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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at:http://www.researchgate.net/publication/258832833
Hilvoorde, I. van & Stokvis, R.
(2013) Pythagoras in boots:
Johan Cruijff and the
Construction of Dutch NationalIdentity.In: Sport in History,
33(4), 427-444.
ARTICLE in SPORT IN HISTORY JANUARY 2013
DOI: 10.1080/17460263.2013.850267
READS
193
2 AUTHORS, INCLUDING:
Ivo Van Hilvoorde
VU University Amsterdam
110PUBLICATIONS 173
CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE
Available from: Ivo Van Hilvoorde
Retrieved on: 09 December 2015
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This article was downloaded by: [Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam]On: 20 November 2013, At: 01:05Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Sport in HistoryPublication details, including instructions for authors
and subscription information:
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Pythagoras in boots: Johan
Cruijff and the Construction of
Dutch National IdentityIvo van Hilvoorde & Ruud Stokvis
Published online: 20 Nov 2013.
To cite this article:Ivo van Hilvoorde & Ruud Stokvis (2013) Pythagoras in boots:
Johan Cruijff and the Construction of Dutch National Identity, Sport in History, 33:4,427-444
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2013.850267
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Pythagoras in boots: Johan Cruijffand the Construction of Dutch
National Identity
Ivo van Hilvoorde & Ruud Stokvis
Sporting icons perform a key role in the production and reproduction of
national identities. In the Netherlands, no one embodies this sentiment more
appropriately than Johan Cruijff, regarded by many as one of the finest
professional footballers ever to have played the game. Much of the early part
of Cruijffs career (during the 1960s and 1970s) mirrored an era of optimism,
(liberal) ideology, freedom, hope and, for the Netherlands competing in
international sport, unprecedented success across a range of sports including
football, ice skating and cycling. Only a very limited number of players (such
as Pele, Platini or Beckenbauer) manage to translate their status as sporting
icons onto their subsequent activities beyond the playing field. This article
focuses on this phenomenon by examining the case of Cruijff, from an icon
on the field of play to his status as a national leader capable of commentating
on a range of domestic issues. This analysis also considers the manner in
which Cruijff deployed his elevated status in the specific confines of a recent
power struggle within his former club Ajax of Amsterdam, the most well-
known football club in the Netherlands. The article argues that even in theevent of perceived failure and, with this, a possible loss of credibility, the icon
retains his prestige and notoriety.
Introduction
To become a sporting icon, the athlete must, according to Lenk, incorp-
orate a mythical ideal and be capable of extraordinary feats which can
Ivo van Hilvoorde, Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam; Ruud
Stokvis, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Amsterdam. Correspondence to:
Sport in History, 2013
Vol. 33, No. 4, 427444, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17460263.2013.850267
2013 The British Society of Sports History
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only be accomplished by complete devotion to the task at hand .1 Johan
Cruijff can be considered the greatest Dutch sports icon of all time.2 In
1999 the International Federation for Soccer History and Statistics
selected him as the European Soccer player of the twentieth centuryand, at the same time, he came runner-up on an all-time list of FIFAs
greatest players of the twentieth century.3 Previously, he was selected as
the UEFA European player of the year in 1971, 1973, and 1974 amid a
glittering career during which he had few peers.
Successes in elite sports are, in various ways, related to questions of
nationality, national pride, and international prestige.4 The identity of the
Netherlands is, in some ways, interwoven with Cruijffs life and the
achievements of Ajax as well as those of the Dutch national team. Formany, Cruijff represents the quintessential sporting hero who, at the same
time, has performed an important role in the social construction of Dutch
identity. His development as an icon, though, has unfolded in different
ways and at different time points.5 In almost all cases, sporting
achievements are crucial to the overall success of the process. Those
achievements and the myths and stories that accompany them are
required to exercise a far-reaching influence on the sport itself, to generate
international stature, to obtain prestige across the rest of the world, and to
remain part of the collective annals of sporting history.
Thus the lived experience of Cruijff as a sports icon can be subdivided
into three distinct periods: that of his time as a football player par
excellence; his career as a football manager; and then through his most
recent guise as something of a business guru/social commentator within
Dutch society. In each phase, his status as a national sports icon reveals a
different face and, with this, an evolving relationship with the construc-
tion of Dutch identity. There can be little doubt about the importance of
Johan Cruijff to the history of Dutch or, for that matter, internationalfootball. That said, there is some debate surrounding the precise influence
of his managerial career (at Ajax Amsterdam 19858 and Barcelona 1988
96). However, his most contemporary role, as someone with an elevated
social and political role and regarded as someone with a view on most
issues, has provoked much debate.
This last point is the most relevant in the context of this article as it
considers the importance, the impact and the limitations of a sporting
icon following his retirement from the sporting domain. After discussingsome of his influences in the history of Dutch and world football, this
article will further elaborate on Cruijffs role as a national icon. What does
it mean to be an icon in this context, what influence does his notoriety in
428 I. van Hilvoorde and R. Stokvis
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the field of association football exercise and how does all of this relate to
national identity construction?
