Richard was born in Amsterdam on 20 September 1969. Following his older brother Rob, Richard Witschge made his debut for Ajax’s primary team on 26 October 1986. This happened during the away game against AZ’67, which ended in a 6-1 victory. Almost a year later, he made his first goal for Ajax.
In the season of 1991/92, he transferred to Johan Cruijff’s FC Barcelona and played with big names like Ronald Koeman, Michael Laudrup and Hristo Stoichkov. After 3 more seasons at the then successful Bordeaux, where he played with Zinédine Zidane (to give just one huge name), he left for the Blackburn Rovers in March 1995 where he and his team became champions in the Premier League.
Consequently, he returned to Ajax for the season of 1996/97. Here, Witschge arrived after Ajax’s huge period of success as coached by Louis van Gaal, to bring some experience to the team. The most memorable and debatable moment from his career took place on 26 October 1997, during a home game of Ajax against Feyenoord in the ArenA in Amsterdam. During the game, which was won by Ajax by 4-0, Witschge caused quite a stir by playing ‘keepie uppie’ nine times while racing alongside the left side of the field. Fans of Feyenoord found this action humiliating, although Witschge afterwards always maintained that he didn’t act deliberately. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O83e_IbNrSc
After a short adventure abroad in Spain and Japan, he decided to put an end to his active career.
On 21 February 1990, he made his debut on the Dutch national team in their home game against Italy (0-0). In total, he played for Oranje 31 times and scored 1 goal, the winning goal in a qualification game for the European Championships on 16 October 1991 against Portugal.
Nowadays, Witschge is an individual technique trainer at Ajax and before that he was assistant trainer under Aron Winter at Young Ajax (Ajax 2).