youth. He had taken his mother’s name Dil, but after he signed for his first proper schoolboy football team he went to see his dad. “Papa,” he said, “is it okay for me to use your name on my football form. A great footballer is not going to be called Ruud Dil.” With a vision of what he could become, he changed his name to Ruud Gullit.

“In some of the teams, I was the only black player and I realised that if you were different in any way, people noticed you. They pay special attention to you. It wasn’t discrimination, just human nature, and I knew if I worked hard and was one of the better players, being black would help me to stand out. That’s how it turned out.”

He played at all underage levels for the Dutch national side and a coach from the famed Ajax academy invited him to join. “With your parents, come to see us,” he said. “I live in west Amsterdam,” the kid replied, “both my parents work and it would be easier if you came to see us.”

“No, no,” the Ajax coach said, “you must come and see us.”

Gullit laughs now at the recollection. “People say I hated Ajax from that day, but I never did. It was just that they were incredibly arrogant. They wanted me and I had to go with my parents to see them. I’d never heard anything so stupid.”

He joined Feyenoord and then PSV Eindhoven before being transferred for a then world record £6m fee to AC Milan. He was a key player in the greatest Milan side and what he remembers especially are the games of tennis football that began each morning at 9.15, 45 minutes before the start of training.

“Technically, they were unbelievably tough. Van Basten and Rijkaard weren’t able to play in those games. It took me time to learn but, years later at Chelsea, I would take a ball on my chest, volley a pass to a guy 10 yards away, the crowd would go mad and I would think, ‘But that’s nothing’. Those years at Milan were hard, all the time hard.”

He remembers the sound of Silvio Berlusconi’s helicopter landing at the club’s training ground, Milanello. “Che, che, che, che, and he would be there. He was a good motivator, very charismatic. He would say, ‘Okay, we have Inter on Sunday, the European Cup next week, then Palermo, another European Cup, then Juventus, after that Roma. Now if we can win these six games, we’ll be in a good position’.

“It wasn’t enjoyable because it was so pressurised. The fun came when you won but it was only for a brief moment because you had to do it again and again, the next week, the following season.”

Milan had a profound effect on him because he had never experienced anything remotely near the culture that existed at Berlusconi’s club. What distinguishes it from all other clubs, he believes, is the compulsion to win. So ingrained that each individual victory seemed as nothing, except as a forerunner to the next.

He talks about a club that refused to do “hallelujahs”. “When Clarence Seedorf left Inter and went to Milan, I said, ‘You will experience something very different’. He went there and we then spoke. ‘Oh, Ruud. It’s incredible. You walk into this club and everything you breathe is about winning, and you know that you want to be part of it’.”

He talks more about Milan and I ask why he doesn’t mention the managers he worked under. “Sacchi and Capello,” he says, matter-of-factly. There is no warmth. Why? “Because there was no fun. There was no laughing. You were just being drilled by them, drilled, drilled, drilled. The fun came later when I went to Sampdoria, and especially when I went to Chelsea. Every time I played for Chelsea, I thought, ‘Nice game, beautiful stadium, great crowd, I’m playing well’. It was the only time I really had fun.”

When he was named European Footballer of the Year in 1987, Gullit dedicated the award to the then imprisoned Nelson Mandela. Italians raised their eyebrows, “Nelson who?” He tried to explain and they said, ‘Oh, a footballer with political beliefs’.

He says lots of footballers have interesting things to say but no one asks them anything interesting. “I met Nelson Mandela after he was released and he said, ‘Ruud, I have lots of friends now. When I was on the inside, you were one of the few’. I’d grown up in the Amsterdam of the early 80s, singing reggae songs about Mandela and Steve Biko.

“Four months ago I visited Robben Island and met three guys who were cell-mates of Nelson Mandela. They remembered my dedicating my award in 1987 to Mandela and they said they couldn’t believe what I had done, and were sure the football authorities would withdraw the award. That’s what apartheid did to them, it made them believe injustice was a normal part of life.”

