photo credit:NASLjerseys.com
I learned of the work of Johan Cruyff because of a T-shirt.
About five or six years ago I went online looking for a soccer specific T-shirt that I could wear that looked good but was also a bit hip. I could not wear an AC Milan or Real Madrid shirt because well everyone has one. Bear in mind this was around the time when popular was uncool and thrift stores were havens for fine fashion. There is probably some level of irony in my decision-making but at the time with two coffees in my system it made perfect sense.
So after hours of surfing the web I found the perfect shirt: a Washington Diplomats Johan Cruyff shirt. It was perfect.
Now something to bear in mind: I had heard of Cruyff prior to this moment. Anyone who has ever followed football to some degree has heard of Johan Cruyff. As a kid my brother and I would have great debates about what the better soccer move was: the Cruyff or the Maradona. What is interesting about this of course is that as two kids growing up in the 1990’s with a dearth of football neither of us had seen either player actually play (Maradona at least had a cup of tea in our consciousness with the lead up to the 1994 World Cup). This was pre-YouTube, pre- Fox Soccer, and pre- illegal streams.
So that brings up an even more interesting question: just why would I buy a Cruyff jersey? The reason is simple: because even for someone who had never seen Cruyff play it was apparent based of what had been written about him and those that have respect for him how important he was as a player. In many ways the respect that he has garnered with later generations is similar to that of a Bill Russell with the Boston Celtics or a Babe Ruth with the New York Yankees, players who new spectators might not have seen but whose impact have trickled down through history.
There was also the local ties. As a football supporter from the Washington D.C. area I thought it was fascinating that one of the greatest players of the game that I loved played in a park, RFK Stadium, that I had been to many times. Even if it was at the end of his career (he was 33 when he came to the North American Soccer League) it is still pretty amazing to think that I get to go to a locker room every week that Cruyff walked through.
The shirt gave me the perfect opportunity to research his exploits. Thankfully, the amount of soccer that is exposed to here in the United States has expanded greatly since the early 90’s. It is one of the true joys of the internet for someone like myself who is of a certain age that they can finally pour through the work of the greats like Cruyff. Sadly many footballers from earlier eras do not have as lengthy of a collection.
So here is what I have learned about Cruyff after pouring through countless videos and Johnathan Wilson’s Inverting the Pyramid: that the footballing world owes this man a debt. Aside from the broader importance of the Total Football system that Cruyff was a part of while at Ajax, it is the little things that made him so special. It is the simple, small intricate passes, the way he helped build up plays, and the runs behind defenders that made him such a special player. It is often stated that the best players are playing chess while ordinary players are playing checkers. If that is the case then Cruyff was Gary Kasparov, thinking 2-3 moves before even the best could react.
As a writer his work has been invaluable to me in explaining how this crazy game works. As a supporter it has been fun to watch someone play in my stadium and play with such fire and such passion:
Although it is unknown at this point if RFK’s current football side, D.C. United, will do anything for Cruyff prior to the match there will be one writer in the pressbox wearing his Washington Diplomats T-shirt.
