The man nicknamed ‘Shandy Andy’ by Toffees fans had a turbulent four years at Goodison Park, but now he wants to put the past behind him
“Everton is a great club. The supporters were always behind me and I messed it up for them. I really want to say I am sorry for that. I hope one day I can go back to Goodison and everything will be okay.”
Andy van der Meyde is a man on a mission. To right the wrongs of his past, to put his days of sex, drugs and zebras behind him, and to win back the love of those who had his back during his four years playing for the Toffees.
His apology was published on the club’s matchday programme before their 3-2 win over Crystal Palace in May 2022 – a win that secured their Premier League status – and it was clear that Andy wanted to secure a place in the Toffees’ fan faithful. Especially given he had a bitter falling out with the very manager who was recently brought back to rescue the club from relegation this season.
How did he get here? And would things have turned out differently had he taken a different path? It’s time to enjoy The Ballad of ‘Shandy Andy’, as Toffees fans used to call him.
Andy was born in the Dutch city of Arnhem in 1979, but did not play for its famous hometown club Vitesse. He made his name at Ajax and became their go-to right winger by the age of 22. At the time, he was sharing the pitch with the likes of future superstars Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wesley Sneijder and Rafael van der Vaart. He also won 17 caps for the Dutch national team, playing a key role in their passage to the Euro 2004 semi-finals.
He was sold to Inter Milan for £4m in 2003 and spent two years there, the latter of which he struggled to get first-team football. It was there that he faced his first major crossroads – should he leave Ajax or not?
Andy told Italian website FootballStation in 2020: “To tell the truth, I didn’t want to go, not because of the Nerazzurri, but because I didn’t want to leave Ajax. I felt in top condition, but [Inter president Massimo] Moratti offered a lot of money to the club [Ajax] and the club itself forced me to go.”
Fed up with not getting enough game time, Andy signed for Everton in 2005 for £2.1m. David Moyes had long admired him, but their relationship would soon be tested.
Andy faced another crossroads – move to Goodison Park or the south of France? At the time, Monaco offered him a generous salary and a stunning apartment on the French Riviera. Sadly for Andy, his then-wife Diana Grifhorst required a large garden for her exotic pets, which included 11 horses, a camel and zebras.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live in 2013: “I wanted to sign for Monaco, but my ex-wife likes a lot of animals. I like a dog or something but not what she likes – zebras and all that sort of stuff. If I went there I could have made a lot of money because I wouldn’t have had to pay tax there.
“I phoned my wife and said, ‘Hey, they only have apartments there and you can’t have a zebra in the flat, you’ll have to leave them at home’. That was not her thing and she didn’t want to go there, so we went to rainy Liverpool.”
At 25 and earning £30,000-a-week, he initially stayed in a hotel while his wife and two daughters, Purple and Isabella, remained in Italy to sort out moving their animals.
Andy, injured on arrival, had ample time to immerse himself in Liverpool’s cultural scene. For his friend’s son’s 16th birthday, he took the lad to a strip club – a choice that perhaps hastened his downward spiral.
In his autobiography No Mercy, he admits: “After a couple of hours of alcohol I drove to the nearest strip club. Getting drunk in a strip club in the middle of Liverpool was not very smart. But I had a strong longing for naked women.”
What then followed was an affair between him and the stripper, Lisa – with whom he “fell in love” and described “beautiful, like Jordan [Katie Price]” and said “After I’d had sex with Lisa once I was addicted, she was wild, crazy and horny.”
His wife, who had by this point joined him in Liverpool along with their children, grew suspicious as he spent long periods away from the family home. She hired a private detective to follow him.
A tracker was placed on Andy’s car and he was caught red-handed. Speaking to the BBC, he said: “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.”
The damage done, Diana and their girls swiftly returned to Italy, leaving him in Liverpool with Lisa. But what happened next had a significant impact on his career at Everton, but it was something he was powerless to prevent.
Andy and Lisa had a child together, Dolce, who was born with a serious stomach condition, which left her fighting for life in Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. Over the months that followed, much of his time was spent by his little girl’s bedside. His relationship with Lisa deteriorated under the stress of their situation.
