Number 14: The Total Footballer

An enigma, an artist, a football brand, an everlasting icon. To many, he is the ‘philosophy’, the father figure of modern football. Today, on his 73^rd birthday, let us honor the legacy of history’s most influential footballer, the greatest revolutionary of the most beautiful game: Hendrik Johannes Cruijff.

Statistics alone would put him in the list of most successful players: 3 Ballon d’Or, 3 European Cup, 1 Intercontinental Cup, 10 league titles, 7 domestic cup titles. But it was not just his extraordinary dribbling, incredible acceleration, prolific goalscoring ability, exceptional passing (as if those weren’t enough!), it was his truly brilliant mind, stunning improvisation, absolutely unmatched vision, and most importantly, his tactics that truly set him apart. It was as though he was aware of everything that was happening and was about to happen on the pitch, before everyone else. He wasn’t just a player, he was the orchestra conductor; even when he was on the ball, he always told his teammates where & when to run, what to do and maddeningly, he almost always turned out to be right. That wasn’t enough for him though, he dictated the referee, linesmen, even the managers too. Jorge Valdano, Argentina’s ’86 WC winner said, “Never in my life have I seen a player like Cruyff rule matches. He was the owner of the show, much more than his team, the referee or the fans. He was a player, coach and referee at the same time.”

The most famous exponent of Total Football(brainchild of great Rinus Michels), the “Number 14” reshaped Ajax history, reformed Dutch football and practically invented the Barca ideology. Ajax’s 3 consecutive European titles in ‘70s, Barcelona’s 1^st league title in 14 years ending the dominance of Real Madrid, Holland’s ’74 World Cup glory - he was the chief architect in all these. The tale of guide-less Ajax winning 2 league titles in ’82 & ’83, incredible story of weak Feyenoord ending league draught of 10 years in ’84 wouldn’t have been told if not for Cruyff. As a manager, he revived Dutch total football again, created his very own 3-4-3 diamond formation to take Ajax back to the top again, renovated Ajax youth academy, revolutionized La Masia(Barcelona’s youth academy), gave the world the Dream Team to win 4 straight La liga & 1 champions league for Barcelona.

