Let's turn this into a proposition...Kowalczyk schreef:Having said the above...
... I have to disagree on this one.The Purple Cow schreef:Cruijff was one of the top 10 best players of all time, and a reasonably successful coach, but let's not get carried away here.
As a player Johan Cruijff made Ajax and Barcelona huge out of absolutely nowhere in the 1970s. Some fifteen years later he did the same thing for both clubs as a coach, in both cases after a very, very long and bad slump that (at both clubs) pretty much started when he left as a player.
After 14 years of total European misery, Cruijff returned to Ajax and gave them European Cup Winners Cup of 1987, Ajax's first European trophy since 1973.
Then he moved on to Barcelona, his second love. The club couldn't even see Real Madrid from where they were at the time, but under Johan Cruijff they won the European Cup Winners Cup, the Spanish league and, finally, the Champions League. And off Johan went.
A very brief coaching career, but one that definitively made him a saint and a legend in both Amsterdam and Barcelona. He did it as a player, disappeared for fourteen (yup...) years or so, walked back into the door as a coach... and did it again. Magic.
It was, in fact, so magical and unique that Cruijff's sense of responsibility evaporated overnight. His reputation as a player and as a coach was now so mythical that he could only sustain damage in a new job. Ever since, he's been pulling strings at all three of his beloved teams (Ajax, Oranje, Barça) from a distance, in an unofficial, 'outsider' kind of way. He expects the people in charge of 'his' three teams to listen to him and do as he says, but whenever they offer him a real position he always turns them down.
Because of this he will - at the end of the day - end up below a man like Franz Beckenbauer on the list of all-time greats in football: their careers have many similarities (replace 'Ajax and Barça' with 'Bayern München' and 'Oranje' with 'Die Mannschaft'), but unlike Cruijff Beckenbauer has never walked away from his responsibility. He (succesfully) coached Bayern when the club needed him, and became their president. He coached the national team and won the World Cup again. He accepted the role of 'figure head' when Germany hosted the World Cup last summer.
Painful but true: Cruijff was perhaps more of a creative genius as a player, but Beckenbauer is a greater man in football, simply because Cruijff lacks the guts and always walks away (one of the reasons, if you ask me: Beckenbauer is a genuinely intelligent person, whereas Cruijff is 'streetwise' more than anything else).
But in my opinion you can't judge Johan Cruijff, as a coach, on the jobs that he did not accept. The only thing you can blame him for, is the fact that - as a coach - he was like a football player that scores three goals in his first game and another three in his second - and then quits his career, so that he can forever say that he used to net three goals per game on average...
Ajax have to give it one more try and offer Johan Cruijff am official key position within the club. If he turns it down once again, it is time to close the book, to cut the strings and to start ignoring the man.
Have your say!
K.
