Johan Cruyff

Gloria Ajax and the golden era of Total Football

Cruyff joined the Ajax youth system on his tenth birthday. Cruyff and his friends would frequently visit a "playground" in their neighborhood and Ajax youth coach Jany van der Veen, who lived close by, noticed Cruyff's talent and decided to offer him a place at Ajax without a formal trial. Cruyff suffered from physical underdevelopment when he joined the Ajax academy and head coach Vic Buckingham urged him to go to the gym while providing him with better nutrition. When he first joined Ajax, Cruyff preferred baseball and continued to play the sport until age fifteen when he quit at the urging of his coaches. At that age, Cruyff quit his secondary education without a diploma after staying down twice. Cruyff made his first team debut on 15 November 1964 for Ajax Amsterdam in a 1–3 defeat against GVAV Groningen (since 1971 FC Groningen). In his second match, his home debut against PSV Eindhoven, he scored a goal. The following match against Feyenoord Rotterdam was lost 9–4, and after a draw the following week, Ajax were close to relegation. The management lost faith in Vic Buckingham and forced his dismissal on 21 January 1965.

The 36-year-old Rinus Michels was hired as the new coach. Michels, a sports teacher for deaf children, had previously played for Ajax himself. His job description as coach included team training three evenings a week. However, the ambitious Michels soon began taking radical steps to…

As a Dutch international, Cruyff played 48 matches, scoring 33 goals. The national team never lost a match in which Cruyff scored. On 7 September 1966, he made his official debut for the Netherlands in the UEFA Euro 1968 qualifier against Hungary, scoring in the 2–2 draw. In his second match, a friendly against Czechoslovakia, Cruyff was the first Dutch international to receive a red card. The Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) banned him from international games, but not the Eredivisie or KNVB Cup. Accusations of Cruyff's "aloofness" were not rebuffed by his habit of wearing a shirt with only two black stripes along the sleeves, as opposed to Adidas' usual design feature of three, worn by all the other Dutch players. Cruyff also had a separate sponsorship deal with Puma. From 1970 onwards, he wore the number 14 jersey for the Netherlands, setting a trend for wearing shirt numbers outside the usual starting line-up numbers of 1 to 11.

World Cup 1974

Before training camp, Cruyff initiated tough negotiations with the federation regarding bonuses and lucrative sponsorship deals. During the training camp, Cruyff and the Ajax players quickly reconciled. Neither side had any interest in reviving old disputes and they quickly came to an understanding. At the training camp in Zeist, Cruyff and the Ajax group were the dominant force. Rinus Michels, appointed as coach, constantly commuted between the Netherlands and Spain, where he was coaching FC Barcelona in the cup…

Entry into management with Ajax

After retiring from playing, Cruyff followed in the footsteps of his mentor Rinus Michels. In June 1985, Cruyff returned to Ajax again. He coached a young Ajax side to victory in the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1987 (1–0). In the 1985–86 season, the league title was lost to Jan Reker's PSV, despite Ajax having a goal difference of +85 (120 goals for, 35 goals against). In the 1985–86 and 1986–87 seasons, Ajax won the KNVB Cup. It was during this period as manager that Cruyff was able to implement his favoured team formation—three mobile defenders; plus one more covering space – becoming, in effect, a defensive midfielder (from Rijkaard, Blind, Silooy, Verlaat, Larsson, Spelbos), two "controlling" midfielders (from Rijkaard, Scholten, Winter, Wouters, Mühren, Witschge) with responsibilities to feed the attack-minded players, one second striker (Bosman, Scholten), two touchline-hugging wingers (from Bergkamp, van't Schip, De Wit, Witschge) and one versatile centre forward (from Van Basten, Meijer, Bosman).

Return to Barcelona as manager and building "the Dream Team"

After having appeared for the club as a player, Cruyff returned to Barcelona for the 1988–89 season, this time to take up his new role as coach of the first team. In 1988, FC Barcelona was going through major turbulence both on and off the field. Since Cruyff's departure in 1978, there had been a lack of an overarching sporting philosophy, and the playing style…

Gold Medal of the City of Barcelona for Cultural, Scientific, Civic or Sports Merit

Hendrik Johannes "Johan" Cruyff was born on 25 April 1947 in the Burgerziekenhuis Hospital in Amsterdam. He grew up on a street five minutes away from Ajax's stadium, his first football club. Johan was the second son of Hermanus Cornelis Cruijff (1913–1959) and Petronella Bernarda Draaijer (1917–2007), from a humble, working-class background in east Amsterdam. Cruyff grew up at Akkerstraat 32 in the Betondorp ('concrete village') neighbourhood, a district whose architectural style was described as "brutalist". Akkerstraat was five minutes away from the De Meer Stadion, where the football club Ajax Amsterdam played its home games. His father Manus was a fan of Ajax. The environment in which the Cruyffs grew up is described by his biographer Auke Kok as business- and market-oriented, which distanced itself from leftist ideas. The young Cruyff was shaped by Calvinism; while he was considered a devout person and often referred to God, he later also experimented with spiritualistic practices to make contact with his deceased father. At school, Cruyff at most showed inconsistent performance and had twice to repeat a school year. Looking back on his youth, Cruyff later expressed the suspicion that his mixed academic performance and his persistent restlessness were due to ADHD. He had a close relationship with his older brother Henny, who was two and a half years his senior, during his youth. Observers originally considered Henny more talented than Johan, but he did not make the…