Cruijff the player and manager
Hendrik Johannes Cruijff was born in Amsterdam on 25 April 1947.6 He
was raised in a working-class neighbourhood close to the home of the
famed Ajax of Amsterdam. Officially he became a member of the club on
his tenth birthday.7 He played his last match for Ajax on 19 August 1973,
after which he moved to Barcelona in Spain. Cruijff first decided to retire
as a professional footballer in 1978, but after a few matches for clubs in
the United States and in Spain, he returned to Ajax in December 1981. At
the close of the 19823 season, Ajax did not offer him a new contract as it
was of the view that his very best days were now in the past. As a result,
Cruijff joined Feyenoord of Rotterdam. He played his last professional
football match on 13 May 1984 in the colours of Feyenoord, helping the
club secure the Dutch championship that year.
With Ajax, Johan Cruijff won the league championship no fewer than
eight times, the KNVB Cup five times, the European Cup on three
occasions, the UEFA Super Cup twice, the Intercontinental Cup once and
the UEFA Intertoto Cup once. With Barcelona, Cruijff won the La Ligaonly once, the Copa del Rey once, and during his last season at
Feyenoord, he claimed both the league championship and the KNVB
Cup titles. Over the course of 520 career matches, Cruijff scored a
remarkable 291 goals. Between 1966 and 1977, he played 48 matches for
the Dutch national team, scoring 33 goals. Cruijff was selected as the
player of the tournament at the World Cup finals of 1974, at which the
Dutch national team lost to West Germany in the final.8
After his career as a professional footballer had come to an end, Cruijff
became the manager of Ajax from 1985 until 1988 and in turn of
Barcelona from 1988 until 1996. Under his supervision, Ajax won the
KNVB Cup twice, the domestic league championship and the UEFA Cup.
With Barcelona, he won La Liga four times, the Supercopa de Espaa
three times, the Copa del Rey, the UEFA Cup, the European Cup and the
UEFA Super Cup. In 1987, Cruijff claimed the World Soccer Award as
manager of the year. Following the 19901 and 19912 seasons, he was
selected as the nations best coach by the leading Spanish football
magazineDon Baln. Finally, Cruijff was honoured as coach of the yearin 1992 and 1994 by the French magazine Onze Mondial. Later, in 2006,
Cruijff received the Laureus Lifetime Achievement Award for his
contribution to football. He is also a holder of the FIFA Order of Merit
Sport in History 429
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(2010) award. After his resignation in 1996 as the then manager of
Barcelona, Cruijff remained actively involved in football as an analyst, as
an ambassador and as an advisor to both Barcelona and Ajax. In 2009, he
was appointed as coach to the Catalonia team (a position he only renegedin 2013), while over the course of the 201213 season he was also a valued
advisor with the Mexican football club, Club Deportivo Guadalajara.
Cruijff as an icon of Dutch soccer
As impressive as these figures may undoubtedly prove to be, such
statistics and their accompanying achievements fail to adequately capture
the status and importance of major sporting icons such as Cruijff in thelived experiences of a nation. Apart from their achievements, the impact
of an icon routinely depends on the stories and myths that accompany
these accomplishments. Nico Scheepmaker (193090), writer, poet and
journalist, was one of the first intellectuals in the Netherlands to pen
literary pieces on the subject of football, and thus bridge the gap between
culture and sports, between high and low culture. He raised football to the
level of high cultureand, with this, Cruijff to the level of an artist. He is
the author of a seminal book on Cruijff (published in 1972; reprinted in
2005). He was also one of the first to write without hesitation about the
international and indeed historical standing of Cruijff. In 1971 Scheep-
maker had already afforded Cruijff an important place among the
pantheon of great players:
As a personality off the field he can be compared with George Best ofManchester United, but on the field he not only displays far more self-control but is also, beyond all doubt, a better footballer and a moredangerous forward. He is, quite simply, the finest football player theNetherlands ever had: he belongs in the ranks of the Greatest Forwardsof All Time, together with Brazils Pel, Portugals Eusebio, SpainsAlfredo di Stefano, Englands Stanley Matthews and Hungarys FerencPuskas. Just now I predicted a certain raising of eyebrows andmuttering about chauvinism, but anyone who has seen both Cruijffand the other greatest forwards play more than a few times will nothesitate to place him on a level with them.9
The Dutch have often been proud of their lack of recourse to overt forms
of patriotism. In fact according to one commentator, The Dutch elitederived national pride from not being nationalist, to use the words of
Frank Lechner.10 However, this characterization relates only to a small
subsection of the Dutch population. It certainly does not reflect the
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significance that certain sports, particularly soccer, have acquired for the
greater majority of those living in the Netherlands.
