When a boy with dreadlocks from Hauge, Netherlands entered the Cobham in 2011, many eyes gazed upon the 16-year-old.
Same nation, same hairstyle, same facial features, if it is that Ruud Gullit‘s son, many wondered.
For a young Nathan Ake, this was nothing new. “Wherever I go, people say: ‘Hey, look, there is Ruud Gullit’s son.’
Of course, he is a big name in the Netherlands, but he is not a player I have watched. I’m too young for that,” Nathan Ake said in 2017.
Since then it has been a running gag on the internet which is still alive and kicking.
The biological similarity is not the only resemblance between the two Dutchmen. Both have played for Chelsea and the Dutch national team.
While Gullit wore number 4 with the Londoners, Ake also wore the number while representing Chelsea’s youth side. For the national team, they also wore the number 6 at a stage of their respective careers.
But are they really related? Let’s trace it back a bit.
Ruud came from a Surinamese family and his father moved to the Netherlands when he was a toddler. Incidentally, his father was befriended by another Dutch legend, Frank Rijkaard’s father, Hermann.
Ruud’s footballing talents blossomed on the streets of Amsterdam alongside Rijkaard before joining Amsterdamsche Football Club Door Wilskracht Sterk’s youth team.
After his senior debut in 1979, Ruud married his first wife Yvonne de Vries in 1984. According to Yvonne, they had a life devoid of late-night thrills. ‘At one point I thought: he is gay or he has other women,’ said Yvonne in an interview.
After 7 years of marriage, they filed for divorce in 1991 and just after 3 years Gullit married actress, Cristina Pensa. This one went strong till 2000. Following a second divorce, in the same year, the Dutch icon married Johan Cruyff‘s niece, Estelle.
They have two children together, Maxim Gullit and Joelle Gullit, but in 2013 things went haywire. Estelle accused Gullit of cheating and said, ‘Of course Ruud had affairs. He always did during our marriage. And of course I knew about them. And of course he would deny them all the time. My trust in him decreased over the years. In the end I didn’t trust him one bit.’
Now at 62, Gullit is living his best life as a TV pundit. Now where does that leave us on the trail of Nathan Ake?
To date, there has been concrete evidence of any links between them, neither one of the pair has spoken about belonging to the same lineage. Ake’s mother, Ineke Telder is a Dutch woman married to Ivorian Moise Ake and that’s that about his links to the Netherlands.
In 2017, Ake revealed that he was invited for an Interview with Ruud Gullit while he was on Chelsea.
“When Ruud Gullit said he wanted to do an interview with me I was happy because he’s a Dutch legend and he was also a big player for Chelsea,” the Manchester City defender said. “Because we used to have similar hairstyles, everywhere I went people would call me Gullit, but that’s stopped now.”
While Nathan Ake has buried the hatchet of being linked to Gullit, the internet is still looking to uncover more details with a missing link. But without any confirmation, the only answer to the much-discussed debate remains a firm NO.
