I am not someone with diplomas or degrees from colleges. Whatever I learned in life, I learned it through experience. After the loss of my father at the age of 12, my life was shaped by Ajax. First by my stepfather, who worked at the club, taking care of the playing field at the stadium, and later by my coaches, Johan Cruyff and Rinus Michels. Thanks to Ajax, I not only learned how to become a better football player, but also how to behave.

From my father-in-law, I learned about finances. When I started, there wasn't a single football player in the world who had even heard of marketing. Contract negotiations and off-field businesses were completely new.

Fortunately, for me, someone came into my life and helped me with this. Because every time I thought I could do it on my own, things automatically went wrong. But all of this doesn't matter. It's part of life. What matters in the end, and is the most important, is whether you have learned or not.

I want to emphasize here how important my family was. Not only my parents, in-laws, wife, children, and grandchildren, but also all the people who took me by the hand at Ajax during a phase of my life when I was so fragile. That's why Ajax is a second family to me. The family that defined who I am today.

As far as football is concerned, I followed a one-way street. I can't imagine myself anywhere else, other than at the top. Whether as a player or as a coach, I can't imagine doing something at a lower level. I only think in one direction. Upwards. I tried to become the best I could be. And that's ultimately why I retired. I wasn't physically fit enough to be at the top, and when that happens, there's no reason to be on the field anymore. However, because I was in a good mental state, I became a coach.

Above all, though, I want to say that I lived my whole life, striving to make things better, and I passed that on to whatever I did.