Although the Dutch also had their sporting heroes over the first half
of the twentieth century, sports-related nationalism gained particularmomentum in the early 1970s. Cruijff emerged as a soccer great during
what may be understood as the most successful period for Dutch football
in the international game.11 From 1970 until 1973 Dutch teams (Ajax and
Feyenoord) secured the Champions Cup, the predecessor of the Cham-
pions League Cup, four times in succession. Indeed the national teams
place in the final of the 1974 World Cup was a logical outcome of this
preceding period of dominance. Because of the justifiably high expecta-
tions held by the Dutch public, their disappointment following theirteams defeat in the final ran deep. Nevertheless, all these successes (and
indeed losses), understood in different ways, contributed to the wider,
social acceptance of soccer by the Dutch people at large and especially
amongst the intelligentsia. As Stokvis has acknowledged, it was during this
period that the former peoples game became a national preoccupation.12
Of course Cruijff was the most prodigious Dutch player of this, some
might say any, era. His style became a source of inspiration for artists,
dancers and writers. His status contributed to evolving connections
between football and pure art that had not been drawn previously. The
Dutch game of that period was associated with modern architecture and
painters, such as Vermeer and Mondriaan.13 In March 1969 Cruijff met
film icon Jacques Tati in Paris. According toDe Telegraaf, Tati remarked:
Monsieur Cruijff, we are colleagues. You are an artist. Your play looks a
lot like mine. We are both people that try to react instantaneously in
situations, that we usually did not invoke ourselves.14 According to
Smeets, Cruijff was the first player who understood that he was an artist,
and the first who was able and willing to collectivise the art of sports .15
Several authors have tried to link the so-called Dutch creation of total
football with peculiar aspects of Dutch society, such as its flat landscape
and comparatively dense population.16 This of course is very difficult to
establish in any convincing fashion. Total football was the natural
outcome of cooperation, experienced at that time, between a number of
exceptionally gifted players who were in turn overseen by a talented and
creative trainer, Rinus Michels. However, because the Dutch were the first
to practise and indeed implement total football, it naturally became mostreadily associated with Dutch society. Certain characteristics of total
football, such as the use of space and the need for cooperation, were used
to accentuate similar features present in Dutch society. In that way it
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contributed to a more refined definition of Dutch national identity.
According to Winner,
Total Football was built on a new theory of flexible space. Just asCornelis Lely in the nineteenth century conceived and executed theidea of creating giant new polders and altering the physical dimensionsof Holland by dike-building and exploiting the new technology ofsteam, so Rinus Michels and Johan Cruijff exploited the capacities of anew breed of players to change the dimensions of the football field.17
Rinus Michels was coach of Ajax from 1965 till 1971. Under his leadership
the club attained its dominant position within international soccer.
According to Murphy, Rinus Michels was the Dutchman who gave the
world total football a tactical vision which raised the game to the levelof great art.18 Although Michels is considered the godfather of Total
Football, Johan Cruijff played a significant role in the implementation of
this football style as well.19 His conception of space on the football field
earned him the nickname Pythagoras in boots.20 In turn Total Football
became associated with the unique Dutch relationship with spatial
awareness. Associations that were made between football, art, architecture
and engineering provided football with an elevated status among intellec-
tuals who, in contrast, had turned their noses up at sports of all forms inthe period prior to this period of Total Football. Suddenly sport was not
merely about winning and of achieving success, but was now about doing
so in a beautiful way, in an artistic manner and through promoting the
aesthetics of the game especially the beauty of its intricate movements.
Although the presumption that a specific style of playing reflects certain
aspects of nationality is again somewhat idealistic, the narrative of
nationality related to total football became a powerful metaphor and an
invented tradition that generated national confidence and self-belief.21
Why this concept became so dominant in the Netherlands is central to
the discussion unfolding in this article. It argues that merely winning
football matches is not in itself sufficient; rather it is primarily about
winning in a beautiful way. According to Winner, The Dutch are devoted
to their good football (a phrase with distinct Calvinistic moral overtones)
and also have an equally Calvinist urge to proselytise their beauty and
goodness to the world.22 During his relative long and very successful
period as a head coach of FC Barcelona, Cruijff was also able to introduce
his beliefs on how the game of football should be played to the approachadopted by the Catalan giants. In turn Total Football gained interna-
tional acclaim after it became the calling cardof what is revered as one of
the most well-known and successful club sides in the history of the world
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game. Cruijff certainly contributed to the prestigious standing that FC
Barcelona has acquired in the world of soccer, including up to the present
day. Dutch soccer history and its ideals thus, by extension, became
associated with the successes of FC Barcelona in a very pronounced way.23
The nature of this relationship was made visible in the documentaryEn
un Momento Dado [At a Certain Moment].24 This movie showed
Barcelona fans from all walks of life testifying about the sporting and
cultural influences of Cruijff right across Catalan society. Of course, this
merely strengthened a view held in the Netherlands that Cruijff was an
icon without compare and an exemplary Dutchman. This international
recognition attributed to such a famous Dutch figure contributed to the
fondness ordinary people demonstrated towards Cruijff as a person and to
the national pride that arose from association with his sporting legacy.Unquestionably, the influence of Cruijff is crucial as far as our
understanding of this urge to proselytize the world and embrace the
beautiful gameis concerned. Not only as a player, but also as a manager
and an advisor, Cruijff exercised remarkable influence on new generations
of football players, specifically with his views concerning youth training
and talent-spotting systems. The Dutch nation identified with Cruijff and
his belief that wedo not only (want to) play beautiful and good football,
but that we must send that message to the whole world as well.