Like a philosophical mathematician on the field, he would always find another way; there was always another dimension to his play. His greatest goal ever was a case in point. Ajax were playing a friendly against an amateur side, and there were no cameras, but what seems to have happened is that Cruyff was advancing on goal when the keeper came out to confront him. He turned and began running back with the ball towards his own half. The keeper pursued him until the halfway line, where he realised that Cruyff no longer had the ball. At some point he had backheeled it into the net without breaking stride. He gave us the “Cruyff Turn”, “Cruyff's impossible goal”, the penalty taken in two, 30-yard passes with the outside of his foot that put team-mates in front of the keeper so unexpectedly that sometimes the TV cameras couldn’t keep up(hardly anyone had kicked with the outside of his feet before Cruyff did). But it was 1974 World Cup that forever cemented his legacy as a player(even though his team lost the final to Germany by 1-2, one of the biggest upsets football has ever seen; it wasn’t Cruyff’s moment to go past Beckenbauer). He notionally spent the tournament at center-forward, but he was everywhere, in his iconic number 14 jersey. He’d sprint down the left wing and cross with the outside of his right foot. He’d drop into midfield and leave center-backs marking air. He’d drop back just to scream instructions. He’d go past defenders like they weren’t there, create space as if the stadium suddenly widened itself. Arsene Wenger tells the story of Cruyff telling two midfielders to swap positions, and returning 15 minutes later to tell them to swap again. To Wenger, this showed how hard it was to replicate the fluidity of “total football” if you didn’t have Cruyff himself. Seeing what others couldn’t, making others do what they couldn’t by themselves- these were his gifts. Rinus Michels,his Ajax coach once told him, “If a team-mate makes a mistake, you should have prevented it.” Frank Rijkaard, a teammate of Cruyff’s and opponent of Maradona’s, said that Maradona could win a match by himself, but didn’t have Cruyff’s gift of changing the team’s tactics to win it. In his own words, “There are some people who might have better technique than me and some may be fitter than me, but the main thing is tactics. With most players, tactics are missing. You can divide tactics into insight, trust, and daring. In the tactical area, I think I just have more than most other players.’’ In his first season with Barcelona, he led them to a 0-5 victory against eternal rival Real Madrid at the heart of Santiago Bernabeu with a tactical performance that will remain as a textbook guide for managers and critics for centuries. After the match a New York Times journalist wrote that Cruyff had done more for the spirit of the Catalan people in 90 minutes than many politicians in years of struggle. In 1981, the-then Ajax coach was helplessly watching from the side line how his team was losing 3-1 to Twente with Cruyff watching in the stands, so he came down, went to the sideline, decided to become the de facto coach and the Amsterdam giants wound up winning 5-3. Franz “der Kaiser” Beckenbauer said, “When players like [Gareth] Bale and [Cristiano] Ronaldo are worth around €100 million, Johan [Cruyff] would go in the billions.” Famous sports journalist David Winner stated, “Cruyff was the first player who understood that he was an artist, and the first who was able and willing to collectivize the art of sports.” In the brief spell that he had with Ajax as a coach, so successful was his system that they won the Champions League in 1995 playing his system – a tribute to his legacy as Ajax coach. Holland won the European Championship in 1988 with a coach (Rinus Michels), a team and a style that had been largely formed by Cruyff. He introduced strategies that remain part of the repertoire of Dutch football: for instance, if your team is under the cosh, don’t bring in an extra defender, but send on another attacker, as that will force the opposition to pull somebody back. To this day, Ajax’s academy operates on Cruyffian lines. "If you look back, you can't talk about his importance," David Endt, Ajax's general manager between 1997 and 2013, tells CNN, "It's much more than that. He is the trademark of our club. He showed in his game, with his ability, everything which is Ajax -- the daring, the offensive way of thinking about football.” Cruyffism is Barca philosophy (at least was, before Bartomeu became Barca president in 2014). If it wasn’t for Cruyff, La Masia wouldn’t have been developed; the world wouldn’t have heard of a certain Leonel Messi, the likes of Xavi, Iniesta, Busquets, Fabregas, Guardiola and many more would have never appeared on footballing world. The cathedral of all-conquering Barca of ’08-’12, arguably the finest team of all time, was literally built on the foundation Cruyff laid out. Apart from all those who graduated from La masia & Ajax youth system and those played with him or under him(that list is hundreds, maybe thousand names long), his philosophy, gameplay, vision have influenced managers like Arrigo Sacchi, Arsène Wenger, Carlos Alberto Torres, Marcelo Bielsa & players like Cantona, Platini, Butragueño; along with Ajax & Barca, brilliant Bayern Munich & Germany of today, invincible AC Milan of 1980s, dominating Spain of 2010s and many other champions would have been unthinkable without him. His blueprint for developing young players has been copied all over the world.

Older Cruyff was the most fascinating speaker on football. He always had something to tell everyone, on everything. “Cruyff thinks he’s always right,” said Ajax’s striker, John Bosman, “The funny thing is, he really is always right.” He said things you could use at any level of football: don’t give a square ball, because if it’s intercepted, the opposition has immediately beaten two men; don’t pass to a team-mate’s feet, but a yard in front of him so he has to run onto the ball which ups the pace of the game. “Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is”, “You play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you”, “Football is a game of mistakes. Whoever makes the fewest mistakes wins” - he never seemed short of these quirky remarks. A crazy philosopher, his talents only surpassed by his mouth- “Sometimes something's got to happen before something is going to happen”, “Every disadvantage has its advantage.”

As much success and admiration as he received in his life, he never had a shortage of criticism, dispute, trouble. A perfectionist, he always had a strong opinion about things and was even loyal to his principles more than anything else in the football world. Players walked out of training, boards threatened to terminate his contract, many criticised his style as too artistic to be practical; yet he never abandoned his ideas, his philosophies. To him, “Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring.” And he was never boring.

On March 24, 2016, in a clinic in Barcelona, Johan Cruyff breathed his last, losing his battle to lung cancer. Following his death, thousands of sportsmen, his supporters alike paid tribute to his legacy, with Gary Lineker saying “Football has lost a man who did more to make the beautiful game beautiful than anyone in history.”  

Cruyff said, “Winning is an important thing, but to have your own style, to have people copy you, to admire you, that is the greatest gift.” A genius way beyond his time, he changed the course of football history forevermore. In ‘1984’, George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Well, no one ruled the present like Cruyff did in his time, as he changed the past before him and shaped the future, more than anyone else.