Legends of the game part 4: Johan Cruyff part 5
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Article part 5 of 10
"It's like everything in football - and life. You need to look, you need to think, you need to move, you need to find space, you need to help others. It's very simple in the end." - Johan Cruyff
The 1979 season started well as Cruyff, fresh off a flight and facing a 9 hour time difference which caused him jetlag, still showed his quality, scoring two goals in the first seven minutes and getting an assist before being subbed off. Though his young countryman team-mate Thomas Rogen remembers his first words as being: "Thomas, I know you are ok as a player, but just win the fucking ball and get it to me." The season continued in a similar vein as he scored 14 goals and 6 assists in 23 appearances, leading Aztecs to the Conference semi-finals. It led to him being voted NASL MVP.
Good times very rarely last long though and Rothenburg sold the Aztecs to a Mexican company called Televisa, who planned to build the team around Mexican stars. As such they wanted Cruyff's $500,000 salary off the books and agreed to sell him to Washington Diplomats for $1m and the remainder of the debt owed to Cosmos. This was not a match made in heaven, there was no Rinus Michels trying to reproduce 'total football' coaching the Dips. Instead they had an English coach called Gordon Bradley, who coached a long-ball static game, the antithesis to the way Cruyff played the game!
It soon became apparent how different things would be for Cruyff in Washington as, on his arrival in 1980 at Dulles International Airport he was met by three of the club's executives. To his apparent surprise there were no fans waiting for an autograph either inside or outside the airport and he was taken to Tiberio, a famous Italian eatery where Washington's movers and shakers ate. None of the senators, congressmen or other powerbrokers recognised Cruyff, which left them scratching their heads in confusion as a succession of busboys, dishwashers and cooks queued up for a picture, autograph and to speak to the great man.
There were problems on and off the pitch with his team-mates, one of whom, Bobby Stokes, told the press: "When the board bought Cruyff they should have gotten a few bales of cotton too. To stick in our ears." That was because Cruyff, was frustrated with Bradley's tactical approach and would be instructing, pointing and explaining to his team-mates what he wanted from them. Nick Mijatovic remembers Cruyff getting exasperated in the middle of a game and standing still with the ball at his feet: "'Somebody please move.' Then he'd raise his arms and declare: 'It's impossible!'"
Team-mates were in the press complaining that Cruyff was killing their confidence, while Cruyff himself was busy pelting the board with requests on behalf of the entire team. Cruyff wanted changes made to practices, which he felt were too long and tough in the oppressive summer heat, 1st class travel for the players, a better travel schedule and other changes. In the end Cruyff decided to just change matters himself, in a way that only Johan Cruyff could get away with.
Thomas Rongen, who the Aztecs had sold to the Diplomats as well, said: "After a teamtalk Johan would walk to the blackboard and erase all Bradley's formation and notes. 'We'll be doing this very differently, of course,' he would tell us. And then he'd tell us how we'd actually be playing." Diplomats club president Steve Danzansky later said: "He was like a musician with perfect pitch who was forced to play in an orchestra where everybody around him was playing off key. It drove him completely nuts."
While most agree that the team benefitted as team-mates were shuffled around, added and dropped at his bequest, there was one particular player who felt otherwise. Sonny Askew was a young, rising American star, who thought he was good enough to ignore the advice of one of the greatest players ever to grace a football pitch and it was not long into the season before, according to Askew, Cruyff told Bradley that "it's either him or me."
Ironically Askew seems rather proud of his refusal to play the Cruyff way, even now after his career amounted to so little, while Cruyff went on to prove himself one of the best coaches the game has ever seen. Askew said, "in the game they all gave the ball up to Cruyff. The whole time, continously. But I didn't, out on the right wing. I went my own way. And that drove Johan nuts." It got to the point where the two had a brawl on the training ground, with team-mates having to separate them. You just have to wonder if Askew will ever realise what a wasted opportunity he had to learn from a legend, instead of arrogantly deciding he knew better!
Written by Ed001