Johan Cruyff’s wizardry proved a true “turn” for the worse for opponents. Add the “total” football philosophy and he was truly unstoppable.

Comparisons are never fair, and rarely are they as scientific as they pretend to be. It’s not fair that Johan Cruyff should be held up against those wonders of the world game, Pele and Maradona. A refined aesthetic sensibility would find such judgment as distasteful as comparison of a ballet master with a world salsa champion. One is a stylised European invention, born of systematised training, discipline and fitness, while the other is a dance of passion, individual expression. The best exponents of either are simply sublime.

As they rise, they converge.

Truth be told, the Dutch football legend Cruyff (born Hendrik Johannes Cruijff) compares favourably with anyone. He was the greatest exponent of the “total” football system of Ajax Amsterdam coach Rinus Michels – who rates an Innovator of his own. In fact, Michels’ system would barely have been possible if not for the far-ranging individual talents of Cruyff. Between them, they made the Netherlands teams of the 1970s the most flamboyant and stylish in the world.

The “total” football system is much like today’s workplace idea of the selfmanaged team, in which everyone is equipped to perform everyone else’s function. The point is that, even if they are never required, team members’ acquired abilities are ready to be used.

Total football meant that players were able to move out of position at will, or at the coach’s request, perform someone else’s role, and be replaced by another just as competent in their former role. Skill levels needed to be up to such an organic system, regardless of natural strengths and weaknesses. It’s doubtful players from contemporary South American sides would’ve survived the rigours of this exacting scheme.

With his remarkable array of skills, Cruyff managed to turn Michels’ theory into breathtaking action.

Coupled with Cruyff’s physical abilities was his skill as a weaver. Like a chess Grand Master playing 100 games at once, Cruyff had a supernatural ability to assess teammates’ positioning and potential effectiveness. His complex and precise passing led him to be dubbed “Pythagoras in boots” by British sports writer David Miller, who also wrote of Cruyff that “few have been able to exact, both physically and mentally, such mesmeric control on a match from one penalty area to another”.

Cruyff, nominally centre-forward under Michels, was able to drop into defence or onto a wing, bamboozling his markers. The fact he was perfectly capable of sustaining such a style, morphing from one type of player into another, obscures Cruyff’s individual, God-given talents.

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