People From Amsterdam

"People remember very well that not only were you [Cruyff] an outstanding football player but that you gave football a social content, you made it an educational process. You are a role model. Football is one of the great ways to make peace among people. When a player like you arrives in our country the eyes of the children light up—Jewish, Arab or Muslim."

"When I was a teenager my idol was the Dutch footballer Johan Cruyff. He's the only person I've ever asked for an autograph."

"The whole world knew Johan Cruijff. And through him, the whole world came to know the Netherlands and Dutch football. (...) A lot of people come to my offices but never before has everyone wanted to be photographed with a visitor as they did with him."

"The Dutch love their country and are proud of the legacy left by Erasmus, [[Hugo Grotius|"

"I always told everyone that Cruyff was my idol. I'm not being disloyal to [Real] Madrid by saying that. I believe in honesty and when you look at what Johan's like, who he is and how he played, then if you can't say he's your idol, you are not a person worthy of being a Real Madrid supporter."

"Johan Cruyff, true football royalty. I don't think anyone has ever influenced the game as much as he has done."

"I have a big respect in general for the Dutch school, and Johan Cruyff especially, because let's not forget he is the product of a school in Holland which was around before him. People like Rinus Michels, who influenced his players too, because this is not an isolated way of thinking. Johan Cruyff had it too - that personality, the character to say 'yes, I believe in this game, and I'm strong and brave enough to apply it on the pitch.' That's what I admired."

"Today football has lost one of its best ever players and ambassadors. I am very sad because Johan was my childhood hero, my idol and my friend."

"You can separate Barça's history into BCE (Before Cruyff Era) and CE (Cruyff Era). And, yes, Barça are still, nearly 20 years after he coached his final game for the club, still very much in the Cruyff Era."

"Sad to hear that Johan Cruyff has died. Football has lost a man who did more to make the beautiful game beautiful than anyone in history."

"His intelligence off the field as well as on it was quite remarkable. How well I remember seeing Cruyff surrounded by journalists from all over the world in 1978 to whose questions he replied almost casually in a multiplicity of languages."

"Cruyff the player was gloriously impudent, a slight and graceful genius who proved that brain could outmanoeuvre brawn. Watching his Netherlands dart and thrust their way around Uruguay or Argentina in 1974, or seeing his Ajax outwit Juventus in the European Cup final in 1973, was to see a devastating puppet-master toying with lumbering opponents. Cruyff the coach, Cruyff the manager, was able to retain that sense of the joy of the game, the importance of beauty and, what’s harder, to convey that sense to his players. There has never been such a great player who was also such a great manager. In that he stands utterly unique."

"He [Cruyff] can be seen as a revolutionary, a dreamer, a visionary, and an innovator who changed the idea of a game in which strength was the primary consideration to another one based, and focused, on ability and technique, giving birth to what has been called “tiki-taka.” He used to say that football should be played with the brain. (...) He would always talk about football in the same way he did when he was playing and coaching—with plenty of passion and excitement. A legend has gone but he has left an important legacy."

"There was also no rational reason why Dutch football should produce someone like Cruyff at the time that he began kicking around a ball in the East Amsterdam planned neighbourhood of Betondorp. (…) Until he pulled on the Oranje jersey, the Dutch national team had failed to qualify for a major tournament since before World War II. No Dutch side had won European silverware. It was very much a footballing backwater, as likely to spawn a guy who would change the sport forever as Jamaica is to produce the world's greatest downhill skier."

"More than an athlete, Cruyff was also a great thinker, someone who reinvented the sport (...) Cruyff has left us now, but his vision and philosophy will hopefully live forever. You can see it in the way Barcelona—one of two clubs Cruyff revolutionized, along with Ajax—still plays every week. It's a style that has admirers around the world. I think a lot of people share that [philosophy] with him. You want to see this type of game, where you set the tone, you control the game, you make it fast, you make it attractive and attacking. He's always been famous for his version of the 4–3–3 with the wide wingers, all technically highly gifted and fast. This is his mark.""