The social construction of Cruijff as a national icon
It is interesting that the portrayal of Cruijffs iconic status achieved new
heights after his retirement from football. During this era he became an
icon of Dutch society in a much broader sense and a key adviser for
politicians and businessmen alike. This was not simply a spontaneous
process without direction. Instead it is possible to identify a number of
quite deliberate decisions around this process that contributed to an
enlarged national role for the former Dutch great. Amid this evolution sat
a number of key advocates, undoubtedly impressed, possibly seduced, by
Cruijffs earlier fame and continued popularity. Among them were
influential commentators within the national media and amongst the
body politic. They did this by acting as exegetes, as members of an
exclusive sub-class of people capable of exploiting and building upon the
notoriety of each other. Cruijffs remarkable use of logical paradoxes,
wisecracks and more often than not simple logic, delivered in theunmistakeable brogue of the Amsterdam working-class district in which
he grew up, was identified very early as a most valuable asset for
strategically minded politicians.25
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This pronounced transfer, from his status as one of the greatest soccer
players ever to play the game, to attaining a broader iconic standing
within Dutch society unfolded between 2004 and 2006.26 An important
advocate during this period was the popular Dutch management guru andpolitician Pieter Winsemius. In 1982, at a comparatively young age,
Winsemius became secretary of state for spatial planning and milieu
affairs in the Dutch government. He acquired the standing of an effective
and successful politician, capable of promoting a succession of progressive
laws through Parliament. After he had served as a secretary of state, he
remained in public life, holding a range of posts in which he continued to
advocate in favour of progressive ideas. His role as a well-known public
figure gained added agency through his authoring of books in which hedwelt on management lessons from the field of sports.27 In 2004 he
published a book with a title derived from one of the many well-known
phrases used by Cruijff: You Wont Get It until You Understand It. This
book became an instant success and was published in more than
40 editions. Based on interviews with people who were well acquainted
with Cruijff, as well as articles written by Cruijff himself, Winsemius
detailed in this book Cruijffs philosophy of management. Up to this
point, Cruijff was known solely as a capable football manager, having
proven his capabilities both at Ajax and Barcelona. However, now backed
by the prestige offered by a popular and well-regarded politician and
management expert, Cruijff was presented as a valuable source of
knowledge for managers operating in a whole host of different fields,
including commercial firms and state services. Eight years later Winse-
mius published a similar book based again on Cruijffs insights, entitled
Coincidence Is Logical. Not without irony Winner claims that Baruch
Spinoza was considered the greatest philosopher the Netherlands had ever
produced, until Johan Cruijffs arrival, that is.28
It seemed logical that Cruijff, as a management philosopher emerging
from the field of sports, should offer his name to a newly established col-
lege for sports management, The Johan Cruijff University, with depart-
ments in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm and Mexico. The college is
designed to cater for elite athletes who want to combine their careers in
sports with studying for a professional degree in marketing or manage-
ment. With the support of Winsemius, a long-standing philanthropic
initiative devised by Cruijff, the Johan Cruijff Foundation, which Cruijffbegan in 1997, also gained similar momentum. In 2003 it established its
first small, well-equipped soccer field in an underprivileged Dutch
neighbourhood, a so-called Cruijff Court. From that point forward the
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number of courts across the Netherlands has grown steadily, reaching
more than 140 in total at present.29
Cruijffs international status in soccer, as confirmed by the movie En un
Momento Dado, and his emergence within society at large as amanagement philosopher of some regard, probably contributed in 2006
to a request from the largest newspaper in the Netherlands, De Telegraaf,
for Cruijff to write a weekly column on soccer affairs. One of the
newspapers sportswriters assisted him in doing so in a ghost-writing
capacity. Cruijffs widespread prestige, combined with the circulation of
the newspaper, resulted in his views on soccer (and life generally)
becoming even more influential than ever before. Regularly, his column
managed to set the agenda for discussions on soccer affairs across a host
of other media platforms, especially television.
To appreciate further how Cruijff was framed as an icon of Dutch
society and how Dutch society was in turn shaped by Cruijffs increased
(and wider) public profile, it is important to consider Cruijffs quite
deliberate use of language. His wilful and inimitable use of language is in
fact crucial to our understanding of him as a national icon. His linguistic
approach has been labelled by some as both poetic and philosophical.
Indeed by 1996, it had already been analysedina major linguistic journal
by a number of well-known literary reviewers.30
It was the contents of thebooks published by Winsemius that particularly promoted this issue of
language to the level of philosophy. As has already been established, both
books Winsemius published about Cruijff contained titles derived from
commonly deployed Cruijff expressions: You Wont Get It until You
Understand Itand Coincidence Is Logical. Some other expressions used
by him, which became widely utilised in Dutch society, are Every
disadvantage has its advantage, Youve got to shoot or you cant score
and Football is simple, but the hardest thing there is is to play simple
football.
