Johan Cruyff is arguably the most influential figure in football's history.
Johan
Cruyff begins in typically strident fashion, but finishes with
something of a romantic flourish. The 66-year-old is asked about the
style of football that he helped to define, and whether he thinks there
has ever been a tactic created to trump the passing-pressing game that
Ajax, Barcelona, Spain and now Bayern Munich have gone on to dominate
the sport with.
"Well, I don’t think so," Cruyff shrugs -- but his reasoning isn’t
totally expected, nor is it completely to do with just finding out the
best way to win.
"I think the way Barcelona played, it’s a pleasure for everybody who
likes football, because the technical qualities are the highest
standard and every little child can try to do the technical qualities.
It’s not like somebody runs 100 yards in nine seconds [and] if you can’t
do it, you don’t count. You always count because you can always get
better. If you want to play basketball you’ve got to be two metres.
Otherwise you can’t play. Here, everyone can play and everyone can
develop. That’s the nicest thing about the game of football."
The way Cruyff thinks remains almost as enthralling as the way he
used to play or manage. He has become one of football’s sages, arguably
the most influential figure in its history. That becomes clear when he
starts to elaborate on the Total Football approach first instilled on
Ajax in the late ‘60s, and how it all remains so recognisable.
"We said, 'OK, where are the best players?'" Cruyff says of the
pressing aspect of their game that suddenly changed the very perceptions
of a pitch. "'There'. Technically, yeah, in the positions very good but
also with the ball -- so attack them there. What’s the difference
between a good player and bad player? It’s the speed of [control], so if
you’ve got to speed them up, it's to provoke mistakes. And the main
thing is that the quicker you can change your mentality, offensive [to]
defensive, the first defender is the centre-forward. He's the nearest
by, so the quickest he can put the pressure on, start defending.
"And you run less. You don’t run more. You run less... of course,
you've got to do possession. It's a way of thinking and it's the way you
can re-organise the whole thing."
"Because, who’s got the ball, who scores the goal?"
It was when Cruyff returned to Barcelona as manager in 1988, making
the same move from Ajax he did as a player in 1973, that the philosophy
was properly put in place in modern terms. That transformation set the
path to Wednesday night and the magnificent manner in which Pep
Guardiola’s Bayern toyed with Manchester City. It is all the more
remarkable when you consider that Barca were so crisis-ridden for most
of the 28 years leading up to Cruyff’s appointment, and an example
no-one would choose to follow. He talks about such a quantum leap as if
it was elementary.
“When I came in, [Barcelona] were bad. We had to change. There was no sense to continue something that goes wrong.
"I had a big advantage that I played there. You know the mentality,
you know what they do, what they think, so it was quite easy to make
some rules.
"The players were there, they were good players. You had to put in
some character. We brought some players from the Basque country that you
know for sure will give it. So it’s a question of compensation in the
things you need."
Cruyff has essentially become the figurehead of one of the game's
two main opposing philosophies, a dichotomy that was brought to a head
in the notorious 2010 World Cup final. Then, his native Netherlands took
Jose Mourinho’s reactive approach at Internazionale to extreme levels,
as they sought to interrupt the Spanish style initially set in place by
Cruyff. The Dutchman himself ended up castigating his country for
attempting "anti-football" and vocally announcing his support for Spain.
On the day of this interview, as he relaxes after a round of golf at
the Alfred Dunhill Links in St Andrew’s to promote his charity, the
Cruyff Foundation, he is a little less dogmatic.
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"You
can’t say this or that, or this is better than that. You’ve all kinds
of different players. A lot of people make comparisons between [Leo]
Messi and [Cristiano] Ronaldo. They’re completely different. You can’t
compare them. They’re both great in the things what they do, and they’re
different.
"You can say who do you prefer as a way of playing. Do you prefer a
[more] technical one or do you prefer somebody who is technical, who is
physical and who can shoot very high. It's totally different and that’s
why it's so good that the differences are there because you can see that
a lot of people make a wrong decision in choosing the team where they
go. It's if the team fits with the quality you have."
Cruyff still views the game from a truly unique perspective, and continues to feel so much of it it could be done differently.
"[Football] has always been narrow-minded because we say 'he's a
football player' but in baseball we say he's a pitcher, he's a catcher,
he's a third baseman... but why is he a footballer? It's all different.
But, as a coach to direct a team, you've got to look at the individual
qualities. That's why I see the game totally different."
He offers the example of a specific European club’s transfer policy.
"I read in the paper that this team are watching this player, this
player, this player. Well, they're idiots because they're so different
that how can you look at three different players in the same position?
"There are too many different things in football. People who are
buying, people who are selling or people accepting to go one place or
another -- it's not like that. It's what the team needs.
"It's absurd.
"You can look at these three, or these three, but you can never look
at these three. It's impossible. What are you looking for? Somebody
who's called a defender or a type of defender?
"It’s a big difference, such a big difference.
"A lot of times people don’t see the quality of the individual, and
this individual should function good in the team and the way the team
plays... in the end, the best player will never come out of a team who
loses too much. It’s impossible."
This is the other enduring impression of Cruyff. For all that he
represents the game at its most sophisticated and often speaks in
contradictions, so much of what he says is applicable to any level of
football.
"The main thing is, a lot of people think that making a mistake is a
problem. No, I don’t think so. Making a mistake is to make you better,
as long you learn from your mistake. So I think making a mistake for me
is never a problem. It's a perfect thing, as long as you learn from it
and don't make the same mistake again. The only way you can learn is
from your mistakes. You can never learn from the things you did well.
It's impossible.
"That's what we learned [at Ajax]. You tried something, that didn’t
work for that [reason] and that. Do it again. Do something different.
"Football is a game of mistakes and, if you analyse a mistake, you
can say OK. If I put somebody where the mistakes come from, with his
quality, you’re going to make less mistakes and if you make less
mistakes you've got more possibilities.
"So it's a different way of thinking. It's not like we think this
pass is good or bad. If this was the best pass why didn't he do it? Did
he see or didn't he see it or wasn’t he capable of executing it.
"So it's not a lot of times that you're going to discuss or analyse
what he did. Most of the time you’ve got to analyse why he didn't do the
other thing.
"That's where it all starts, how you see totally different the game. If you analyse it, you can train on it."
This idea of the individual fitting into the collective, of the
truly social aspect of football, is something that still engages him. It
is the guiding principle of his charity, which is all about enriching
lives through sport.
"What is sport, besides the physical education you do for yourself?
It's playing together, trying things out, getting better every day,
winning together, losing together, helping somebody out. It's life. It's
totally life, 100 percent.”
