Great European Cup Players #1 Johan Cruyff

By: Rob | February 25th, 2008

As a series to keep everyone reading between Champions League games, I’ll now and then profile a great player who has played in the Champions League, or its former incarnation as The European Cup. So fittingly, I’m starting with perhaps the greatest of them all. Hendrik Johannes Cruijff (Johan Cruyff to you and me)

Johan Cruyff at Ajax

“I don’t understand why players cross themselves before they come onto the pitch. If it works, and all 22 players cross themselves, every game is going to end in a draw” – Johan Cruyff

When Cruyff was first coming to prominece in the mid-1960s for Ajax, dutch football had no real history. The Dutch national team was not a force to be reckoned with at all. In fact, its quite difficult to imagine with knowledge of the 1974 team, but they didn’t even qualify for the world cup in 1970. Cruyff did however make an pretty immediate impact in the Ajax side – playing centre forward, he scored 25 goals in 23 games in his second season in dutch football, guiding Ajax to the title.
The 1969 Ajax team were quite a revelation – knocking out esteemed opposition on the way, Ajax made it to the final, and though they were beaten by AC Milan in the final were considered a great new, exciting attacking team. Up till this point Cruyff has been wearing #9, the next season after missing the start of the campagin with a groin injury, he would switch to his now iconic number 14.
The 1970-71 seson, Cruyff inspired Ajax to a European Cup, and as star player in the tournament won European Footballer of the Year, as well Dutch Player of the Year for about the thousendth time. Cruyff’s finest hour in the competetion came against Inter in the 1972 final, where as the star of the show, tore apart the super-defensive Italian side and scored two goals.
At the end of every season at Ajax, the unique way of picking a captain was a blind vote by the players (a novel way of sorting out the England captaincy, methinks) Cruyff had been voted a couple of times, and naturally expected it to be a formality that he would be voted again. He wasn’t as his supposed arrogance and superstardom was supposedly getting in the way. Reportedly after finding out, the first thing he did was get on the phone to his agent to get him out of Amsterdam. He joined Barcalona just two games into the Dutch season.
At Barca, he instantly became a hero after saying he joined the Catalan club because unlike Real Madrid, they weren’t associated with Franco, and Fascism. Imagine for a second a modern player having the intellegence to have a political opinion – Oleguer aside – let alone letting it be known. Cruyff was rather different from most footballers however. In fact, he pretty much was the first modern footballer in alot of ways, the first to see the chance to sell image rights and only play in certain brands – he famously tore a stripe off of his Holland shirt at the ‘74 World Cup because he was paid by a different brans, and didn’t want to be associated with adidas.
Idyosncratic as always he once delibrately hit the post, so as to liven up the crowd in a game Ajax were winning easily.
He was also, a tactical genius. Together with Rinus Michels at Ajax they invented Total Football, and completely revolutionised the game again (The last revolution had been the England team of ‘Wingless Wonders’ in 1966, pretty much cementing the 4-4-2 formation, that would be thier cross to bear for the next 40 years. The ‘Ajax Formation’ is much more modern, and indeed coming into fashion again, with two wide forwards and a deep sitting striker – Its pretty much how Roma, and Man United play these days) so it was natural when he went on to become a fantastic coach. He also always stayed true to his attacking principles – one season as Ajax coach Ajax had a goal difference of +85. He also picked up a European Cup as the manager of Barca, in 1992 at Wembley. And he still stands as the most sucsessful Barca manager of all time.

The best player to never win a World Cup, and in my humble opinion the greatest footballer of all time. Johan, we salute you.

A couple of Youtube links to tick you over: