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Pitch Publishing Ltd - Andy Bollen

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164 pages

English

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In 1983, aged 36, Johan Cruyff, one of the world's most iconic football superstars, guided Ajax to a league and cup double. Out of contract, most people, including the player, expected a valedictory final season and a one-year extension. Inexplicably, Ajax let him go. They grossly underestimated the fierce genius of Johan Cruyff. He signed for bitter rivals Feyenoord, leading them to a league and cup double, silencing his critics and thrilling football fans everywhere. Fierce Genius analyses this incredible season, as he evolves from player to coach. It is a fascinating insight into his professional and private life. Imperious on the park, off it, he dealt with kidnappings and bankruptcy after being defrauded by a conman. Bollen gets inside Cruyff's mind, helping the reader understand the mentality which made him a top player and successful coach. Fierce Genius: Cruyff's Year at Feyenoord is compelling, insightful and poignant. Written with a journalistic tone, by an accomplished comedy writer, this is a warm, affectionate and informative portrait of one of world football's greats.

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	15 février 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785319006
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Andy Bollen, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785318245
eBook ISBN 9781785319006
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Contents
Introduction
1. Even in his Youth Love of Ajax
2. Season 1983/84: Matchdays 1-6
3. Feyenoord Forever Cruyff Never
4. Season 1983/84: Matchday 7 De Klassieker: 8-2 Defeat and Cruyff We Will Win the Championship
5. Betrayal, Brutal Coup and Heading to Barca
6. Best Match for Barcelona: at Bernab u v Real Madrid, 1974
7. Reflection, the Early Years, and Jany van der Veen
8. Living in America, Road Trips with Wim
9. Season 1983/84: Matchdays 8-13
10. The Movie and Number 14
11. Ajax and the European Cup Finals
12. 1974 World Cup and That Turn
13. Cruyff Live in the Flesh, the Dutch Beatle
14. Season 1983/84: Matchdays 14-23
15. Total Football and Mindset
16. Season: 1983/84: UEFA Cup, St Mirren, Spurs, Hoddle and Hooliganism
17. What Makes an Icon?
18. Barca Coaching - Something in the Air
19. Season 1983/84: The KNVB Cup Run
20. N ez v Cruyff
21. Dutch Legacy Influence Yet Never Dutch Coach
22. Season 1983/84: Matchdays 24-28
23. Homage to Catalonia Part 1: La Masia
24. Here s Looking at Euclid
25. Season 1983/84: Matchdays 29-34
26. Here s Johnny
27. The Next Chapter, Netherlands Demise and Coaching Badges
28. Johan Cruyff Technical Director
29. Homage to Catalonia Part 2: The efecto mariposa
30. The De Telegraaf Column
31. So it was okay to end this way. It had been lovely.
32. Acknowledgements
33. Notes on Sources
Photos
This book is dedicated to Johan Cruyff.
Fierce Genius is a cinematic look at the career of Johan Cruyff, seen through the prism of his final season as a player, spent at Ajax s bitter rivals, Feyenoord.
Andy Bollen
Introduction
HENDRIK JOHANNES Cruijff - Johan Cruyff to you and I - in full flow, was often compared to a great artist, a Dutch Master, a maestro or maverick. Why wouldn t he be? He was Dutch. He shared the same rain, sunshine and light as Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt and Vermeer.
When the Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff (the native spelling confused too many outside of the Netherlands) is discussed and pored over by sports journalists, his style of play is regularly elevated to an art form. We shouldn t be surprised. When writers contemplate Cruyff s play in detail, there is a natural inclination to compare his athleticism to the form, movement and creativity of the greatest works of art.
If art truly is an interplay between the artist, the world and the means of figuration, then Cruyff s brand of football, one of exquisite technique, fluidity and movement, confirmed it: Cruyff was an artist. He had the temperament of an artist and performer. A pervading obsessiveness for excellence, like Buddy Rich, Picasso or Leonard Bernstein, fixated with greatness, self-improvement and an at times impossibly high level of expectation.
His personal life was packed with as many inciting incidents as his playing and coaching career; moments almost as intriguing as his stunning level of performance and his many twists and turns. The fluidity of his story often seems as complex as Cruyff s football intelligence; a constantly moving, chess-playing strategist, when he would create a move deep in his half, and end it, 20 passes later, knowing where the play would end, scoring in the opponent s six-yard box. However, real-life events would become as interesting as his football and come to shape the story of his life.
Here was an iconic figure, an imperious sportsman, the epitome of style, invention, creativity and 1970s glamour. He wasn t only playing football; he was re-imagining it. Yet away from the game, when he wasn t in control, the scene shifted, his dramatic intensity had no release, and chaos ensued.
