When people ask me , an anglo-spaniard- born in 1953 in Madrid a few hundred yards from the Bernabeu,the year of Di Stefano’s arrival, why I am a Barca fan, I mention Johan Cruyff.
Hearing the news of his death brings back those heady days of the mid 1970’s when I first fell in love with FC Barcelona thanks to the flying Dutchman who later created Barca’s a ‘dream team’-one of several as it would turn out- thereby leaving an enduring legacy.
For if in its political and cultural dimension FC Barcelona has long prided itself in being ‘mes que un club’ – more than a club- it was Cruyff’s coming to it in 1974 which proved a defining moment in the club’s evolution as universally respected sporting institution at a hugely significant moment in Spanish history.
Cruyff arrived in Barcelona having already earned a reputation as a living legend playing for Ajax –initially under Vic Buckingham and later Rinus Michels- and the Dutch national team. Cruyff , never known for his modesty, would later admit to having Michels as his “first and only football master.” It was under his coaching that Cruyff fin 1966 played a leading role in Ajax’s first real achievement in the European Cup, helping the team trounce Liverpool 5-1 in Amsterdam, and scoring two memorable goals in the return tie, in front of the Kop.
It was in Holland that Cruyff emerged as the star performer of what the Dutch first and called ‘total football’. It was the concept under which every player was supposed to have comparable technical and physical abilities and be able to interchange roles and positions at will.
At its best the system was supposed to have players in a seemingly effortless collective flow of transition for most of the game, an exciting mixture of dribbling, first-touch passing and goals, rather than long balls or kicks into touch.
The number 14 Cruyff wore on his shirt was as surprising as his play. While he might play centre-forward, he was often seen playing through the midfield or out on either wing, his ever-changing figure on the pitch playing havoc with any conventional concept of defence
Cruyff’s star with Ajax seemed on a never-ending ascendant until his fellow less talented Dutch players, resentful of his higher earnings and his character, in 1973 voted against his captaincy. That summer he signed a $1m three-year contact with FC Barcelona-the highest ever paid until then by the club for any player. After years of being humiliated by the memory of Real Madrid ‘golden years’ and the continuing superiority of its rival, Barca, now with Michels as its coach, was ready for its own Di Stefano, a player that could make a team great thanks to the influence of his personality and genius on and off the field.
In his first season, Cruyff brought Barca out of its doldrums and into a brilliant zone many of its fans had been longing for. Within weeks the club had positioned itself at the top of the Spanish league and resisted all attempts to replace them.
During that first memorable season, Barca played football not only with an enormous self-confidence but also with particular vengeance against the one opponent that had always mattered-Real Madrid- beaten in its own Bernabeu stadium 5-0. Of all the goals it was Cruyff’s that seemed guided by particular magic. Picking up the ball on the turn just inside Real Madrid’s half, Cruyff weaved in and out of the defence, his nimble frame turning at sharp angles, then accelerating like a cheetah chasing his prey before skipping effortlessly over a final desperate sliding tackle and striking home past the goalkeeper.
His contribution to Real Madrid’s defeat, as wrote the New York Times correspondent in the aftermath of the match, did more for the spirit of the Catalan nation in ninety minutes than many politicians had achieved in years of stifled nationalist struggle. Indeed Cruyff- nicknamed El Salvador – was never just a footballer. Into a Spain still ruled by a repressive dictatorship Cruyff brought with him some much needed social and cultural fresh air from his native Holland. His defiance of the Franco regime’s prohibitive laws on the use of the Catalan language, by registering his son with the Catalan name Jordi, came to symbolise the sense of imminent liberation that democratic Spaniards were feelings in the dying days of the old dictator.
As a player, Cruyff went on to give fans like myself many more hours of sheer delight, as a new Spain post-Franco took its place among the democratic nations of Europe. But it was his second coming to FC Barcelona as coach which was to prove more successful and far reaching in sporting terms than the first. When he signed up as Barca coach in May 1988, Cruyff not only ushered a period of unprecedented football success for the club, but provided it with a culture and style that would endure long after his retirement .
If Cruyff hadn’t done nothing else, Barca’s victory in the European Cup final at Wembley in the summer of 1992, would have earned him a significant place in the club’s official history. Thanks to the ‘dream team’ that Cruyff coached and Koeman’s winning goal , Barca became champions of Europe for the first time, and the first Spanish champions since Real Madrid had won the title more than a quarter of a century before. Cruyff had achieved his personal ambition of leading Barca to the title he had won as player with Ajax twenty-one years earlier. He had also fuelled the Catalan sense of national identity, while teaching Barca fans a lesson in the meaning of success.
While in fact it would take several years more before Barca managed to catch up with Real Madrid in terms of national and international achievement, the process eventually entered a new golden period under Pep Guardiola a player turned coach who owed his inspiration to Cruyff.
The lesson of the Cruyff years was that Barca could have foreigners and Spaniards (not just Catalans) in its team, some drawn from its exemplary youth academy La Massia, and produce hugely entertaining football which won titles and enhanced the value of the club, commercially as well as culturally. Thanks to Cruyff , fans like me rediscovered why the club mattered to them.
Which is why so many fans of my generation remember the day in early 1991 that Cruyff was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack. He was subsequently diagnosed with coronary fatigue brought on by the narrowing of an artery, almost certa8nly provoked by his heavy-smoking habit.
When in his first press conference after undergoing an operation double-bypass operation, he talked about his scrape with death, he did so with humour. “It’s one’s good fortune to have a God watching over one and making sure when something like this happens that there happens to be a hospital nearby.”
Soon afterwards Cruyff made himself available for an anti-smoking campaign organised by the Catalan government. A poster showed him tanned and relaxed, and healthy alongside the words : “In my life I’ve had two vices: smoking and playing football. Football has given me everything in life. Smoking nearly took it away from me.”
Months ago, he was stoic when making public that he had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, and although many of us prepared for the inevitable there was a part of us that recalled how his recovery the first time round seemed to personify the resurrection of the club itself. This time the dream of having Johan beat death again failed us and we tilted at windmills.
However my enduring memory of Johan will be sharing tapas and wine with him at his home outside Barcelona one sultry summer’s evening in the late 1990’s while researching the first edition of my book ‘Barca: A People’s Passion’. I was utterly absorbed as I listened to him taking me breathlessly through the modern history of FC Barcelona, his eccentric if non-grammatical use of English matched in its unrivalled originality only by his captivating thought and insight around the game of football and its worth . His spirit will endure in the Camp Nou.
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