Marc Overmars (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmɑrk ˈoʊ̯.vər.mɑrs], born 29 March 1973 in Emst, Gelderland) is a retired Dutch footballer. He is best known as a right-footed left winger, although he is able to use both his feet with equal precision and power. Known for his speed, Overmars' nicknames included "the Roadrunner" or its famous sound "meep-meep".

Club career[link]

Overmars first joined a small Dutch club called SV Epe, before joining Go Ahead Eagles in 1987 at the age of 14. Three years later, Willem II bought him from Go Ahead Eagles for £200,000, and a year later he signed for Ajax.

Overmars became famous with Ajax under Louis van Gaal. He was a member of the Ajax team that won the European Cup in 1995 against Milan. However, in early 1996, he suffered a serious injury, which kept him out of Euro 1996. Having returned to action in the 1996–97 season, Overmars was signed by Arsène Wenger's Arsenal in the summer of 1997 for £5.5 million.^[1]

He scored many vital goals for Arsenal, including one in the 1998 FA Cup Final and another in a 1–0 victory over Manchester United at Old Trafford, which helped Arsenal to secure the Double in his first season there. However, the next two seasons were trophyless, as Arsenal were pipped to the Premier League title by a single point and suffered an FA Cup semi-final replay defeat (both times by Manchester United) in the 1998–99 season, and were on the losing side to Galatasaray of Turkey in the UEFA Cup final a year later, also finishing runners-up to Manchester United in the league for the second season running – this time by an 18-point margin.

In the summer of 2000, he moved to Spain and joined Barcelona, for £25 million (€40.6 million), making Overmars the most expensive Dutch player of all time. It also made him the most expensive player to be sold by a British club and the most expensive to be signed by a Spanish club.

This transfer was the first in the history of football to be announced via the player's personal website. Despite a difficult first season at his new club, Overmars was still an impressive performer, registering eight goals in 31 appearances. He was a regular feature of Barcelona's 2001–02 Champions League campaign as they reached the semi-finals before bowing out to fierce rivals Real Madrid, but failed to inspire Barcelona to any trophy success due to a financial crisis the club suffered during the early 2000s.

After retiring as a player on doctor's advice through injury on 26 July 2004, Overmars joined his first professional football club, Go Ahead Eagles, as the technical manager.

On 26 July 2008, Overmars played in the testimonial match of Jaap Stam, where he played for a team of former Dutch internationals. During the match, Overmars outplayed Ajax defender George Ogararu. His performance led to several invitations from Eagles coach Andries Ulderink to make a comeback in football. On 10 August 2008, four years after hanging up his boots, Overmars made a shock announcement that he would come out of retirement to play again for the Go Ahead Eagles for the 2008–09 season.^[2] His right knee that caused him to end his career, still gave Overmars some worries. Therefore, Overmars did not play as many minutes or attend as many training sessions as the rest of the squad. After the end of the 2008–09 season, Overmars announced his retirement again.

International career[link]

On 24 February 1993, he made his debut in the Dutch national team against Turkey. By the 1994 World Cup, Overmars was a regular in the Dutch national team.

In the 1998 World Cup, he was a regular fixture for Holland where he assisted his nation to a semi-final showdown with Brazil. Overmars was one of the best Dutch players in the tournament but suffered an injury in the second round game against Yugoslavia (now Serbia). This ruled him out of the next match, which was against Argentina. However, he did enter late into the game as a substitute. He made an immediate impact by providing an inch perfect cross that almost led to a goal for the Netherlands. Overmars' injury became even worse after this game and he had to sit out the entire following match against Brazil. The Netherlands lost this match on penalties. Overmars was fit again to play in the Netherlands final match, which was the third/fourth play-off game against Croatia, but the Dutch lost 2–1.

In all, Overmars played 86 games for the Dutch national team, scoring 17 goals. Overmars was the youngest player to reach 50 caps with the Dutch national team. His final match was the Netherlands' loss to Portugal in the semifinals of the 2004 European Championships.

Post-playing career[link]

After his retirement he started working as a director for his first team, Deventer side Go Ahead Eagles.

Personal life[link]

He is friends with Dennis Bergkamp.

