Meet the Everton flop who owned a pet zebra, was caught red-handed with a stripper by a private detective before being ‘snitched on’ by a Toffees team-mate

Royston Drenthe had barely touched down on Merseyside when his phone rang. It was late August 2011, and the former Dutch winger, a loan arrival from Real Madrid, was about to embark on a turbulent season at Everton – a subject in which few were better versed than the man on the other end of the line.

‘This is Andy van der Meyde, I got your number from Johnny Heitinga,’ chirped Drenthe’s compatriot, who had left Goodison Park two summers earlier after four  controversial years during which he rarely pulled on a blue shirt. 

‘Royston, I hear you are on your way to Everton. Don’t do it boy, I beg you, don’t do it. Liverpool has too many temptations for boys like us. Before you know it, you will be dragged into the nightclubs. Be careful not to ruin your career.

‘Promise me you won’t go to the Newz Bar. Bacardi flows there and you can ski on cocaine. And the women, Royston. Oh man, oh man, oh man. Those English women with their short skirts.’

If it left something to be desired as an appraisal of life in Liverpool, it was nonetheless a neat summation of Van der Meyde’s ill-fated sojourn in L4.

The Dutchman’s addition to an Everton side that had finished fourth in the Premier League the previous season was intended to bring pace and pedigree to David Moyes’s midfield. But over the course of four seasons at Goodison Park, the fast-living, injury-prone attacker would make just 20 league appearances, a lamentable return on a weekly salary of about £30,000. 

Van der Meyde takes the ball for the Netherlands in a Euro 2004 qualifying match against Moldova. He made 17 appearances for his country between 2002 and 2004, scoring one goal

Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez, second left, and Moyes, third from right, look on as Van der Meyde makes his way off the pitch at Anfield after receiving a red card in March 2006   

The £2 million Everton paid Inter Milan for Van der Meyde’s services initially appeared something of a bargain, given that only two years earlier the San Siro outfit had splashed almost £5 million to prise him from his boyhood club Ajax, where he played alongside the likes of Wesley Sneijder and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. 

But by the end of his time on Merseyside, Van der Meyde had cost the club about £312,000 a match – a good deal less than the 90,000 euros a minute he once claimed, but a scarcely believable sum nonetheless. 

Then again, so much of the 45-year-old Dutchman’s life has beggared belief that the wealth he accumulated – he estimates he squandered about 11 million euros on ‘cars, clothes, jewellery, all that crazy stuff ‘ over the course of his career – barely skims the surface.

A case in point concerns his reason for rejecting a potential move to Didier Deschamps’ Monaco.

‘It was good money,’ Van der Meyde recalled. ‘Tax free. They were a good team, too. It was a nice offer. But we couldn’t go. It’s all apartments in Monte Carlo. We would have had nowhere to keep the zebras.’

The zebras in question – not to mention the turtles, horses, parrots and even a camel – belonged to his former wife Diana Grifhorst, a lover of exotic animals and the mother of his daughters Isabella and Purple, two of his five daughters.

But not even the ability to accommodate African wildlife was enough to make Van der Meyde’s time in Liverpool a success. 

Trouble, in one guise or another, stalked the Dutchman from the outset, starting with a groin injury that delayed his debut by two months, and continuing with a thigh problem that sidelined him again after just five matches. It was at that point that his difficulties began in earnest. 

Van der Meyde’s inability to make things work at club level did nothing for his hopes of adding to the caps he won with the Netherland in the early stages of his career

Andy Van der Meyde poses with Zlatan Ibrahimovic, right, alongside whom he played at his boyhood club Ajax in a team that included the likes of Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart

‘I had no goal and couldn’t do anything,’ said Van der Meyde, attempting to build bridges with the Everton faithful in an interview published three years ago. 

‘I’d go to the club, they’d put some ice on my leg, then I’d go home. So I thought, “I will go out and enjoy myself.”‘

Enjoy himself he did, purchasing a Ferrari and frequenting the now defunct Newz Bar, a local celebrity hotspot whose clientele included footballers, celebrities and models. He vividly recalls his first visit. 

‘After a couple of hours of drinking alcohol, I drove to the nearest strip club,’ he recollected in his candid 2012 autobiography. ‘Getting drunk in a strip club in the middle of Liverpool was not very smart. But I had a strong longing for naked women.’

It was there that Van der Meyde met Lisa, a stripper to whom he became ‘addicted’ after the pair started an affair. But when the Dutchman told his wife he needed to stay on his own in order to recover from his injuries, she became suspicious and had him followed by a private investigator. The fallout would cost him his marriage.    

‘I said to my ex-wife that I wanted to go to a hotel because I was injured at the time and I needed some rest,’ said Van Der Meyde. ‘But that was not the case – I was just cheating on her.

‘A private detective had videos and photos of me and my new girlfriend, and then my wife rang me and said: “How’s your new girlfriend?”

‘I was still denying it then.’