As we can see from the title of the film En un Momento Dado, another
aspect of this use of language was his framing as a plain, ordinary Dutchman
who was nonetheless prepared to learn and speak Spanish (during his
time with FC Barcelona), even if he did so by retaining his Dutch idiom. The
title of the aforementioned film is a word-for-word translation of a typical
Dutch expression that is not used at all in Spanish. Through Cruijff, many
people living in Dutch society saw themselves represented in wider society
in similar terms as plain but intelligent people.Not only the language used by Cruijff as an individual but also that
employed by others about Cruijff contributes to a form of religious
elevation. During his years at Barcelona, Cruijff was often referred to as
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El Salvador.31 However, the parallels go further than simply this. Just like
God, Cruijff is regarded as almost inaccessible, but at the same time omni-
present, almighty and omniscient. The exegetes are there to interpret the
oracle. Pfeijffer, a well-known Dutch literary writer and poet, expressesthis view when he describes how
Cruijff appears when, according to himself, the time has come to orderthe state of the world for the best. His epiphany is a manifestation ofmercy.Criticism is a form of ingratitude in his view.In theexperience of Cruijff, he has always left as soon as people refused toacknowledge that he was the truth and the ultimate way to go.32
Not all Dutch intellectuals admired Cruijff as much as Winsemius and
others did. However, no one could deny Cruijffs national and interna-
tional prestige. As such he remained a crucial source of national pride for
a great many Dutch people.
The sports icons ability to divide a nation
Great sports icons have the unique capacity to unite an entire nation and,
at times, to throw it into unbridled ecstasy. However, the more readily the
icon gets involved in disputes concerning practical affairs, the greater therisk of him splintering a country into fans, followers, believers and zealots
on the one hand, and sceptics and critics on the other. In the case of
Cruijff that risk became manifest when he began to criticize not only the
way the game was being played in the Netherlands, but also the manner in
which his old club Ajax was being organized and managed. Already
during his career as a player and then a manager, there had been other
players and managers who felt damaged as a result of Cruijffs actions and
the stance he was adopting. And as befits many exceptional sports talents,
there have been a lot of conflicts with sports organizations, club directors
(both at Ajax and FC Barcelona) and sponsors over this period too.
Indeed the polarizing capacity of Cruijff is exceptionally pronounced.
Earlier in his career Cruijff had already demonstrated a high degree of
independence from the games authorities and a capability to negotiate
with them on his own terms. After his marriage in 1968 to the daughter of
the owner of an important diamond trading firm, his father-in-law helped
him with the business side of his career. This individual, Cor Coster, is
considered by many as the first players agent to have emerged withinDutch soccer. His role in bringing first Cruijff and then later coach Rinus
Michels and midfielder Johan Neeskens to Barcelona was not especially
welcomed by Ajax fans.33 However, through the cooperation with his
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father-in-law, Cruijff helped to promote a more businesslike relationship
between the players and their clubs. At an early stage, Cruijff already
revealed the ability to look after himself and to accept the help of others
who, in turn, could be useful to him.Much has been written about this quarrelsome aspect of Cruijffs
character. Conflicts were, in his view, always necessary to enhance
sporting performances. In fact this conflict model was embraced by
Michels as well during his own coaching career. Often the directors or
journalists were the ones who served as his prime target, as occupiers of
another world, a world of non-sportspeople, with little or no understand-
ing of the spirit of the athlete. This is also evident from the sensational
and much publicized power struggle that Cruijff pursued against club
directors between 2010 and 2012 at his own club Ajax.34
This kind of conflict that is, the opposition between the traditional
supporters and players of the club and the officials who have to manage
the clubs financial and business interests can be witnessed in nearly all
leading European clubs. The officials find it necessary to defend and
promote the long-term aims of their policies. In contrast, the tendency
among supporters and even many players is to pursue the short-term
interests of the team and take to the field of play in pursuit of instant
gratification. More often than not, supporters want a successful team,even if this is not financially prudent from a business perspective. Within
Ajax of Amsterdam, this conflict of interest was framed in terms of the
opposition between club Ajax and Ajax Ltd. Club Ajax represented
policies based on the insights of former players and other long-term club
members; in contrast, Ajax Ltd stood for the modern structure of
professional management, which defines club governance across the
continent of Europe. This framing emerged originally in 2000, two years
after the club had transformed itself from a voluntary association into a
public limited company. In 2000 the central issue was the modern
professional type of management that the new directors, now in charge of
the club, had introduced.35 In contrast, Cruijff became the major
representative of club Ajax. His primary objection was that when it
came to the decision-making process surroundingon-fieldaffairs, former
players and real club members had been excluded. It did not take long
before the new board of directors gave way to the mounting criticism
being generated by one of the clubs greats and were forced to resign.
Notwithstanding this, the conflict was seen by many as aninternal affair(to Ajax) and thus caused little reaction outside of the club.36
In 2010 the public became aware of a new source of discord. That year
the Ajax team was playing reasonably well under its new manager, the
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Dutch national Martin Jol. Interestingly Jol did not show much respect for
Cruijff, claiming that according to the teaching of Johan Cruijff total
football is that you score one point more than your opponent.37 In his
right to reply, and via the medium of his widely read column, Cruijffbegan to criticize the policy of Ajaxs new trainer. According to Cruijff, Jol
had deviated from the principles of total football and, because of this, the
Ajax team did not play like an authentic Ajax side should perform. This
was again linked, just as in 2000, to the fact that former players still had
no say in the affairs of Ajax.
