Ruud Geels passed away at the age of 75. The Haarlem-born former striker of Telstar, Ajax, Feyenoord, PSV and Oranje, among others, became top scorer in the Premier League no fewer than five times in his career. Geels had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for a long time.
Geels played football for the amateurs of DSS and Onze Gezellen before he ended up at Telstar in Velsen-Zuid. In 1966, after 8 games and 5 goals for Telstar, he was recruited by Feyenoord for the then astronomical sum of 165,000 guilders. He won the European Cup with the Rotterdam club in the 1969/70 season.
At all clubs where Geels played, he scored frequently and usually with his head. He scored most of his goals in the shirt of Ajax, where he scored 153 goals in 166 games between 1974 and 1978. Geels became top scorer in the Premier League no fewer than five times. He did this in 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978 and 1981. The striker scored a total of 252 goals in 360 Premier League matches.
Painting on the ladder
Geels wore the Oranje shirt twenty times and managed to score eleven times for the national team. He was part of the Dutch selection for the 1974 World Cup, but did not play a minute at the tournament in West Germany.
After his career as a football player, Geels started working as a painter. “I experienced the glitter and fame as a burden,” he once said on the Barend & Van Dorp program. “Can I tell you something completely honest? If I had stayed on the ladder, I might have been much happier.”