"As a player and as a manager he [Cruyff] won a lot of titles, but that's not his legacy. The titles only help. Johan has changed two clubs. Not only did he change Ajax, but also Barcelona – and then the Dutch and Spanish national teams, too. Forget the titles. I've won more titles than him. Messi, for example, is someone runs less and in that he's the best of Cruyff's alumni. (...) I would not have been capable of doing what he did at Barcelona. He changed everything. He did it all. What Cruyff's done for football cannot be compared. The statue thing is superficial. He has made us love this sport so openly that there's no way we can forget him."

"He [Cruyff] has been inspirational to me along my career. When I was giving my first steps as a footballer he was a myth, an icon to follow. Afterwards, when I became a football manager, Cruyff was one of my references."

"There may have been better players in the history of the game, though I doubt you can count them on more than one hand. And there may have been better managers, too, if only because his coaching career only lasted 10 and a half years (during which he won 14 trophies, not a bad return). But it's tough to argue that any man has exerted a greater influence -- on the pitch and on the bench -- on the game as we know it today."

"Cruyff really impressed me. I think I wasn't the only one in Europe."

"Cruyff has had many enemies and critics over the years. He has been accused of being too idealistic, too stubborn, insufficiently interested in defending and simply too difficult a personality. He loves an argument, and his conflict-model method of working can be bruising."

"The Netherlands [until the early 1960s] was a third-rate footballing nation, its tactics and facilities stuck in the 1930s. Yet within a decade, the club and country had become the most important and admired in the world. Cruyff was the man who made it happen."

"Cruyff, the great ideologue of the Catalan club, its philosopher king,"

"You really have to put things in their context and their historic moment. For me, my idol was always Johan Cruyff. For me he has always been the greatest, not just as a player but also as a person. (...) He has been a point of reference for me. It was his era, his moment - and he was the best in the world. For me, the best in history."

"When players like [Gareth] Bale and [Cristiano] Ronaldo are worth around €100 million, Johan [Cruyff] would go in the billions."

"We [Barça] have had great players before, from the days of László Kubala and Luis Suárez. [Johan] Cruyff, as a player, made us relevant again and as a manager he put us on the map with the European Cup win in 1992. Ronaldinho made us global and Messi has made us universal."

"I consider him [Cruyff] the ideological father of the football; the one I try to play like and the one I look to learn from as a spectator whenever I watch a game. The intelligent use of the ball and the spaces, the importance of talent over the physical condition and the understanding of football as a team sport are concepts that I definitely endorse."

"Cruyff 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."

"We discussed space the whole time. Cruyff always talked about where people should run, where they should stand, where they should not be moving. It was all about making space and coming into space."

"Cruyff introduced some passing drills into Barça's ‘arterial’ system. And since then, the rondos have been not just a method but a symbol of the club's playing style: of dominating and never losing the ball. Cruyff blended several ideas and concepts and converted them into a philosophy – the seeds of which were planted throughout a club in urgent need of a footballing identity. Until then, the first team of Barcelona had been comfortably living in a world of excuses and enemies, content with their role as victims when faced with Real Madrid, an institution seen from Catalonia as the club of the Establishment."

"He [Cruyff] changed the idiosyncrasy of the club (Barça). He introduced the philosophy to keep the ball, to play in triangles, to attack. That philosophy remains true to this day. We're all students of Cruyff and his school of thought."

"As a player he [Cruyff] turned football into an art form. Johan came along and revolutionised everything. The modern-day Barça started with him, he is the expression of our identity, he brought us a style of football we love."

"There have been four kings of football – Di Stéfano, Pelé, Cruyff and Maradona – and the fifth has not yet appeared. We are awaiting the fifth, and it is sure to be Messi, but so far he is not among the kings. You can't give him the crown after five years."