After Cruijffs increasingly regular interventions, former players began
to assume leading positions in the youth department of Ajax. The director
and the new trainer subsequently departed, and Cruijff became a member
of a board of trustees alongside four other appointees. The first task of this
newly established board was to appoint a new director. In response Cruijff
proposed an old friend of his, former Ajax player Tscheu La Ling. Ling
was rejected by the other trustees because he was associated with
fraudulent activities as the former owner of a Slovakian football club.38
After several months the four other members of the board of trustees
announced that they had nominated Louis van Gaal as the new director.
Cruijff had not been informed about this decision. This was a full-scale
attack on the position of Cruijff. Louis van Gaal had been a very successfulinternational trainer (with Ajax, Barcelona and Bayern Munich). Under
his lead Ajax had won the Champions League in 1995, as well as the world
super cup. It had been the last great international success of Ajax. Many
people judged it as a most astute move by the four members of the board
of trustees. However, Van Gaal and Cruijff had not been on harmonious
terms since the time when Cruijff had criticized van Gaal during his spell
as manager of FC Barcelona. In November 2011, in a popular talk show
broadcast on Dutch television, Cruijff defined the situation at Ajax andhis relationship with van Gaal as follows (it also gives a feeling for his
typical use of language):
INTERVIEWER: But could you imagine because it is also about largeegos of course, Johan Cruijff and Louis van Gaal, that you just think:
you know what, perhaps its not so bad for Ajax at the moment, lets justgive him a call.CRUIJFF: Nowadays you can see a revolution in soccer in almost allaspects. First we had, say, hobby trainers, lets call them this way, wehave to give them a name somehow. Then we had trainers who wereobliged to obtain a licence, so you get a different kind of person, adifferent kind of trainer that is just a very normal course of events.These people can communicate more easily with directors and
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members, because they have a different kind of education. Perhaps Ishould mention in between that soccer players, they are creativepeople and in general they use the right hemisphere. At school and ifyou learn in different ways, your left [hemisphere] will eventually be
filled. When the left [hemisphere] goes over the right [hemisphere],you will of course get collisions. Therefore there are always collisionswith all kinds of directors and members in sports.INTERVIEWER: But your intelligence should then be at the same locationas Van Gaal he is an elite athlete as well.CRUIJFF: Yes, but he never competed at the elite level. At a sub-elitelevel, not the elite level. This is not meant in a bad way at all. He hasnever reached, say, the level of Jonk, Bergkamp and so forth, he hasnever reached our level, but that is not a problem at all. He has been ateacher. When you are a teacher, you are being educated in a very
different way. And then you automatically get these kinds of anti poles,lets call it that way. At this moment we have a very large amount ofplayers, ex-players, who do have that intelligence: again Bergkamp,Jonk and so forth. So they can easily take this over. Therefore, now isthe time to take it over again, so the next generation should just haveits turn.39
The full-scale attack on Cruijff (by appointing one of his greatest enemies,
Van Gaal) divided Dutch society. Of course, De Telegraaf, the popular
newspaper in which Cruijff penned his column, supported his stance. Hewas also backed by many regular commentators on television. However, a
large part of the more educated public supported the decision of the
majority of the board of trustees. They were further encouraged in their
view by the liberal newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Indeed, it was not an
easy choice for all who cared for the future of Ajax. Nobody could deny
that Van Gaal was a good choice. The choice was also supported by some
other well-known club icons of Ajax. For a while, it seemed that Cruijff
had been dealt a severe blow. However, in time he recovered. In a juridical
procedure it was established that the four members of the board oftrustees had been wrong in nominating Van Gaal without informing
Cruijff about their decision. In the end Cruijff won the case. It was a
Pyrrhic victory. His iconic status was damaged after it became known that
he had used racist and sexist language against his colleagues in the board
of trustees. According to Cruijff, a black member of the board (former
Ajax and Dutch team player Edgar Davids) was nominated to the board
only because he was black. In his opinion the female board member
Marjan Olfers (also a professor in sports law) achieved her place solelybecause she was a woman.
Most people agreed that it was necessary to find an approach for Ajax
in which the interests of both the club and the public limited company
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were best represented. In spite of all these upheavals and organizational
chaos, Ajax became national champions in successive seasons, 2011, 2012
and 2013. These successes contributed to the gradual softening of the
conflict as described here.
Cruijff the icon?
The careful construction of Cruijff as a more general icon of Dutch society
after the period 20046 was unquestionably damaged in light of the
conflict surrounding the appointment of van Gaal. Cruijff had shown
himself not as a philanthropist, linguistic virtuoso or management
philosopher but as something of a street fighter who would not hesitate
to verbally attack people who failed to accede to his iconic status. As such,
he was still valued highly by many people, including an emerging support
from those who admired the ferocity with which he expressed his views.
