At the end of the season, Barcelona were champions for the first time since 1960. They had not lost a match that mattered with him in the side, going 22 unbeaten before losing twice after the title had been clinched. It was, as it turned out, the only league title he won as a player in Spain but if that is a surprising limited return in terms of silverware, the impact now looks almost limitless – particularly when Cruyff the player is recalled alongside Cruyff the manager. When he is just Cruyff.
“Cruyff was a sensational player,” says his former team-mate Juan Manuel Asensi. “He was also a winner. The change in mentality was brutal. It was like we had been drowning and now we were pulled out of the water.” Cruyff recalled: “[Barcelona] were always thinking about inferiority, they had Madriditis. We were always thinking we were the victim but in my way of thinking there was no victim. I said: ‘Let’s look at ourselves, let the rest do whatever they want; we know what we want.’”
He knew what he wanted; the style was defined, one he remained faithful to as a coach as well as a player. Rexach says the change in footballing terms when he came in 1973 was “radical, a revolution”. He explains: “Back then football was: ‘Right, out we go: come on lads, in hard’ and that was it. No one studied the opponents. It was fight, run, jump. Then it was: ‘No, let’s play better football.’”
Cruyff was contagious, representing a radical shift at Barca, and not just on the pitch. As Asensi puts it: “With Cruyff, everything changed – the club as well as the team.” He defied convention, at every level; this was not only sport, it was society. “They said I was difficult but I was not difficult, I just fought for justice,” Cruyff said. “I’m from the post-war era; I was born in ’47 and all the people from my age were renewing everything – take the Beatles, all those kinds of people. I have always been renewing, always challenging.”
Rexach describes Barcelona’s 5-0 win over Real Madrid in February 1974 as the moment: the beginning of the current Barcelona model. In the crowd that night was Emilio Butragueño, a Real fan and later a legend at the Bernabéu, who admitted it was Cruyff, his idol, that he had come to see.
Cruyff was sensational, dominating a match that ended up having a huge political and social symbolism, one that he could only play because he had brought forward the birth of his son – a son he insisted on calling Jordi, like the patron saint of Catalonia, in spite of the resistance of the registrar. “I just liked the name,” he remembered, smiling a little mischievously. “[At the registry office] I said: ‘What’s not allowed? I decide: I’m Dutch. I decide the name of my son.’”
Cruyff decided, always. And his decisions were so often different. “It is better to fall with your ideas than someone else’s,” he insisted. He did fall too but he stood above.
They 'were the centrepiece of their teams'.