Van der Meyde, seen here during a Dutch Eredivisie match between FC Twente and Ajax at the Grolsch Veste in 2015, has appeared as a pundit on Dutch TV since retiring 

Van der Meyde celebrates after scoring for Inter Milan in a Champions League match at Highbury in September 2003. Good times were few and far between in his time at the San Siro

It was the start of a downward spiral that would rapidly gain momentum. A stormy relationship with Lisa led to more drinking. The couple had a daughter, Dolce, who was born with a serious bowel condition and spent months at Alder Hey children’s hospital. He was admitted to hospital with breathing problems after claiming his drink had been spiked in a bar, and became addicted to Unable to prescription-strength sleeping pills, which he stole from the club doctor’s office.   

Inevitably, it was not long before Van der Meyde’s personal problems began to bleed into his professional life. 

A first taste of the Merseyside derby ended in ignominy, a substitute appearance lasting just five minutes before the Dutchman was dismissed for elbowing Liverpool midfielder Xabi Alonso. He missed training, or would turn up late, prompting Moyes to suspend him. Relations became strained with some of his team-mates, not least the club captain Phil Neville.

‘He was Moyes’s pet, so I picked on him a lot,’ said Van der Meyde. ‘I think he told everything that was going on to the boss and that’s why he was captain, he was a snitch.’

Neville, for his part, appeared unrepentant.

‘Andy was a lovely lad but he didn’t have the professionalism you needed to succeed,’ he later reflected.

Even Van der Meyde’s finest moment in an Everton shirt was not without complication. It came four months before his departure from the club, when he crossed for Dan Gosling to score the winner deep into extra time of a fourth-round FA Cup replay at Goodison Park. 

So far, so uncontroversial. But the live TV coverage inexplicably cut away to an advert at the crucial moment and, by the time the pictures resumed, Everton were already celebrating. 

Van der Meyde, seen here at a film premiere in Amsterdam last year, was no great fan of Phil Neville: ‘I think he told everything that was going on to the boss… he was a snitch’

Naturally, Van der Meyde’s pivotal contribution to the victory ensured he would forever be favourably remembered by those of a blue persuasion. But the episode also seemed to embody the career of a player whose undoubted talent was too often rendered invisible by injury, mishap or the chaotic nature of his personal life.

Van der Meyde would play one more game for Everton before his contract expired that summer. 

Then he found himself alone with his demons. He had split from Lisa. His former wife and children were back in Italy. The phone remained silent. Six years after former Inter boss Roberto Mancini had heralded him as ‘the best in your position in the world’, his career was at a crossroads.

‘I still thought, “When my contract finishes, there will be a new club,”‘ said Van der Meyde.

‘No way. If you don’t play, you are not important any more. Unless a gaffer really likes you, it is over. It is really stupid I threw it away like that.’

Reluctant to relinquish his hedonistic lifestyle in Liverpool, Van der Meyde moved in with a friend and, for the first time, began to take drugs. It did not take him long to realise the path he was on could cost him more than just his livelihood.

‘I took coke and alcohol and partied seven days a week,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t concentrate on football or anything else for that matter. Partying was what my life was about. 

‘Liverpool is dangerous if you don’t know how to control yourself. I realised Liverpool would kill me. I needed to leave.’ 

‘I drank to get away from reality,’ says Van der Meyde, seen here before a 2004 friendly for the Netherlands. ‘Other players can go out and just drink a little, but I was drinking to forget’

Van der Meyde returned to the Netherlands, where his friendship with PSV Eindhoven boss Fred Rutten helped to secure a trial at the Philips Stadion. Hopelessly out of shape, he was on a hiding to nothing.

‘I was really fat,’ said Van der Meyde. ‘They thought I was somebody else: two Andys!’

As his former team-mates will attest, that trademark willingness to laugh – not least at himself – was always among Van der Meyde’s most endearing qualities. Yet beneath the outward mirth, there was sadness.

‘I drank to get away from reality,’ he said. ‘Other players can go out and just drink a little, but I was drinking to forget. That is why I had a problem.

‘I need to have my family around me. When I went to Inter, it was because Ajax wanted to sell me, not because I wanted to go.

‘I was not happy in Italy, for football reasons, and because the atmosphere did not suit me, but in Liverpool, because my marriage was over, I became unhappy off the pitch. That is what it came down to.

‘I had a baby with Lisa after being with her for maybe four or five months. I wanted to have that family unit again. That is what I need to keep me stable.’

Happily, Van der Meyde now has that stability. While his return to the Netherlands did not yield employment, it did result in a chance meeting with Melissa Schaufeli, a hairdresser with whom he has two daughters, Lily Fay and Roxy. 

‘I first saw her in my local pub and found her arrogant, but also fascinating,’ said Van der Meyde. ‘We exchanged numbers and after three days of pinging on our BlackBerrys she said: “Would you like to come and have dinner?” 

‘We talked, had dinner, and from that moment on it was pretty clear. Don’t ask me how, but we both knew we were going to stay together.’

The couple moved in together after three months and had their first child a year later. They went on to star in a popular Dutch reality TV show, Andy and Melissa, and also appear together on Van der Meyde’s popular YouTube channel.   

As for Liverpool, should Van der Meyde ever return, he will be relieved to know that Newz Bar no longer exists – although, perhaps unpromisingly, it has been replaced by a branch of Hooters.