Most people saw him as a wonderful player and soccer manager, but no
longer as an example of a modern, creative managerial approach
appropriate for the twenty-first century. This degradation of the iconic
stature of Cruijff as a person followed the somewhat disenchanting
performance of the Dutch team during the World Cup final in 2010 held
in South Africa. After the World Cup final against Spain many interna-tional media commentators drew attention to the contrast between the
somewhat robust, industrial play of the Dutch and the now increasingly
redundant memories of total football. The Independent characterized the
teams style of playing, with a primary focus on achieving results, as
almost non-Dutch:
It is hardly the stuff of David Winners Brilliant Orange we aredescribing here; nothing like the total voetbal perfected by Johan
Cruijff under Rinus Michelss leadership in 1974 in which all theDutch players were so completely gifted that they could interchangepositions in th e 43-3 formation which the side displayed to theworld.40
Although a contrast is being drawn here, the power of the sporting icon
reveals itself as well. In 2010 Dutch players and managers wanted to rid
themselves of the image of just falling short of achieving success and
perish in beauty.41 During the 2010 World Cup final the Dutch national
team appeared aware of the fact that the connection between playing styleand nationality was just a constructed identity and that securing success
was the currency by which modern teams are judged. That does not take
away the fact that all new generations will always be overshadowed to
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some extent with that source of identity, which has been outlined to every
Dutch football player since the 1970s.
Conclusion
A sports icon has the power to mobilize enormous amounts of positive
energy within a society. The success of Ajax and the Dutch team during
the 1970s led to periodic euphoric responses. Those successful years have,
until today, particularly in the embodiment of Cruijff, exercised an
enormous influence on football in the Netherlands. Such performances
constitute the foundation of mythical memories, which in turn have a
symbolic meaning for the construction of Dutch identity and the role that
sporting success plays in it.
Remarkably in the case of Cruijff and a small number of others that
achieved notoriety through international sport he has maintained the
iconic status that he acquired as a player in the 1970s to the present day.
He has not only maintained this status, but has also managed to embellish
it. This article has outlined this enlargement by documenting how a
number of high-profile people, with strong influence in politics, literary
circles and the media have promoted Cruijff as an icon, not just for those
interested in soccer but for the Dutch people as a whole. This involved inparticular his way of thinking and the manner in which he expressed
himself. These views enjoyed an elevated status and represented forms of
wisdom from which the Dutch people at large could appreciate how to
conduct themselves in a vastly changing world. Of course in promoting
Cruijff these individuals were also able to promote themselves and the
interests they represented (see, in particular, De Telegraaf).
Ajax was floated on the Dutch stock exchange in 1998 and was, in
Cruijffs opinion, placed under the charge of managers who lacked any
credible understanding of the game of football. He took the side of the
ordinary supporters, who were seemingly crying out for European
success just like they had experienced in the 1970s. He thereby employed
a nostalgic identity discourse and contrasted it with the hard-nosed
businesslike approach being pursued by the clubs board of directors.42
The we in his rhetoric referred to the real sports fans, the true
connoisseurs or, when the battle took place at boardroom level, to the
brilliant athletes at the club themselves. On the other side of this
dichotomy, in the mind of Cruijff, are the businesses, the directors, orthe academics. In his view, a director can never be a good administrator
if he has not played football at an elite level. In this way Cruijff appealed
to the peoples uncomfortable lack of understanding about the intricacies
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of soccer management. Within this idiom, the thinking and acting of an
elite athlete is unique, creative and inimitable to the ordinary person.
In a similar way Cruijffs capacities and achievements as a football
player were used to characterize the identity of the whole country. Thisbattle transcends that of the football player against club directors.
Whether or not induced by others, Cruijff was acutely aware of how to
appeal to societal sentiments, utilising his linguistic tools and polarizations
in a subtle and efficient way. The arguments and the language have
changed, however, in a way that again seamlessly fits with the mood music.
The man who could unite a country like no other, who made the Dutch
proud by the mere mention of his name, could also deride others who
opposed his position on certain matters in a wholly primitive manner.
Notes
1. Hans Lenk, Herculean MythAspects of Athletics,Journal of the Philosophy of
Sport3, no. 1 (1976), 16.
2. David Goldblatt, The Ball Is Round. A Global History of Soccer (New York:Riverhead Books, 2008), 465.
3. Seehttp://www.rsssf.com/miscellaneous/iffhs-century.html#worldpoc; alsohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA_Player_of_the_Century(accessed 3 March 2012)
4. See Lincoln Allison and Terry Monnington,
Sport, Prestige and InternationalRelations, Government and Opposition37, no. 1 (2002): 10634; Tom Gibbons,
Contrasting Representations of Englishness During FIFA World Cup Finals,
Sport in History30, no. 3 (2010): 42246; Ivo van Hilvoorde, Agnes Elling and
Ruud Stokvis, How to Influence National Pride? The Olympic Medal Index as a
Unifying Narrative, International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45, no. 1(2010): 87102; Barrie Houlihan, Sport, National Identity and Public Policy,
Nations and Nationalism3, no. 1 (1997): 11337; Grant Jarvie and Irene A. Reid,
Sport, Nationalism and Culture in Scotland, The Sports Historian 19, no. 1
(1999): 97124; Mojca Doupona Topic and Jay Coakley, Complicating the
Relationship between Sport and National Identity: The Case of Post-SocialistSlovenia,Sociology of Sport Journal27, no. 4 (2010): 37189; Lloyd L. Wong andRicardo Trumper, Global Celebrity Athletes and Nationalism. Ftbol, Hockey,
and the Representation of Nation, Journal of Sport & Social Issues 26, no. 2(2002): 16894.
