If only back in 2020 governments worldwide had been honest with planet earths inhabitants, perhaps we’d be in a better place today. This isn’t some outlandish conspiracy, but wasn’t the real purpose of the lock-downs to ensure everyone would sit at home and endlessly pour over grainy but glorious footage of Ajax and the Dutch national team from the 1970’s? If it wasn’t, then it should of been.
During such a surreal, bleak and uncertain time in human history, putting this era under the microscope proved to be the antidote to some pretty dreary days for me.
Of all the modern contraptions the technological revolution has thrown at us in the last twenty five years, YouTube is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most invaluable. To quote a certain Mr Alexander Ferguson formerly of Govan – “There’s no question about it”.
Countless hours of my life were spent in front of a screen during those times, watching history unfold as eleven demigods, be it in red and white or pure Oranje, weaved magic around opponents, or more appropriately – victims.
In the late 1960’s football’s tapestry was being altered and up-cycled in a small nation on the south eastern shore of the North Sea. Rinus Michel’s had turned up at Ajax in a battered old Skoda – a vehicle which embodied the miserable position the Amsterdam club found themselves in at this particular juncture. The big difference was that the Skoda’s best days were behind it, Ajax’s lay ahead.
Michel’s wasted not a second in his bid for glory and enduring pursuit of excellence. He was a stickler for discipline and when he cracked the whip, his soldiers got in line. His arrival would prove serendipitous for a certain long haired, bird legged, juvenile genius – a certain Johan Cruyff.
Cruyff was a rebel who always had a cause – he and authority were like oil and water. Michel’s though, was one of the few teachers who could get him to behave – well, sort of. The vision proposed by Michel’s, later to be christened Total Football, was one which Cruyff bought into wholeheartedly and then injected into his veins for the remainder of his life.
At the Apex of the temple of Total Football, carved into ancient stone by the hands of an assiduous, masterly sculptor are the faces of Cruyff and Michels, side by side. The master and the apprentice as one. They do not sit alone however, and the great hall is adorned with oil paintings and monuments to Total Football’s many other, often less heralded architects.
One such figure was the taciturn, awkward Austrian, Ernst Happel. The appointment of Happel at Ajax’s eternal foes Feyenoord saw the script being ripped up and rewritten. Operating with a 4-3-3 formation he had curated on the training fields at ADO Den Haag earlier on in the decade alongside a daring offisde trap that was fraught with risk, Feyenoord became the first Dutch side to plant their flag at the summit of European Football.
Ajax’s response would be emphatic. The next three European Cup’s would be claimed in a breathtaking style.
The effects of the constant dueling of Michels and Happels over the next few years would spread to the national side – who they both lead at two separate World Cups. Twice the Dutch captured the imagination on the world stage and twice they fell at the final hurdle. Such was their influence on those who witnessed their majesty that it was one of the rare occasions when history was written by the vanquished.
I initially encountered Gary Thacker’s work on the subject sometime in the aforementioned lock-downs, when on my allocated outdoor allowance I paced the pavements and country lanes on the border of Leeds and Wakefield, headphones nestling high on a head of untrimmed, unkempt hair. On various podcasts, an unmistakably broad West Midlands accent took the listener on a journey back in time, providing a front row ticket to one of the greatest football stories ever told.
Conversing recently with Gary on my own podcast, The Football Conversations, was a real thrill. Gary’s enthusiasm on the subject is infectious. The passion he has for this particular era pours out of every page of his two fantastic books – Beautiful Bridesmaids Dressed In Oranje and Dutch Masters. If you haven’t already, then you should pick up a copy now. And if you haven’t spent hour after hour on YouTube watching Cruyff, Rep and Neeskins in their pomp then I suggest you should. In fact, it should be compulsory. It should be the law.
image from the Nationaal Archief, the Dutch National Archives
