Johan Cruyff (1947 - 2016) was a Dutch footballer and coach regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of the game. [1] As a forward for Ajax he won three consecutive European Cups and was voted European Footballer of the Year three times, and he captained the Netherlands side that reached the 1974 World Cup final playing the style known as Total Football. [2] As coach of Barcelona from 1988 he built the team that won the club's first European Cup and established the playing philosophy and youth system that shaped its later dominance.
Early life and Ajax
Hendrik Johannes Cruijff was born on 25 April 1947 in Betondorp, a working-class district of eastern Amsterdam, close to the Ajax stadium. [1] His father, a grocer who supplied the club, died when Cruyff was twelve, and his mother later worked as a cleaner at Ajax; he joined the youth system at ten and made his first-team debut at seventeen.
Under the coach Rinus Michels, Ajax developed the approach later called Total Football, in which outfield players continually exchanged positions and the team pressed high and compressed the field. [3] Cruyff, nominally a centre-forward, ranged across the pitch directing play. Ajax won eight Dutch league titles with him and the European Cup in 1971, 1972 and 1973.
Barcelona and the Netherlands
In 1973 Cruyff moved to Barcelona for a world record fee, rejoining Michels. The club won its first league title in fourteen years in his opening season, including a 5-0 victory at Real Madrid, and he became an adopted figure in Catalonia at a time when Catalan identity was still suppressed under Franco. [2]
At the 1974 World Cup the Netherlands reached the final with a style that drew worldwide attention, beating Brazil and Argentina along the way before losing to West Germany. [1] Cruyff was named player of the tournament, and the turn he performed against the Swedish defender Jan Olsson is still known as the Cruyff turn. He declined to play at the 1978 World Cup, later explaining the decision by reference to an attempted kidnapping at his home in Barcelona.
After spells in the North American Soccer League and returns to Ajax and then Feyenoord, where he won a final Dutch title, he retired as a player in 1984. [3]
Coaching
Cruyff coached Ajax from 1985, winning the European Cup Winners' Cup, before taking charge of Barcelona in 1988. There he assembled the side remembered as the Dream Team, which won four consecutive Spanish league titles and the club's first European Cup in 1992 at Wembley. [2]
He insisted on possession football, a high defensive line and technical ability over physique, and reorganised the club's La Masia youth academy around the same principles. [4] Players and assistants who worked under him, among them Pep Guardiola, Frank Rijkaard and Ronald Koeman, carried the approach into coaching careers of their own, and the Barcelona and Spanish national teams of the late 2000s are widely traced to his tenure. He left the club in 1996 after a dispute with the board.
Later years and legacy
A heavy smoker, Cruyff underwent heart surgery in 1991 and afterwards campaigned publicly against tobacco. [1] He later managed the Catalan representative side, founded the Cruyff Foundation for sport among children and disabled people, and established the Johan Cruyff Institute for sports management education.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2015 and died in Barcelona on 24 March 2016. [4] Ajax renamed its stadium the Johan Cruijff ArenA in his honour, and his aphoristic remarks on the game, often paradoxical, remain widely quoted in football.
