Frank Rijkaard spitting at Rudi Völler is one of the most notorious images of the 1990 World Cup. What happened next in the tunnel stayed out of shot. This is the story of an escalation – and of an unlikely reconciliation involving butter and bathrobes.
Milan, 24 June 1990. The Giuseppe Meazza, 74,559 inside, West Germany against the Netherlands in the World Cup round of 16. Barely 20 minutes in, the football briefly stops mattering. What follows produces images that have never gone away.
Frank Rijkaard fouls Rudi Völler and is booked. Jogging past, he spits into Völler's curly hair. Völler complains to the referee – and is booked too.
Moments later, it flares up again. Völler goes in dangerously close to Dutch goalkeeper Hans van Breukelen, but pulls out just in time. Rijkaard responds by pulling him by the ears. In the 22nd minute, referee Juan Carlos Loustau sends both of them off.
It isn't over. As they leave the pitch, Rijkaard spits into Völler's hair again.
What happened between Völler and Rijkaard in the tunnel
By his own account, Völler heads to the German dressing room and waits there for Rijkaard. When the Dutchman appears behind him, Völler confronts him. A scuffle breaks out until staff and FIFA officials separate the two.
Exactly how it played out can no longer be reconstructed with certainty. In the book “Wir Helden von Rom”, Andreas Möller recalls Völler telling his teammates afterwards that he had “given him one”. Wolfgang Niersbach, then head of press at the German Football Association (DFB), also describes a blow there – but can no longer say whether Völler struck with an open hand or a fist. According to Niersbach, Rijkaard also spat at Völler once more in the tunnel.
Lothar Matthäus brings it up too, later, on the podcast “FUSSBALL MML” – making clear he didn’t witness the tunnel incident himself. He passes on what he heard: “Frank spat a third time in the tunnel and Rudi smacked him in the face.”
Back on the pitch, it's ten against ten, and West Germany win 2-1. Jürgen Klinsmann scores in the 50th minute, Andreas Brehme in the 84th, before Ronald Koeman pulls one back from the spot four minutes later. Völler is suspended for the quarter-final. Three games later, West Germany are world champions.
Six years later, Völler and Rijkaard sit down to breakfast in bathrobes
Cut to 1996.
It could hardly look more different. No national team shirts. No grass. Instead, two men in white bathrobes, seated at a breakfast table. In front of them: Dutch butter.
The two men are Frank Rijkaard and Rudi Völler.
The opponents from Milan are now advertising partners. The campaign's slogan: “With real butter, you can get anyone round the same table.”
The ad flips that night in Milan with a knowing wink: confrontation on the pitch becomes a show of harmony over breakfast.
The reconciliation, though, didn't start with the campaign. By his own account, Rijkaard apologised to Völler straight after the match. In 1996, he returned to the story in an open letter in the magazine “Sports live”. In it, he put his lapse down to personal problems: he had gone into the game particularly on edge. He also rejected the claim that Völler had insulted him before the first spitting incident. Neither Völler nor he, Rijkaard wrote, deserved to be reminded of the incident for the rest of their lives.
The joint campaign put that reconciliation on public display. Both had wanted a normal relationship again. After that, Völler said, everything was “alles in Butter” – a German idiom meaning all is well. The fee from the ad, he said, went to the charity Deutsche Mexikohilfe.
Why the spit still sticks
Neither man can be reduced to Milan. Rijkaard won the European Championship with the Netherlands and, as a player, won the European Cup twice with AC Milan and the Champions League with Ajax. He later won the competition again as Barcelona coach. Völler became a world champion with Germany and won the Champions League with Olympique Marseille. In 2002, as Germany’s team manager, he led them to the World Cup final.
Thirty-six years after the flashpoint in Milan, Germany and the Netherlands meet again in the Nations League in Amsterdam on 24 September. The plan had been for Germany to wear a reissue of that tournament’s green adidas away shirt. The original, however, was worn not against the Netherlands but in the semi-final against England. Instead, Germany will play in black – in adidas’s final shirt.
Völler and Rijkaard settled their differences long ago – and not just at the breakfast table. The image from 1990 has stayed all the same.