After Milan, he joined Sven-Göran Eriksson at Sampdoria and enjoyed a wonderful autumn to his career in Italy. He scored 15 goals for Sampdoria and much praise for how he played.

“Since Eriksson came to England, the guy who has been portrayed in the newspapers is not the guy I know. Sven is a gentleman, very likeable, very passionate and one who knows his football. My feeling was, ‘When someone treats you with kindness, why would you not treat him the same?’ ” We talk about his personal life; three wives, two children by each, a trail of emotional turmoil in his wake. He says he has not been the best father because difficulties in his first two marriages meant he saw his first four children less than he should. His marriage to Johan Cruyff’s niece, Estelle, is now in its eighth year.

“Because of personal difficulties in my relationships, I could never be with all my children every day and that’s something I regret. But it was also something that was out of my hands. Because of circumstances, I couldn’t be there for them. My two oldest kids are now 21 and 18 [Felicity and Charmayne from his first marriage to Yvonne de Vries] and understand why I took the decisions I took and they can live with that. They can see it’s different to what they were told. The middle two [Quincy and Sheyenne from his second marriage to Cristina Pensa] won’t understand yet because they are still too young.” Maxim and Joelle are the children from his marriage to Estelle.

The interview ends and he disappears, only to return a few minutes later. Something has struck him and he believes it should be written. “I have had a lot of personal troubles, but I ask myself have I been so good at football because I have not been happy in my personal life?”

I ask what he means. “Football was my outlet. I could express myself in the best way. But I couldn’t have both, a good private life and a good football career.”

What was it about his character that made his private life the opposite to his professional life? “Wrong choices,” he says. “Bad choices. Bad decisions. Can happen. The funny thing is that when I was in this situation, I thought, ‘I’m the only one. Typical black guy, goes there, makes mistakes’.

“Then you look at people in normal life and all of a sudden you realise you’re not the only one. You are not the only one. Maybe the difference is that I can’t hide it.”

But he and Estelle have been together for 12 years. That gives him a shot at long-term stability. “I’m not doing everything right, but I’m pleased about that.”

Gullit’s career in the spotlight from world-class player to chat-show host

- Ruud Gullit is one of the best players to come out of Holland, where he is ranked alongside Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff in the pantheon of Dutch footballing greats

- Versatile and powerful, the dreadlocked Gullit could play virtually anywhere in midfi eld or attack and made a huge impression at Feyenoord, PSV Eindhoven, Milan, Sampdoria and Chelsea, scoring 175 goals in 465 games

- Gullit won 66 caps for his country, scoring 17 international goals

- In a playing career laden with trophies, Gullit won Italy’s Serie A three times, the Dutch title three times, the Champions League/European Cup twice and a host of domestic cups. He also helped Holland to win the European Championship in 1988

- Gullit was named European Footballer of the Year in 1987 and World Player of the Year in 1987 and 1989. He was only the third player to receive both awards in the same year after Paolo Rossi and Michel Platini

- His first coaching job came when he was appointed player-manager of Chelsea in 1996, winning the FA Cup in his fi rst season with a 2-0 win over Middlesbrough, far right. It was Chelsea’s fi rst trophy for 26 years and Gullit was the fi st nonBritish manager to win a major trophy with an English club

- The following season, with Chelsea second in the league and in the quarterfi nals of two cup competitions, Gullit was sacked

- In 1998 he was named manager of Newcastle United, promising to bring ‘sexy football’ to the northeast. He guided the club to the FA Cup final in his fi rst season, but then fell out with, and dropped, crowd favourite Alan Shearer. He also refused to give captain Rob Lee a squad number. The fans turned against him and he left fi ve games into the 1999-2000 season

- In 2004 he became manager of Feyenoord but quit after just one season

- Last year he was given his own talk show on Dutch TV, left, where he interviewed Nelson Mandela. He also appeared as a pundit for ITV during the 2006 Fifa World Cup, and is a regular Champions League analyst on Sky

- Now 45, Gullit has been married three times and has six children. His present wife is Estelle Cruyff, niece of football legend Johan