“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.”
“Liverpool are like Bayern Munich, they are all about name and prestige. In footballing terms, we are talking about two horrible sides. In my opinion, a team is horrible if it is incapable of putting three passes together” – on the Champions League and Uefa Cup winners of 2001.
“I only decided to become a manager when I was told I couldn’t.”
“Look, the thing about [Filippo] Inzaghi is he can’t actually play football at all. He’s just always in the right position.”
“I find it terrible when talents are rejected based on computer stats. Based on the criteria at Ajax now I would have been rejected. When I was 15, I couldn’t kick a ball 15 meters with my left and maybe 20 with my right. My qualities technique and vision, are not detectable by a computer.”
“Why couldn’t you beat a richer club? I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal.”
“We showed the world you could enjoy being a footballer; you could laugh and have a fantastic time. I represent the era which proved that attractive football was enjoyable and successful, and good fun to play too.”
“You play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you.”
“Sadly they played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style... If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost” – on the Netherlands’ 2010 World Cup finalists.
“Italians can’t win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.”
(In 2012, Cruyff picked his all-time XI, although current players like Lionel Messi were not considered. The team, in a 3-4-3 formation, was: Lev Yashin; Carlos Alberto, Franz Beckenbauer, Ruud Krol; Alfredo Di Stefano, Pep Guardiola, Bobby Charlton, Piet Keizer; Garrincha, Pele, Diego Maradona.)
“If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.”
“Jack [Charlton] makes out he is not really interested in football, and tells the world he’s going fishing. But we know what he’s thinking about when he’s fishing. Football.”
“Johan Cruyff painted the chapel, and Barcelona coaches since merely restore or improve it” – Pep Guardiola on Cruyff’s work at the Nou Camp.
“He is like the Godfather of Dutch football” – Frank Rijkaard.
“Pythagoras in boots. Few have been able to exert, both physically and mentally, such mesmeric control on a match from one penalty area to another” – David Winner, author of Brilliant Orange.
“He was at the heart of a revolution with his football. Ajax changed football and he was the leader of it all. If he wanted he could be the best player in any position on the pitch” – Eric Cantona.
“The proudest moment of my career. I thought I’d win the ball for sure, but he tricked me. I was not humiliated. I had no chance. Cruyff was a genius” – Jan Olsson, the Sweden defender who was tricked by the Cruyff Turn at the 1974 World Cup.
“As a player he turned football into an art form. Johan came along and revolutionised everything. The modern-day Barca started with him, he is the expression of our identity, he brought us a style of football we love” – the former Barcelona president Joan Laporta.
“He has had the biggest influence on football out of anyone in the world, first as a player and then as a coach” – Guardiola again.
“Barcelona was not born in the last couple of years. It was born, the style of play now, in the early 90s through Johan Cruyff. It took 20 years for that moment today that we see and all admire” – Jürgen Klinsmann.
“Without Cruyff, I have no team” – Rinus Michels, his Ajax manager.
No comments:
Post a Comment