Best Johan Cruyff quotes

Johan Cruyff might be the most influential figure in the history of football.

One of the finest footballers of all time, the legendary former forward was instrumental as Ajax won three consecutive European Cups in the 1970s and was the star of the Netherlands team which reached the final of the 1974 World Cup.

“After several medical treatments I can say that the results have been very positive, thanks to the excellent work of the doctors, the affection of the people and my positive mentality,” he said. “Right now, I have the feeling that I am 2-0 up in the first half of a match that has not finished yet. But I am sure that I will end up winning.” The Dutch legend passed away just over a month later, on March 25th, at the age of 68. A life extremely well lived.

Some of that connection has been lost in modern football, but Cruyff said in 2011: “Normally, all the great teams of the past had more than half from the local community. You take Ajax [from the 1970s], you take AC Milan [from the 1980s], you take Barcelona in my time, Celtic from that time [1967], Manchester United in 1999. It gives you something extra. Maybe it’s not much but it’s local people who have been there and know the public.”

“I remember my move to Spain because it was quite controversial,” he told TV3 in 2015. “People were saying I was going to a fascist country and the president of Ajax wanted to sell me to Real Madrid. I was born shortly after the war though, so I was brought up not to accept just anything. “[At the time] Barcelona were not at the same level as Madrid football-wise, but it was a challenge to play for a Catalan club. But Barcelona was more than a club.”

“He was a boy and the people said to me, ‘Oh, he’s one of the best,'” Cruyff recalled.
“So I looked for him in the reserves, but he didn’t play in the reserves. So then I looked at the first youth team, and he didn’t play in that team. And eventually I found him in the third youth team. So I said to the coaches, ‘You said he was the best one!’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but physically…’ I said, ‘Put him there (in the reserves). He will grow. Don’t worry, everybody grows’. And they said, ‘Yeah, but we will lose’. I said, ‘If we lose, we lose. We need to create players’. And he did very well.”

Johan Cruyff captained the Dutch side to the World Cup final in 1974, but the Netherlands’ star forward surprisingly opted not to take part in the 1978 tournament. He told Catalunya Radio in 2008: “You should know that I had problems at the end of my career as a player here and I don’t know if you know that someone [put] a rifle at my head and tied me up and tied up my wife in front of the children at our flat in Barcelona.

“The children were going to school accompanied by the police. The police slept in our house for three or four months. I was going to matches with a bodyguard. All these things change your point of view towards many things. There are moments in life in which there are other values. We wanted to stop this and be a little more sensible. It was the moment to leave football and I couldn’t play in the World Cup after this.”

“I let all youth teams play the same way, like the first team,” he explained. “I always put the emphasis on learning. Sometimes I had the suspicion the youth coaches were more concerned with winning. They cared more about their own reputation. I cared only about the interest of the club. When a player with talent couldn’t defend I put him in defence so he could learn. I didn’t care if it cost points, I was busy developing the player.”

Drawing inspiration from Cruyff’s famous penalty one-two with Jesper Olsen at Ajax in 1982, Messi laid the ball off for Luis Suárez to make it 4-1. The pass was actually meant for Neymar, but the the Uruguayan scored it and Cruyff was thrilled. “What Messi did gave me great joy,” he said. “I don’t know if he had seen the (original) play, but if anyone can do something like that, it’s him. I saw straight away how people spoke about my penalty. It’s a joy that people remember you after so many years. It’s special, [one of those] things that football gives you.”

“For me, I have always liked small, technical players because that’s a little what I was like,” he said in 2015. “Ronaldo is a great player, but he’s a goalscorer. He will never be the player that can create or force a team to play well. He cares about finishing.” And he added: “Messi is much more of a team player than Cristiano. He gives passes, produces many more assists… so for me, as a player, not a goalscorer, although he also scores a lot, the best is Messi. For me, there’s a great difference between being a great player and a goalscorer.”