David, he claimed, was not sympathetic: “There was a team in London who wanted to take me on loan, but in Liverpool there is the best children’s hospital and my daughter was there,” he said in Ryan Baldi’s book The Next Big Thing.
“[Moyes] said to me, ‘Go to London, you can play there.’ I said, ‘I don’t want to go to London. My kid is in hospital. I want to stay here’. He said to me, ‘It’s always something with your kid. Always problems’. From that moment on, I thought, ‘F*** you. You speak like that about my kid? You can do whatever you want with me now.’ It was unbelievable.”
During his four years at Everton, Andy created two crucial opportunities – a cross for James Beattie’s goal in their 2005 Premier League match against Middlesbrough and an assist for Dan Gosling’s Merseyside derby FA Cup goal in 2009.
Off the pitch, life was more chaotic. On one occasion, he revealed that he fell ill after his drink was allegedly spiked on a night out.
Shortly afterwards, his dog Mac was kidnapped in a ransom plot after burglars raided his Wirral home. The gang also took a Ferrari, a Mini Cooper and eight Rolex watches and used his mobile to contact one of his friends, demanding a £5,000 ransom in exchange for the dog’s return.
In a shocking revelation, the footballer described his tumultuous weeks, saying: “It’s been an unbelievable couple of weeks. I thought when I went to the game and played on Saturday that everything would get back to normal. Then I came back to this. I wish it would just stop.”
His struggle with addiction emerged in his book, where he admitted: “Soon I couldn’t sleep without popping a pill – I was addicted.”
He even confessed to stealing sleeping pills from the club doctor, saying: “The pills were pretty heavy, the kind you only get with a doctor’s prescription. So I stole them from the office of the club doctor and no one noticed, for more than two years I stole those pills.”
His relationship with former teammates also buckled under the pressure. On club captain Phil Neville, he commented: “He was Moyes’ pet so I picked on him a lot. I think he told everything that was going on to the boss and that’s why he was captain, he was a snitch.”
Drug use wasn’t part of his life until after his Everton career ended. He clarified: “I never took drugs while I was playing at Everton. That was after I stayed another year living in Liverpool and had no club and I was taking drugs. I was living there alone with a friend and we were just going out and taking drugs.
“On Friday and Saturday we’d go out and do stupid things because you don’t see reality and I was hoping I could get my relationship back with my ex-girlfriend.”
Eventually realising his mistakes, he pleaded with his agent for help. He secured a deal with PSV Eindhoven in 2010, but he failed to appear in competitive matches. Following a brief retirement in 2011 at only 31 years of age, he played sporadically for the Dutch amateur team WKE before quitting football completely in 2012.
Thirteen years since he last kicked a ball, Andy appears to be a changed man. In a surprising turn of events, in 2014, he officiated at the Lingerie World Cup and now runs his YouTube series Bij Andy in de Auto (In Andy’s Car) where he chats with other footballers in his car. Among the guests were Ruud Gullit, Hakim Ziyech and current Liverpool boss Arne Slot.
He has also been happily married to Melisa Schaufeli since 2014 and both of them even had their own reality TV show, Andy & Melis, which ran for eight years. Such is the love he has for her, he claimed “She saved my life” when he was at his lowest.
Turning to Everton, Andy has shown nothing but regret for the way his time at Goodison Park went. He bluntly told Amazon Prime Italy last November: “I f****d up there. My football career was almost over when I went to England, it all ended because I did a lot of stupid things.
“I cheated on my ex-wife, she didn’t deserve all this, she was a good woman. I gave up my children for someone else. I will never forgive myself for this. Only my fault. I can’t blame anyone else for this.”
As for making up with David, he was clear: “For the things I said, I would shake his hand and say, ‘Sorry, man’. People ask why I did this and that. But life for me was a cocktail of problems. Mentally, I needed to put those away and, on that, I failed. I have to live with it.”
Andy definitely has to live with this turbulent chapter of his history. But he, like the rest of the club, have plenty to look forward to beyond 2025. The club will move to their brand new home at Bramley Moore Dock next season. Andy, meanwhile, has turned the page in his life.
Whether or not any zebras will make an appearance soon remains to be seen.