5. See also Steven J. Jackson and Pam Ponic, Pride and Prejudice: Reflecting on
Sport Heroes, National Identity, and Crisis in Canada, Sport in Society4, no. 2
(2001): 4362.
6. For this information on Cruijff we used Nico Scheepmaker,Cruijff, Hendrikus
Johannes, fenomeen(Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1972/2005); Mik Schots
and Jan Luitzen, Wie is Johan Cruijff. Insiders duiden het orakel (Amsterdam:
Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers/Het Sporthuis, 2007); David Winner, BrilliantOrange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).
7. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round, 464.
8. Ibid., 478.
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9. Scheepmaker,Cruijff, Hendrikus Johannes, fenomeen, 142.
10. Frank J. Lechner, Redefining National Identity: Dutch Evidence on Global
Patterns, International Journal of Comparative Sociology48, no. 4 (2007), 360.
11. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round; Menno de Galan, De trots van de wereld. Michels,
Cruijff en het Gouden Ajax van 19641974 (Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 2006);Auke Kok, 1974. Wij waren de besten (Amsterdam: Thomas Rap, 2004); Udo
Merkel, The 1974 and 2006 World Cups in Germany: Commonalities,
Continuities and Changes, Soccer & Society7, no. 1 (2006): 1428.12. Ruud Stokvis,Sport, publiek en de media (Amsterdam: Aksant, 2003), 101.
13. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round, 469.
14. De Telegraaf, March 7, 1969, cited in Scheepmaker, Cruijff, Hendrikus Johannes,
fenomeen, 178.15. Hubert Smeets, Hard Gras, 1997, cited in Winner, Brilliant Orange, 25.
16. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round, 469.
17. Winner, Brilliant Orange, 44.18. Alex Murphy, The Independent, March 4, 2005, online at http://www.independ-
ent.co.uk/news/obituaries/rinus-michels-6151472.html. Rinus Michels (1928
2005) was coach of Ajax Amsterdam (196571; 19756), Barcelona (19715;
19768) and the Netherlands national team (1974; 19845; 19868; 19902).
With Ajax he won the European Cup and the Spanish league with Barcelona.
With the Dutch national team, he reached the final of the World Cup in 1974
and in 1988 he won the European Championship. In 1999 he was named coach
of the century by FIFA.
19. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round, 468.20. The phrase Pythagoras in boots was first used by David Miller, former
sportswriter ofThe Times (London).21. Eric J. Hobsbawm and Terence O. Ranger, eds,The Invention of Tradition(New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Hugh Dauncy and Geoff Hare, World
Cup France 98. Metaphors, meanings and Values, International Review for the
Sociology of Sport 35, no. 3 (2000): 33147; Frank J. Lechner Imagined
Communities in the Global Game: Soccer and the Development of Dutch
National Identity, Global Networks 7, no. 2 (2007): 21529.
22. Winner, Brilliant Orange, 149.
23. Goldblatt,The Ball is Round, 726.24. Johan Cruyff. En un momento dado, directed by Ramon Gieling (Pieter v.
Huystee Films/Humanistische Omroep, 2004).
25. Guus Middag and Kees van der Zwan, Utopien wie nooit gebeuren. De taal van
Johan Cruijff, Onze Taal11 (1996): 2757.
26. Schots and Luitzen,Wie is Johan Cruijff; Winner, Brilliant Orange.27. Pieter Winsemius, Je gaat het pas zien als je het doorhebt. Over Cruijff en
leiderschap (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2004); Pieter Winsemius, Toeval is
logisch (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Balans, 2012).28. Winner, Brilliant Orange, 212.
29. http://www.cruyff-foundation.org/, accessed 21 February 2012.30. See note 25.
31. See the movie cited in note 24.32. Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer, JC, een hagiografie,Vrij Nederland, April 14, 2012, 207.
Sport in History 443
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33. Marcel Maassen, Betaalde liefde. Voetbal, van volkssport tot entertainment-industrie (Nijmegen: Sun, 1999), 180.
34. Menno de Galan, De Coup van Cruijff. Hoe Johan de macht greep bij Ajax
(Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Thomas Rap, 2011).
35. Ruud Stokvis, Ajax Isnt Ajax Anymore: On Power, Rhetoric and Identity,Soccer and Society9, no. 4 (2008): 497508.
36. Ibid.37. Schots and Luitzen,Wie is Johan Cruijff.
38. Menno de Galan,De Coup van Cruijff.
39. Johan Cruijff, interview by Jeroen Pauw and Paul Witteman,Pauw en Witteman,
November 18, 2011.40. Ian Herbert, Holland: Brotherhood is Why the Futures Orange, The Independ-
ent on Sunday, July 4, 2010.
41. Winner, Brilliant Orange.
42. Stokvis, Ajax Isnt Ajax Anymore.
444 I. van Hilvoorde and R. Stokvis
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