Patrick Stephan Kluivert was born on July 1, 1976 in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Kluivert, like Edgar Davids is of Surinamese descent.

Kluivert's career on the international level started off a little shaky as he suffered a knee injury early in the Euro 1996 which forced out of the tournament completely.

Netherlands eventually were knocked of the tournament in a penalty shootout against France. In 1998, Kluivert was a part of the Netherlands squad in the World Cup hosted by France. Kluivert showed his flair for scoring in matches against Argentina and Brazil with the striker scoring in both matches, but the match against Brazil ended in a penalty shootout which the Brazilians won and knocked Netherlands out of the Cup.

The next major tournament that Kluivert participated in was the Euro championships in 2000. Kluivert put on a show in this tournament, scoring a hat-trick against Yugoslavia. The Netherlands eventually lost to Italy in the semifinal, but Kluivert still managed to get top scorer honors with Savo Milosevic at 5 a piece.

It was a different story in the Euro championships in 2004 though, as Kluivert didn't have one minute of playing time on the pitch and Netherlands were knocked out once again in the semifinal.

It seems as though Kluivert was getting over shadowed by other up and coming strikers from Netherlands like Ruud van Nistelrooy and youngster Klaas Jan Huntelaar after his success in with the squad in 2000.

Kluivert was denied an invitation for participating in the World Cup in 2006 in favor of Coach Marco van Basten's decision to leave him off the roster.

Even though his career with Netherlands national team seems to be over with Van Basten as the coach, Kluivert still holds the all-time goal scoring mark for the Dutch squad at 40 goals that has yet to be broken.