A tribute to Johan Cruyff

The Dutch master sadly passed away very recently and while it is always sad to hear of such news, I think football has lost a particularly important person in Johan Cruyff. A true legend of the game on and off the field who has contributed more to football than most ever will and more than a lot of people realise.

Let's begin with the famous Cruyff turn. It is something we take for granted now and, to play Devil's advocate, i'm sure someone somewhere would have come up with it if he hadn't. However, it highlights the innovation of the man, the ingenuity and the technical ability. Regardless of what it is or how it comes about, if you do something on a football pitch that no one has ever seen before, that is named after you as a result, then you have already created a legacy.

Cruyff was also part of the famous 1974 Dutch team that were runners up in the World Cup. Probably the greatest team not to win a world cup, and probably the best player not to win the World Cup. He did win player of the Tournament and pioneered what we know now as 'Total Football.' The idea that this was the way to play football, where everything was a source of total mastery.

This leads onto his next venture, as a player he had almost achieved everything he could, there is no question he was one of the greatest. But was he possibly the actual greatest? When he went behind the scenes of football, that's when he really changed everything, and not all of you may know this.

After showcasing what Football could be with his influence on the pitch, it was time to showcase how football should be played with his influence off the pitch. This, my friends, is where tiki-taka was really born.

Now, recently conventional tiki-taka is actually being shifted out of the game in place of a faster more direct attacking approach, however, this is a product of evolution as players and managers looked for a way to stop the tiki-taka style. 

Cruyff moved to Barcelona as part of the coaching staff and began training players from a very young age to play a different style of football. 10-15 years later Barcelona started to take hold of the world and, probably to the dismay of the Dutch, so did the Spanish. 

Tiki-taka was so much more than just neat passes though. I say 'conventional' tiki-taka because there are elements of it that do, and will, forever live on. The principle was not simply to pass a lot, but in fact, assert less energy on keeping the ball and more energy on getting the ball back. It utilised the age old method of pass and move but with less empathises on an immediate end product. Cruyff new that moving the ball around constantly wore out the opponent, gave confidence to his team and allowed them to wait for an opening. When they lost the ball, all players ran to the ball disregarding structure or shape. It was risky because it left space. However, before teams could figure out this system, opposing players were far too tired from chasing the ball to make space for their team-mates and when an opposing player had the ball, they ran out of options fast. The Barcelona/Spanish players would take the ball back and begin again.

This philosophy actually changed the game of football, it was revolutionary. Cruyff saw that, he saw that we could play the game in an entirely different way. He knew more about football than thousands, maybe millions, before him. That says to me that he was special, coupled with his god given technical ability he was certainly one of the greatest the game has ever seen and maybe, just maybe, the greatest ever. 

R.I.P.