It’s been more than 20 years since Chelsea icon Ed de Goey left the club to join Stoke.
De Goey began his career at Sparta Rotterdam in the Netherlands before signing for Feyenoord in 1990. After seven years, the goalkeeper signed for Chelsea for £2. 25 million.
He was the first-choice goalkeeper for the first three years of his time at Stamford Bridge and a member of the team that won the League Cup and European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1998. In the 1999/00 campaign, De Goey made 59 appearances and kept the cleanest goals in the Premier League.
However, De Goey later dropped down to No.2 following the signing of Carlo Cudicini and played just 25 times in his final three years before being released in 2003. The Dutchman signed for second-tier Stoke and cemented himself as a regular in the side, making 38 appearances in his first season.
He lost his place completely to Steve Simonsen in the 2005/06 campaign and was released at the end of the year. De Goey decided to hang up his boots and moved to QPR as a first-team coach in July 2007. He left the west London club before the end of the season.
De Goey joined RKC Waalwijk from the Eredivisie as goalkeeping coach in July 2010 and held the position for 4 years before parting ways. The former Chelsea No. 1 finished fifth in the Netherlands at VOC Rotterdam in 2018 and has been at the club ever since. .
However, De Goey’s images made the impression on social media and Chelsea fans were stunned. During his time at Stamford Bridge, De Goey wore a beard and had long, bare hair. In a recent interview, De Goey gave the impression of having no facial hair and a much shorter haircut.
De Goey will go down as a Chelsea cult hero, but he had no idea he was leaving the Blues. “No, I didn’t know at all. The strange thing was, in a meeting with [Claudio] Ranieri he told me I was getting older and he wanted more young keepers,” he told the club’s website in 2020.
“But right after I was handed over together, he called the young goalkeeper [Rhys Evans], who was also playing for England Under-21s, and told him to leave too!If I was going after the young people, why let them go?I had mixed feelings. “
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