In October 1977, aged 30, Cruyff quit international football. While in his Barcelona apartment, Cruyff, his wife Danny Coster, and three children were subject to a kidnap attempt. The experience changed his attitude to life and became part of the reason he decided not to play in the 1978 World Cup. He revealed the story in an in-depth interview, in 2008, for Catalunya Radio: You should know that I had problems at the end of my career as a player here. I don t know if you know that someone put a rifle at my head, tied me up and tied up my wife in front of the children at our flat in Barcelona.
Cruyff managed to escape but the incident affected him. 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, he continued, his normally confident voice becoming troubled. These things change your point of view 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. Cruyff was done, he d had enough of kidnap threats and yet there was worse to come.
Sick of the game, the pressure of superstardom and relentless travel, when his contract ran out at the Nou Camp, he had made up his mind. He was retiring, from the game completely, aged 31. By March 1979, his Barcelona flat was repossessed. This stemmed from two financial issues. Firstly, he was almost bankrupted after being scammed into poor investments in property and a pig farm (Cruyff had made the biggest financial mistake of his life and was robbed of his fortune).
Secondly, there was a major tax issue with Barcelona. The club s incoming president, Josep Llu s N ez, and Cruyff did not get on. In the future, N ez would bring back Cruyff as head coach, purely for political gain and it helped guarantee he would remain president but that s for another chapter. For now, all we need to know is the tax rules were changed for players and the clubs had a long-standing agreement where they helped players meet the shortfall. Since Cruyff had already announced his retirement at the end of the season, and wouldn t be a Barca player the following year, N ez refused to pay Cruyff s substantial shortfall and the player was left to pay the sizeable bill himself.
Cruyff s agent, manager and father-in-law, Cor Coster, was one of the first super-agents who negotiated deals and transfers; he also represented Johan Neeskens when he moved from Ajax to Barcelona. While playing, Cruyff hardly saw his agent-manager-father-in-law, spending most of his time playing, training or travelling. But once retired he had nothing to do with plenty of time on his hands and money in the bank. The pig breeding scam would cost dearly and change both the impetus and dynamic of his story.
In business, if you are in any doubt, most would stay away, but Cruyff, as the press loved to suggest at the time, was too pig-headed. If in doubt, leave it out. If you do invest at least have some kind of interest or passion for it; invest in wine, art, or in Cruyff s case, something connected to sport.
When Cor Coster checked his client s finances and wanted to know what he had done, Cruyff tried to remain nonchalant, hoping to deflect the inevitable. He told Coster he had bought three plots of land to build on. When Coster immediately demanded to see the deeds of the land he had bought, Cruyff couldn t provide any. The reality dawned on him. He wasn t used to dealing in business transactions. He was a football player; he had been done. Coster s advice was blunt, first as an agent, and then a father-in-law: You ve been shafted. You ve paid for it but there is nothing in your name. Get the whole business out of your head. Accept your losses and then go and do what you re good at.
The loss was substantial. Having signed for Barca in 1973, for a then world-record transfer fee of $2m ( 929,000), the wages and tax arrangements were far more amenable than his package as an Ajax player. Of the wage difference itself, Cruyff would say, The salary on offer was gigantic. At Ajax, I was earning a million guilders a year. Furthermore, in the Netherlands, Cruyff paid close to 72 per cent in taxes. At Barcelona, it was different. I was earning twice as much and only paying 30-35 per cent to the Spanish tax man. I wasn t just earning more. I was getting to keep more of it.
Between a considerable wage increase, a decrease in his taxes, not to mention endorsements and sponsorship deals, between 1973 and 1978 Cruyff would have amassed a considerable amount. Coster did not trust the conman, Michel Georges Basilevich, suspecting from the moment he came on the scene that he was a thief, and he was proven right. But his daughter and son-in-law were besotted with the reputedly charming Russian-Frenchman. They thought they had acquired property, stately buildings, businesses and invested heavily, and ultimately badly. Basilevich was given complete control of Cruyff s fortune and proceeded to burn through the footballer s money. It was blown in months. Businesses they had invested in folded immediately. The pig farm investment in Ganadera Catalana was the business which grab