Johan Cruyff finally reveals why he didn’t play in 1978

By: Rob | April 17th, 2008

Cruyff didn’t play in 1978 and now we know why The answer to one of football’s great mysteries has been revealed. In 1974, Holland, led by Johan Cruyff waltzed through the World Cup to a final where - arguably - only thier own confidence cost them. He was playing at Barca when 4 years later they made it to the final again, only to again loose to the hosts. It was without thier talisman, Cruyff, who had mysteriously refused to travel to Argentina. He left Barcelona, immediatly after the World Cup finished and left the world wondering what had gone on.

In Holland there is a deep belief that had Cruyff played in the 1978 World Cup, they would have been champions. Certainly, they have never come as close as they did since. Many reasons over the years have been given for Cruyff’s no show - his slightly leftist politics meant he didn’t want to play in dictotorial Argentina, he fell out with the Dutch FA over sponsership (famously in 1974 he refused to play in an adidas shirt and tore one of the famous three stripes off) or that his wife Danny was a sort of Yoko Ono figure who convinced him not to play on the biggest stage of all again.

Its that last theory, as projected in Carlos Rexach - his former Barca teamate - autobiography, that has prompted Johan, after 30 years to set the record straight. It turns out there was a bizzare plot to kidnapp Cruyff and his family - presumably to hole Barcelona to ransom - which affected his mindset.

“You should know that I had problems at the end of my career as a player here and I don’t know if you know that someone [put] a rifle at my head and tied me up and tied up my wife in front of the children at our flat in Barcelona.

The children were going to school accompanied by the police. The police slept in our house for three or four months. I was going to matches with a bodyguard”

The kidnapp attempt, which Cruyff apparently escaped from relatively unscathed, happened in 1977, so little wonder that Cruyff was unwilling to travel halfway around the world to play in a World Cup. He wouldn’t confirm it, but its almost certainly the reason he walked away from Barcelona as well - he would later move over to America, an experience he loved, playing for the Washington Diplomats, and guesting for the New York Cosmos.

Barcelona didn’t win the European Cup while Cruyff was a player, but he did manage to set things right as a manager, and won them thier first European Cup in 1992. He soon left the club, but remains in a big advisor role, he was of course talking before the big Champions League semi-final next week between Barca and Manchester United.