Cruyff overwhelmingly best-ever football gift

In Summary

SIMPLY THE BEST. It is at Ajax and Barcelona that he blossomed and almost single-handedly brought a style of play that not only delivered success then, but also laid the template for Barcelona and Spain’s recent domination of football philosophy.

I gave up on the ineffectual attempts to judge the world’s greatest anybody. It is way too subjective an argument to have. But from time to time a man so extra ordinary comes along and leaves us no option but to sing his praises.
And one such man would be Johan Cruyff, a Dutch footballer of the 60s, whose fame and influence was to extend beyond three decades and will now definitely outlive him given that lung cancer claimed his life on March 24.
Now, a no less footballer than Pele himself once said that to be rated as a great footballer one must bring something to the game that has never been seen or done by anyone before. I do agree with Pele even if there are millions of kids doing unthinkable stuff on some non-descriptive dusty fields that shall go unrecorded.

It does not matter who did it first. I do not care, for instance, who invented the no-look pass but when you see Ronaldinho execute one, you just want to give him the copyright and a thousand lawyers to protect him from infringement.
I guess what I am saying is that some of the things in football cannot be described with words. They just have to be seen or tried out, if only to establish how difficult they are to think of, let alone execute.
As it is then, it does not matter whether those watching at the 1974 World Cup thought Cruyff really invented that turn, but that he did it at all and ‘patented’ it.

Decorated
Having passed the greatness test, Cruyff went to have an extremely successful football career, leading Ajax to three consecutive European Cups at the start of the 1970s before signing up for Barcelona in 1973 as the world’s most expensive player then. He played for other clubs in his long career but those two – Ajax and Barcelona – stand out. It is at these two that he blossomed and almost single – handedly brought a style of play that not only delivered success then, but also laid the template for Barcelona and Spain’s recent domination of football philosophy.

He was the thinking footballer in a team that does not lose possession and in which every player is capable of replacing the other in a fluid formation that ensures structure is not lost either. This is how he played and thought and this is what enabled him to make the rare transition from a successful player to a successful coach.

Cruyff was not only, alongside Pele and Maradona, the most influential player of contemporary football, he is also the architect of La Masia and Ajax’s total football, a model that informs how football is being played today. If that is not great, then nothing should be in football.
He once said; “Football gave me everything and tobacco almost took it away.” On March 24, tobacco did take it away, but the best way to honour him would be to say, ‘football gave him everything and he gave it right back’.
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