Has the game of football ever produced a brain – or feet – quite like those packed into the whiplash frame of Johan Cruyff? I think not.
In July 2009, FourFourTwo undertook the sizeable task of unpicking the genius of the world’s first total footballer, the man with a personality so big that his manager, Rinus Michels, hired two psychologists to try and understand him, a giant whose transfer fee to Barcelona was so huge – £1million when that really was £1million – that he had to be registered as a piece of agricultural machinery to get it past the Spanish tax authorities.
Simon Kuper’s article covers Cruyff the player, the coach, the pundit and plenty more besides. If you want to try and understand him as well as either of those psychologists, this is the place to start – you can find Kuper’s article here.