"It is about creating one philosophy, one mentality, from the bottom of the club to the top. Cruyff is the one who started it all. He has been the club's most influential figure. We all have the ability to do certain things, but I would not have been able to build something from scratch like Cruyff did. I learned a lot of things from him. I cannot imagine the current Barcelona without Cruyff's work."

"With Cruyff we [Barça] began to play differently, breaking new ground and innovating. With him, both as a player and coach, we established our own style on the field, what is traditionally known as 'total football,' the Barça style everyone admires. The arrival of Cruyff altered the history of Barça. He contributed decisively to a change of mentality. He got us to keep our heads up and to see that no opponent was invincible, that we could attain what we were aiming for. Cruyff was an icon who explained, better than anyone, that Barça is more than a club. He did it simply and based in reality, and always moving forward. Without Cruyff's unabashed and non-conformist spirit, we quite possibly wouldn't have become the greatest club in the world. So, again, thank you, Johan. Thanks to the man who was admired, thanks to the social icon, thanks to the football superstar."

"Never in my life have I seen a player like Cruyff rule matches. He was the owner of the show. Much more than his team, the referee or the fans. He was a player, coach and referee at the same time."

"I like technical players who can also think in terms of the team's interests. I've already mentioned Iniesta and Xavi, who disprove entirely the theory that only physically strong footballers with a lot of running ability can play in their positions."

"I loved the Dutch in the '70s, they excited me and Cruyff was the best. He was my childhood hero; I had a poster of him on my bedroom wall. He was a creator. He was at the heart of a revolution with his football. Ajax changed football and he was the leader of it all. If he wanted he could be the best player in any position on the pitch. (...) I was going to choose Cruyff as a player-manager because I loved his tactical brain. He was always thinking, he always wanted to improve his players. I know what his teams can do as I watched from the stands as his Barcelona side beat United 4-0 in 1994."

"That December [1992], we [Barça] lost the Intercontinental Cup match against São Paulo 2–1. It was one of the few times that I had no problems with a defeat. I've always admired the Brazilian coach Telê Santana for his vision, because it always displayed a genuine love of football."

"I haven't always been understood. As a footballer, as coach and also for what I did after all that. But OK, Rembrandt and Van Gogh weren't understood either. That's what you learn: people go on bothering you until you're a genius."

"When it was clear that I was leaving Ajax [in 1973], I was sent all kinds of poisonous messages and lots more of that kind of nonsense. But the worst thing for me was that Ajax gave my mother, who had always done her best for the club, an inferior seat in the stadium. Behind a pole. That absolutely crushed me."

"I sometimes wonder if Argentina would have won the World Cup in 1978 if Cruyff had been playing but he chose not to be there. In 1974, he scored two goals against Argentina in the quarter-final but without him in 1978 we just had the edge. He was a great player at a time when Dutch football was going through a great period and deserves to be considered as one of the all-time greats."

"Right now, I have the feeling that I am 2-0 up in the first half of a match that has not finished yet. But I am sure that I will end up winning."

"Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring."

"If you can't win, make sure you don't lose."

"Every disadvantage has its advantage."

"Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. And this is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere. Everyone can play it but those values are being lost. We have to bring them back."

"In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker the first defender."

"Players today can only shoot with their laces. I could shoot with the inside, laces, and outside of both feet. In other words, I was six times better than today’s players."

"Barça wanted to get rid of him [Guardiola]. They considered him scrawny, bad defensively and ineffective in the air. What nobody saw was that he had the basic qualities to go far: he had game intelligence, speed in his execution, technique. If I hadn't been at Barcelona, for sure he would have been sold to a Segunda Division club."

"Because you play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you. If you don't use your head, using your feet won't be sufficient. Why does a player have to chase the ball? Because he started running too late. You have to pay attention, use your brain and find the right position. If you get to the ball late, it means you chose the wrong position. Bergkamp was never late."