Steven Jerome Pienaar

Steven Jerome Pienaarimage:Steven Jerome Pienaar |Steven Jerome Pienaar is a South African football player playing for the English Premier League club, Everton. Steven can play on both right and left wing. Moreover, he is also a member of the South African national team. In his entire soccer career, he has played for Ajax, Ajax Cape Town, Everton and Borussia Dortmund.

Standing five feet seven inches tall, Steven focuses mainly on the position of winger and attacking midfielder. During his youth years, he played actively for the Westbury Arsenal, School of Excellence and Ajax Cape Town teams.

During his senior career years, he started playing from 1999 for the Ajax Cape Town till 2001. With this team, he made 24 appearances and 6 goals. From 2001 to 2006, he played for Ajax team, making 94 appearances and scoring 15 goals. For two seasons, 2006-08, he played for Borussia Dortmund team, making 25 appearances. From 2007 to 2008, he played for Everton team, making 28 appearances and scoring 2 goals.

Born in Westbury in Johannesburg, he started his soccer career at Ajax Cape Town. He was noticed by Ajax CT when he played for the School of Excellence. Later on, he was asked to join the Ajax CT youth academy. During this period, he got to polish the technique and the talent that God gifted him and learned to use it as per the God’s wish. Moreover, he even added that he was fortunate to have been coached under Leo van Veen.

In 2002 he made his international debut at under-17 for South Africa in a 2-0 victory against Turkey. Since then, he achieved 46 caps and 2 goals. He even participated at the FIFA World Cup in 2002 and in 2010; he was named in the 29 man preliminary squad for the FIFA World Cup.

Steven shined as one of the best players of Ajax Amsterdam along with other teammates like Maxwell, Nigel De Jong, Ibrahimovic and such players. In 2006, it was announced that Borussia Dortmund, a German club had signed him on a three year contract basis from Ajax. He had to struggle during his first year at the club and other players also didn’t accept him to the club.

By 2007-08, he joined Everton, an English club on loan and signed a three year contract for a pre-agreed fee of 2 million pounds after payment of an initial loan fee of 350,000 pounds in April 2008 from Dortmund. For Everton, he made his Premier League debut and of the 2-1 latter stage, achieved home victory against Wigan Athletic. For the team, he scored 2-1 win over Middlebrough in 2007.

=== Career Highlights ===

At Ajax Cape Town, he won the Rothman’s Cup by beating Orlando Pirates by 4-1 in the finals.

Whilst with the Ajax Amsterdam team, he got Eredivisie twice in 2001-02 season and in 2003-04 season. He got the KNVB Cup twice in 2001-02 and in 2005-06 season. Moreover, Steven got the Johan Cruijff-schaal twice again in 2002 and in 2005 respectively.