GREAT AND GOOD
Johan Cruyff believed it was more important to improve people’s lives than to win trophies
THE Finn with the slickedback flaxen hair and the bulging eyes was ready to pounce. He had been at our table in the plush five-star Berlin hotel all night making less than scintillating conversation about his trade in Nigerian footballers. Not what I was there for.
I was there for a quiet chat with the Johan Cruyff. My idol, but also my fellow performance guest the next day at a football seminar in the German capital.
We had both been on stage together for about an hour while I quizzed him about his career, his philosophy and, specifically, his advice for clubs wishing to invest strategically and financially in youth development.
It would be a gallery of the great and good the next morning.
From Real Madrid, Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao to AC Milan, Juventus, Roma via Benfica, Sporting Lisbon, Feyenoord, Everton, Spurs, Borussia Dortmund, Philadelphia Union, Zenit Saint Petersburg and many others.
Then, just as Clarence Seedorf finished delivering the single most impressive, articulate, persuasive speech I have ever heard from a football player, there was a sudden presence at my shoulder.
It was the great man. JC himself. He tapped me on the shoulder to begin to say: ‘Hi, it’s me... shall we have a chat now?’, when our Finnish ‘friend’ pounced.
‘Can I have a word first?,’ asked the Finn. ‘I’d like to explain about how important my business is of importing Nigerian players to Europe and how much it would help us if you’d endorse it and come and have a look... blah blah blah blah.’
Cruyff looked at him with a bemused half-smile, which was one of his trademarks and developed from long years of people wanting something from him and others not being anywhere near his level of experience or intellect.
As the Finn finished his breathless torrent of tosh, the great man put his hand on the garrulous nitwit’s shoulder and said, encouragingly: ‘This must all be very interesting to you...’ and, with that, glided away, beckoning me to join him.
I glanced back to see a puzzled, dazed look on a Finnish face — not sure whether he had been tricked, encouraged, condescended to or agreed with.
It occurred to me right then that was the latest in 50 years of opponents left humiliated in Johan Cruyff’s wake.
Just a tiny anecdote about a giant of a human being. Not just the most influential and important man in the history of football, but a guy who spent the last third of his life seeking to improve the lot of others.
Of sportsmen and women who required training and vocational education in order to have a career after they finished competing.
Of neighbourhood kids who were in need of a dedicated and protected space in order to practice, for free, their soccer skills. The Dutchman helped design, co-fund and inaugurate a couple of hundred ‘Cruyff Courts’ around the globe where youngsters can play safely on the latest artificial turf on a free to use durable seven-a-side space. I believe Aberdeen was due to be the next venue.
Attached to every single Cruyff Court are the 14 ‘Cruyff Rules’ — they are short and simple, but they embody everything he stood for.
Control the ball, think about your team-mates, anticipate, take care of your environment, use the ball well ...the great man’s voice in written form. There forever.
He helped thousands and thousands of mentally or physically-handicapped children to feel liberated, proud, bolder, happier, more co-ordinated and, I’ll wager, more loved.
Johan (right) always believed that it was an even more important part of his mission to i mprove other people’s lives than to win trophies or run a football club.
You may well know people like that in your own life but, let’s be honest, exceptionally gifted and visionary people usually dedicate their energies to themselves, their empires, their wealth, their ego. Not my hero, though. Across all the words I’ve written or spoken about Hendrik Johannes Cruijff, I have tried to make clear that even if he was a winged god of football he was also a cussed, idiosyncratic, argumentative and sometimes impenetrable man.
When we were talking about football last October, I asked him about Dortmund manager Thomas Tuchel’s theory that the life and development of junior football talents should be deliberately made full of obstacles and tests of various kind, not velvet carpet as is the way nowadays, so that when they encounter problems and adversity on the pitch they have the armoury to deal with them. ‘He’s right!’ Cruyff beamed. ‘When my (Barcelona) “Dream Team” was dominating Spain, we were fantastic in creating, attacking and controlling the ball but perhaps we weren’t as good at defending.
‘One day, the keeper (Andoni Zubizarreta) and the central defender (José Ramón Alexanko) came to me to say: “Coach... what should we do when we are defending a corner — how should we organise?”. ‘I told them: “How should I know!? I’m the coach — YOU guys are the defenders, it’s your responsibility. Sort it out”.’
Now, with all those Barcelona trophies won, it stands as an example of his idiosyncracy. The world being out of step with Johan, not the other way round.
But, think about it. If a new, young moderately promising coach were to spout that now, the idea he had no input in defensive organisation and didn’t see it as his responsibility, then we would shred him for ineptitude.
RULES and Johan didn’t sleep well together. He did it the best, he did it brilliantly. But he did it stubbornly differently. Last word not to me but to one of the icons of the club he most humiliated, who most regretted failing to sign him back in 1973: Emilio Butragueño.
I have said it before, but it stands repetition. This Real Madrid legend saw Cruyff as soaring above the rancour, bitterness and polemic of a century-long angry rivalry, sometimes hatred, between Madrid and Barcelona.
Butragueño explained: ‘I always told everyone that Cruyff was my idol. I’m not being disloyal to Madrid by saying that.
‘I believe in honesty and when you look at what Johan’s like, who he is and how he played, then if you can’t say he’s your idol, you are not a person worthy of being a Real Madrid supporter.’
Amen to that. Amen to a great life. A man of immense genius, vision, looks, wit, intelligence, family values and success.
Not just a great footballer. Not just the greatest football man, but a truly great man. Adios, Johan.
I told everyone that Cruyff was my idol. I wasn’t being disloyal to Madrid