The Johan Cruyff apology

As mentioned in my pathetically short previous post, this one is dedicated to the dutch football figure of Johan Cruyff.

Hendrik Johannes Cruyff was born in Amsterdam in 1947 and is a former football player who retired in 1984, and then coached a few teams until somewhat recently. He started out in the professional league at about 17 and he was a fatherless, weak, skinny scrawny boy, before famed dutch coach Rinus Michels took him under his wing and created a special training to make him stronger. He started his career in Ajax and retired from Feyenoord, after brilliant performances in the national team, FC Barcelona and even the Washinton Diplomats in the US (back when football was a big fad in the US and many former stars decided to move there, for greener pastures...or rather, greener Astroturf)
Like Platini and Van Basten after him, he too has received the Ballon D'Or 3 times in his career and has been qualified as one of the best football players in the XX century.

....But I'm not here to talk about biographic details. What prompted me to write this is that despite being considered such a good player and big influence, how come fame has been so elusive? Shouldn't he be freakin' huge?? I mean, I know people into football know him, but whenever there's talk of the best players in history, his name is never in the top of anybody's mind; in fact, it seems to almost escape the list until somebody remembers him. It's always Pele, Maradona, Di Stefano, Beckenbauer, even Zidane, before somebody even thinks about mentioning Cruyff.

Well, a little nugget of history will help me kick off my part: Cruyff participated in one World Cup and one only. It was Germany 1974. He reached the final, no problem.
And he lost. The golden trophy went to Beckenbauer's Germany, instead.
So I started thinking, what if that hadn't been the case? Because today everybody knows Beckenbauer, but less know about Cruyff and only hardcore fans around the world know of or remember his absolute brilliance.
If Cruyff had taken the cup instead of Beckenbauer, he'd arguably be a lot more famous and he'd be on the top of everybody's head when it came the time to elaborate rankings.
I'm not saying everybody who lifts the World Cup over their heads becomes instantly famous (go on, try to remember who held it in their hands all the times before Beckenbauer in '74...); but is there a possibility that losing so famously kinda made him infamous...?


Beckenbauer and Cruyff, always the great strategists.

The problem in football, as with any other art, is that it's measured through actual achievements (how many trophies, how many goals, how many matches played, how many won); it's only the positive culmination of the process that makes us take a good look at the process itself. Just like in History, it is writen by those who win and to the victor belongs the spoils of war.

But it just takes one look at a video of Cruyff playing to notice his huge talent. Losing the Cup may have been product of other circumstances. It's hard to argue that Germany had had a brilliant campaign so far, carrying along a team of stars that's hardly happened in history before or after (Maier, Muller, Breitner, Vogts, Beckenbauer, Seeler, Netzer...)
And Holland...well, Holland was special. They had a good team, but not as many stars; they worked rather as a unit, a well-oiled machine that not many knew about before this event. The technique (or philosophy even) called Total Football, created by coach Rinus Michels, was the great revelation of '74. But who could deny their underdog status? Sure, one of the best teams in Europe was Amsterdam's own Ajax (also with Michels and Cruyff in the lead), but we must consider that Holland didn't have a great back history in football. They had just begun to turn pro when Michels took Ajax under his management (introducing then his Total Football); and though it took him only 6 years to make them the best team in Europe, what was Holland to the rest of the world, until they played in the World Cup?

But Germany had everything to win. And though we love to watch old 80s movies where the titans are beaten by the underdogs, real life tends to go in a different way. Germany overcame Cruyff's orange squad and took the cup home. You could probably breathe it in the air even before it happened.


Beckenbauer holds the golden pokal, after an intense match against Holland.

What a beautiful story would it be if the dutch had taken the cup home. What a strange, but gorgeous image to watch that skinny hopeful orphan boy -now a man-, that 'golden tulip' (as he was called) and his army of nobodies lift that same cup...

Beckenbauer was already the media darling and arguably, the first media superstar conceived by pro football. Always a gentleman, usually a diplomat, always there (having even played with injuries -remember Mexico 70 against Italy), always enthused by the sport as he had been when little.
And I confess he's been the subject of my adoration for a very long time. I have books on him, photos, figures and even his autograph rests framed in my living room.
But I inevitably feel that I may have taken the easier road when I became his fan. Supporting somebody so popular, so mediatic, with 2 World Cups on his resume (as captain and as coach) is surely easy to do.
The hard way would be to step out of the mold and follow the underdog. Hard, because less will know of him or remember him right away; there's less documentation, there are less websites, even less merchandise...gives you a weird feeling like you're supporting a loser, even though reality's not that simple.
But bottom line is: if you're not the winner, you're not popular. No good PR from you and you'll only not be famous, but infamous.
And Cruyff was...difficult, sorta speak.
Never one to hide what he really had to say, he always spoke his mind when it came to fighting for his principles. In the game, and in life and even when it came to money and sponsorships. He famously stripped one of Adidas' stripes from his national orange jersey, because though the team was sponsored by this brand, he claimed he was 'sponsored by Puma'. And there was no arguing over this point.
He reminds me of me, that way; I guess I feel a certain empathy and know where he's coming from. And I know what it's like to be *that* difficult person. It's inevitable, but more often than not, they'll mistake your tenacity for pedantry.



Certain decisions in his life made his reputation even harder to cope with: why did he not go to Argentina '78?
There were many reasons for him not to go. It was rumoured that he disliked the politic situation in Argentina and that he had problems with Adidas; some even think he had lost interest.
This issue caused major uproar in his country. This is one thing you just don't see anymore as very few players are now considered so indispensable, but Cruyff was different, of course. He was the one big gear that made the rest of the machine work.
Different media even went as far as organizing big celebrity-laden parties or raising signatures (14.000!!) in order to convince Cruyff from changing his mind about retiring from the orange squad.
Yet Cruyff was adamant about his decission; and what made it worse, he kept quiet about the resons behind it.
It was only in 2008 that he finally revealed why he did not go to Argentina in '78; the real reason is much darker than anything else you could've fathomed: in 1977 (when playing and living in Barcelona), he was almost kidnapped by some guys who broke into his apartment, tied him and his wife up and pointed a rifle to his head, in front of his own children.
After that, he was seen at all matches accompanied by bodyguards; his kids had to go to school with police escort.
How could he go faraway to South America after something like that had happened?

I'd kinda like to think that he actually felt bad about not being there in '78, but of course his own safety as well as his family's came first....but a man who loved the game so and was practically raised in a football field must've felt something...

Back on the subject at hand, Cruyff was a big talent, but maybe average at being the superstar. Beckenbauer seems to feel at home when doing advertisements, or back when he recorded songs and hung out with celebrities (and even married more than once, making any ole Hollywood inhabitant proud)
Cruyff did ads for products and sang too, but he always seemed out of his element, odd and uncomfortable. He did not have a singing voice (too nasal and out of control) and even claimed he was very embarrassed by those records and that he was probably drunk when he did it.


I've heard them. They're hideous and make me believe in the devil.

To him, football is just that. It's very simple, in the end; he coined the phrase "If you have the ball, your enemy doesn't". Sounds a bit daft, but after all, football is one-on-one and there *is* only one ball...

Watch him play, please. Take off all the myths, rumours, all you know or don't about him, all the vices and all the stupid crap and watch him. It's like a miracle. There's magic on that field. He's passionate, but precise. Only those who truly love what they do can manage that. As the president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta, said: Cruyff's someone who prefers to be the best, than to be the first.

Just a short one, showcasing the Johan Cruyff Turn:



So I end the post on this note.
Beckenbauer, you're my favorite.
But Cruyff...you're the best.