Farewell to a true legend

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

Dutch football giant Johan Cruyff has died at age 68 after a 5-month fight with lung cancer.

He was one of the most emblematic names in the game. He is credited for transforming football in the 90s as a coach and hugely contributing to the development of the so called "total football" in the 70s as a player, a style which dominated the game for about a decade, and which served as a basis for the development of modern football.

Cruyff won 36 trophies throughout his career, both as a player and coach. He took the Golden Shoe trophy three times, and won three European Champions Cups in a row with his original team Ajax Amsterdam. Although he came just short of winning the World Cup with Holland (beaten by West Germany in the 1974 final), he's considered one of the handful of football deities of all time, and for a good reason.

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As a coach, he led FC Barcelona to their first triumph in the European Champions Cup in 1992 (they took the Cup Winners Cup in 1989, again under his guidance). FCB also won four consecutive titles in the Spanish Liga between 1990-94, the golden years of the club which they're trying to emulate nowadays with Messi, Neymar and Suarez. He was the father of the Barcelona dream team with unforgettable players like Zubizareta, Laudrup, Koeman, Stoichkov, Romario, Eusebio, Guardiola, Amor, Ferrer, Bakero, Begiristain, Salinas, etc. He is said to have "invented" modern football, and was known for his tremendous intellect both on the pitch and beside it.

He'll be greatly missed. Rest in peace, you genius magician.

Comments

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

He was indeed a great player, and an even more influential manager. Whether what he played should be considered "modern" football is debatable, of course, since the game has changed a lot from those times, and nowadays you could almost never see someone roll across entire defenses like he did. Even Messi would not be allowed by defenses to do what Cruyff did - the game has become much tighter, more athletic, faster, and such individual raids, no matter how high the individual technical skills of the attacker, are nearly impossible. As for "total football", it had its flaws which were exposed by the West Germans in that final, and later by a number of teams (notably Italian ones).

That said, Cruyff was indeed a giant of the game. May he rest in peace.

[dreamville-bg.livejournal.com]

Look, even Messi has tried to emulate him:

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[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Along with George Best, the greatest I ever saw (on telly). I must add that Pele was too old by the time I was football aware and watching.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I'm looking at George Best's dribbling (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWWA-h_-5g) and Cruyff's, and two things stick out to me. One, why the hell are all the defenders always just standing around, watching from close, instead of tackling him? That would never happen in modern football. Messi has tremendous dribbling skills, but he very rarely attempts to beat more than 2-3 defenders, because he knows the 4th one would knock him down.

And two, if any forward attempted such individual heroics today instead of passing the ball to his team-mates, they'd be instantly substituted by their coach, and rebuked very harshly. In fact this has happened several times to guys like Balotelli. Excessive displays of individualism are not appreciated in modern football. Mainly because of the iron principle that "the ball is always faster than the man". If you want to quickly develop your attack, you pass the ball quickly and move around quickly to create open spaces (just look at Barcelona's "tiki-taka" style that has left many a team totally baffled.

Rule one: if you don't have space, you don't dribble. Otherwise the whole attack gets stuck, your play stops being fluid and dynamic, your team loses its rhythm, becomes too reliant on one or two players, and thus, succumbs to predictability. While those dribbling tricks are indeed very exciting, they wouldn't yield any results nowadays.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

In general I'd tend to agree with you, with one or two caveats.

i) during Best and Cruyff's playing careers referees tended to give less protection to strikers than they do nowadays.
ii) I can still picture Best playing in an era when the likes of Norman Hunter and Jackie Charlton (for example) were at Leeds and chopped all around them with the sort of callous abandon that put strikers into hospital with his socks around his ankles...ie no shin guards. Either extreme bravery, or a bravura that mesmerised opponents.

Some of it was sheer charisma made physical. Cruyff had that in spades, much like Best.