Armand Carabén told it: “At the time of negotiating the signing of Cruyff, the legislation prohibited the export of foreign currency for the purchase of a footballer. To pay Ajax, we had to put Cruyff through a luxury car. This anecdote explains the kind of audacity practiced by those who participated in the operation. As a luxury car, the Cruyff that arrived in Barcelona in 1973 had two gears more than any other player, an unbeatable reprise and the most plastic and modern aerodynamics of the moment. He didn’t run: he flew. He never repeated the same dribble. He was not frightened by the sinister black of the referees, turned into Civil Guard of traffic. And he had the cheeky insolence of cars that make themselves looked at and that provoke a cocktail of admiration, envy and, yes, also anger.
If the secret of radio audience leaders is that both their supporters and detractors listen to them, Cruyff liked to jump onto a theoretically hostile lawn and, through the game, not only dazzle them briefly, but seduce them forever. Rabid still remain. And his perseverance, which over the years has constructed an alternative account of irrefutable facts weakened by an unhealthy string of lies and grudges, honors them. The verdict of posterity, however, weakens them thanks to a memory that has freed itself from pettiness to focus on the evidence.
As an Ajax player, Cruyff changed the modern conception of football thanks to a phenomenal team, exceptional coaches, a context that was crying out for changes that he was unaware of and, above all, a talent that combines natural aptitudes, biographical phases of improvement, defiant insolence, charisma and the certainty of believing that creatively anticipating any obstacle is the shortest way to enjoy what you do. At Barça, moreover, he changed what pedants call the “mental framework”.
As a player and coach, he liked to repeat that betting on a technically virtuoso attacking show was the best way to satisfy everyone – and, incidentally, to get the most out of it. If the players enjoy, the public also. And if the audience enjoys it, the pleasure is reciprocal and spreads as a precedent for what his disciples would later call a “virtuous circle.” And, okay, let’s add the critics’ tagline: if everyone is happy, we’ll all make more money.
It’s such a simple idea that it has to be complex. The proof is that the only elite coach who has enriched this Idea is Josep Guardiola, who has ordered his melodic and orchestration precepts. Many other disciples, luckily, maintain the Style, which is to Cruyff’s football what tribute groups are to the Beatles’ repertoire: the way to cultivate the pleasure of interpreting it without having to make it evolve.
Cruyff was never a conventional virtuoso. Guardiola explained it very well in the interview in La Vanguardia when he said that the entire life of a Dutchman (you will allow me not to call him a Dutchman) is marked by conflict. Conflict with the pain of the premature loss of his father during childhood. Conflict with early adaptation to an environment in which he must stand out above average. Conflict as a pioneer in improving player conditions and exploiting their sponsorships. Conflict with the management structures of the club, with the media environments, with business, with its philanthropic vocation and the federative, national and international miseries.
The very decision to choose Barça has, originally, a seed of conflict. The confrontation with Van Praag, president of Ajax, added to falling in love with his wife, Danny, from Barcelona and the friendship with the Carabén, pushed him to distance himself – he knew how to do it – from a possible transfer to Real Madrid. It was written by one of the heteronyms of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán: “The fight for the signing of Cruyff had a dramatic back room of negotiations in which at one time or another Philips, Real Madrid, the Zionist international, Barça, Banca Catalan, the Spanish Football Federation, the Dutch and a horrifying etcetera in which, fortunately, Henry Kissinger did not appear”.
Conflict with Josep Lluís Núñez, in which he found his most powerful antagonist. Together they starred in one of the most institutionally disturbing moments in history: a tribute match at the Camp Nou between former Barça players and Barça (of Louis van Gaal). Official result: Núñez won. Moral result: Cruyff’s dream team won, reinforced by the happily extravagant presence of Éric Cantona. In Cruyff, the conflict as the engine of history itself always has a creative, unexpected, singular dimension, but also the undisguised satisfaction of seeing that defeatism and pettiness almost always lose.
Those who really knew him know it, and there are not many. Jaume Roures, for example, who, from a parsimony altered by emotion, remembered the phrase with which, in cubist Spanish, Cruyff defined his friendship: “He blindly trusts me and I the other way around.” And then, of course, there is the myth. Guardiola explains it very well: for him, Cruyff is not an artifice of idolatry that is interpreted à la carte, but a method. A method applicable to the pitch, to the locker room and even to more personal areas.
Although they do not say so publicly, some Cruyffists suspect that certain interpretations of Cruyffism are, due to excessive idolatry, counter-Cruyffists. The Dutchman’s repertoire of certainties was limited, but incorruptible. Precisely for this reason, he used to change his mind and contradict himself with an ease that, instead of weakening his ideology, reinforced it. Three aphorisms confirm these philosophical juggling: “Before you make a mistake, don’t do it”, “I am against everything until the moment I make a decision, and then I am in favor of it. It seems logical to me” and “I almost never make mistakes because it is very difficult for me to be wrong”.
The oral tradition keeps it alive in many after-dinner meals. The chef Fermí Puig remembers the generosity of the day in which, with Guardiola, they inaugurated the private one of his restaurant. Joan Patsy preserves hundreds of memories that he does not want to share out of loyalty and to annoy the snoopers who would give an arm to know about them. The brothers Joan and Robert Font are moved when they relive so many meals at the Montanyà golf course. My ex-wife remembers the day that Cruyff shook her hand, but instead of thanking God for having touched the prophet, he complains that he squeezed hers too hard. I, who had the privilege of dealing with him very intermittently, remember Cruyff who went to buy the newspapers (which he said he did not read) in the unusual shop in Montanyà, accompanied by a dog – sorry: maybe it was a dog – hairy and docile, that moved with a typically Cruyffian unpredictability. And, as the years go by and I lose the will to believe in anything and nobody, I marvel that the only loyalty I keep intact is for this genius named Johan Cruyff.