Honours[link]

Ajax[link]

• Eredivisie: 1993–94, 1994–95, 1995–96
• KNVB Cup: 1992–93
• Johan Cruijff Shield: 1993, 1994
• UEFA Champions League: 1995
• European Super Cup: 1995
• Intercontinental Cup: 1995

Arsenal[link]

• Premier League: 1997–98
• FA Cup: 1998
• FA Charity Shield: 1998

International[link]

• FIFA World Cup 1998: Fourth Place
• UEFA Euro 2000: Semi-Finalist

Career statistics[link]

^[3]

In popular culture[link]

• Gavin and Stacey: In the final episode of Series One, a couple at the wedding attempts to revitalize their marriage by experimenting with role-playing. In their scenario, the husband pretends to be Marc Overmars.^[4]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Marc Overmars – FIFA competition record
• Marc Overmars profile and stats at Wereld van Oranje (Dutch)

Netherlands squads v t e Netherlands squad – 1994 FIFA World Cup 1 De Goey 2 F. De Boer 3 Rijkaard 4 Koeman 5 Witschge 6 Wouters 7 Overmars 8 Jonk 9 R. De Boer 10 Bergkamp 11 Roy 12 Bosman 13 Van der Sar 14 Van Gobbel 15 Blind 16 Numan 17 Taument 18 Valckx 19 Van Vossen 20 Winter 21 De Wolf 22 Snelders Coach: Advocaat v t e Netherlands squad – 1998 FIFA World Cup Fourth Place 1 Van der Sar 2 Reiziger 3 Stam 4 F. De Boer (c) 5 Numan 6 Jonk 7 R. De Boer 8 Bergkamp 9 Kluivert 10 Seedorf 11 Cocu 12 Zenden 13 Ooijer 14 Overmars 15 Bogarde 16 Davids 17 Van Hooijdonk 18 De Goey 19 Van Bronckhorst 20 Winter 21 Hasselbaink 22 Hesp Coach: Hiddink v t e Netherlands squad – UEFA Euro 2000 semi-finalists 1 Van der Sar 2 Reiziger 3 Stam 4 F. de Boer 5 Zenden 6 Seedorf 7 Cocu 8 Davids 9 Kluivert 10 Bergkamp 11 Overmars 12 Van Bronckhorst 13 Konterman 14 Van Vossen 15 Bosvelt 16 R. de Boer 17 Van Hooijdonk 18 de Goey 19 Numan 20 Winter 21 Makaay 22 Westerveld Coach: Rijkaard v t e Netherlands squad – UEFA Euro 2004 semi-finalists 1 Van der Sar 2 Reiziger 3 Stam 4 Bouma 5 Van Bronckhorst 6 Cocu 7 Van der Meyde 8 Davids 9 Kluivert 10 Van Nistelrooy 11 Van der Vaart 12 Makaay 13 Westerveld 14 Sneijder 15 De Boer (c) 16 Overmars 17 Van Hooijdonk 18 Heitinga 19 Robben 20 Seedorf 21 Bosvelt 22 Zenden 23 Waterreus Coach: Advocaat

Markus Hendrik Overmars (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmɑrk ˈɦɛn.drɪk ˈoʊ̯.vər.mɑrs], born 29 September 1958 in Zeist, Netherlands)^[1] is a Dutch computer scientist and teacher of game programming known for his game development application Game Maker. Game Maker lets people create computer games using a drag-and-drop interface. He is the head of the Center for Geometry, Imaging, and Virtual Environments at Utrecht University, in the Netherlands. This research center concentrates on computational geometry and its application in areas like computer graphics, robotics, geographic information systems, imaging, multimedia, virtual environments, and games.

Overmars received his Ph.D. in 1983 from Utrecht University under the supervision of Jan van Leeuwen,^[2] and has since been a member of the faculty of the same university. Overmars has published over 100 journal papers, largely on computational geometry, and is the co-author of several books including a widely used computational geometry text. He has an Erdős number of 3, due to his collaborations with several other computational geometers.^[3]

Overmars has also worked in robotics. He was the first to develop the probabilistic roadmap method in 1992, which was later independently discovered by Kavraki and Latombe in 1994. Their joint paper, Probabilistic roadmaps for path planning in high-dimensional configuration spaces,^[4] is considered one of the most influential studies in motion planning, and has been widely cited (more than 1000 times as of 2008).

Books[link]

• Overmars, M. H. (1983). The Design of Dynamic Data Structures. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, no. 156, Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0-387-12330-X. 
• de Berg, M.; van Kreveld, M.; Overmars, M. H.; Schwarzkopf, O. (2000). Computational Geometry, Algorithms and Applications (2nd ed.). Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-65620-0. 
• Habgood, J.; Overmars, M. H. (2006). The Game Maker's Apprentice: Game Development for Beginners. APress. ISBN 1-59059-615-3. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Mark Overmars' homepage
• Entry at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Game Maker website