Read the book: «Zonal Marking»

Contents

1  Cover

2  Title Page

3  Copyright

4  Contents

5  Introduction

6  Part One – Voetbal, 1992–96

7  1 Individual versus Collective

8  2 Space

9  3 Playing Out from the Back

10  Transition: Netherlands–Italy

11  Part Two – Calcio, 1996–2000

12  4 Flexibility

13  5 The Third Attacker

14  6 Catenaccio

15  Transition: Italy–France

16  Part Three – Foot, 2000–04

17  7 Speed

18  8 The Number 10

19  9 The Water Carrier

20  Transition: France–Portugal

21  Part Four – Futebol, 2004–08

22  10 Structure

23  11 The First Port of Call

24  12 Wingers

25  Transition: Portugal–Spain

26  Part Five – Fútbol, 2008–12

27  13 Tiki-taka

28  14 False 9s & Argentines

29  15 El Clásico

30  Transition: Spain–Germany

31  Part Six – Fußball, 2012–16

32  16 Verticality

33  17 Gegenpressing

34  18 Reinvention

35  Transition: Germany–England

36  Part Seven – Football, 2016–20

37  19 The Mixer

38  Epilogue

39  Bibliography

40  Acknowledgements

41  List of Searchable Terms

42  Also by Michael Cox

43  About the Publisher

LandmarksCoverFrontmatterStart of ContentBackmatter

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Introduction

Despite this book’s chronological nature, it was not originally intended to be a history of modern European football. The primary intention was to analyse the various playing styles that dominate Europe’s seven most influential footballing countries – the Netherlands, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Germany and England – a fairly unarguable septet, based on a combination of recent international performance and the current strength of their domestic leagues.

A nation’s footballing style is reflected in various ways. It’s not simply about the national side’s characteristics, but about the approach of its dominant clubs, the nature of its star players and the philosophy of its coaches. It’s about the experiences of a country’s players when moving abroad, and about the success of its imports. It’s about how referees officiate and what the supporters cheer. That’s what this book was always going to be about.

But then came the issue of structure – in which order should the countries be covered? Geographically? Thematically? By drawing balls out of bowls at UEFA’s headquarters? It immediately became clear that the story wasn’t simply about the different style of each country. It was also about how Europe’s dominant football country, and dominant style, had changed so regularly.

1992 was the obvious start date, heralding the back-pass law, the rebranding of the European Cup to Champions League and the formation of the Premier League. From that point, each country could be covered in turn, by focusing on a four-year period of success.

In the early 1990s the Dutch footballing philosophy was worshipped across the continent, but its influence declined after the Bosman ruling. The baton passed to Italy, which clearly boasted Europe’s strongest league. But then France started winning everything at international level and its national academy became the template for others, before suddenly, almost out of nowhere, Europe’s most revered player and manager both hailed from Portugal. Next, Barcelona and Spain won across the board during a very obvious four-year period of dominance, before tiki-taka’s decline meant Bayern and Germany took control. Finally, Europe’s most successful coaches found themselves competing in England, introducing various styles to the Premier League.

Naturally, each section strays outside these four-year boundaries. You can’t analyse Dutch football in the mid-1990s without relating it back to the Total Football of the 1970s, and you can’t analyse Didier Deschamps’ performances for France at the turn of the century without noting that he won the World Cup as manager in 2018. None of the chapters are named after specific individuals or teams from each period; they’re based around more general concepts that have been reflected in each nation’s football over a longer period.

The seven sections are different in style. The Netherlands section is about how the Dutch dictated the nature of modern European football, the Italy section focuses on specific tactical debates and the France section is about its production of certain types of player. The Portugal section is about its evolution into a serious footballing force, the Spain section about its commitment to a specific philosophy, the Germany section about its reinvention and the England section about how it borrows concepts from elsewhere.

By virtue of the book’s structure, some noteworthy teams aren’t covered extensively here: there are only passing mentions of Greece’s shock Euro 2004 triumph, Italy’s World Cup success two years later and Real Madrid’s Champions League-winning sides of recent years. But the most influential players, coaches and teams since 1992 feature heavily, and therefore, while it wasn’t the original intention, this book hopefully serves as a history of modern European football by outlining its crucial innovations, including gegenpressing, playing out from the back, tactical periodisation, tiki-taka and, of course, zonal marking.

Part One

1
Individual versus Collective

At the start of football’s modern era in the summer of 1992, Europe’s dominant nation was the Netherlands. The European Cup had just been lifted by a Barcelona side led by Johan Cruyff, the epitome of the Dutch school of Total Football, while Ajax had won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. And there was strength in depth domestically – PSV had won the league, Feyenoord won the cup.

Holland failed to retain the European Championship, having won it in 1988, but played exciting, free-flowing fotball at an otherwise disappointingly defensive Euro 92, the last tournament before the back-pass change. Europe’s most dominant player was also a Dutchman – that year’s Ballon d’Or was won by Marco van Basten, while his strike partner at international level, Dennis Bergkamp, finished third.

But the Dutch dominance wasn’t about specific teams or individuals; it was about a particular philosophy, and Dutch sides – or those coached by Dutch managers like Cruyff – promoted this approach so successfully that football’s modern era would be considered in relation to the classic Dutch interpretation of the game.

When Total Football revolutionised the sport during the 1970s, the nature of the approach was widely associated with the nature of Amsterdam. The Dutch capital was the centre of European liberalism, a mecca for hippies from all across the continent, and that was reflected in Dutch football. Ajax and Holland players supposedly had no positional responsibilities, and were seemingly allowed to wander wherever they pleased to create vibrant, free-flowing, beautiful football.

But in reality the Dutch approach was heavily systematised – players interchanged positions exclusively in vertical lines up and down the pitch, and if a defender charged into attack, a midfielder and forward were compelled to drop back and cover. In that respect, while players were theoretically granted freedom to roam, in practice they were constantly thinking about their duties in response to the actions of others. In an era when attackers from other European nations were often granted free roles, Ajax and Holland’s forwards were constrained by managerial guidelines. Arrigo Sacchi, the great AC Milan manager of the late 1980s, explained it concisely: ‘There has only been one real tactical revolution, and it happened when football shifted from an individual to a collective game,’ he declared. ‘It happened with Ajax.’ Since that time, Dutch football has held an ongoing philosophical debate – should football be individualistic like the stereotypical depiction of Dutch culture, or be systematised like the classic Total Football sides?

During the mid-1990s, this debate was epitomised by the rivalry between Johan Cruyff, the golden boy of Total Football now coaching Barcelona, and Ajax manager Louis van Gaal, who enjoyed a more prosaic route to the top. Both promoted the classic Ajax model in terms of ball possession and formation, but whereas Cruyff wholeheartedly believed in indulging superstars, Van Gaal relentlessly emphasised the importance of the collective. ‘Van Gaal works even more structurally than Cruyff did,’ observed their shared mentor Rinus Michels, who had taken charge of those legendary Ajax and Holland sides in the 1970s. ‘There is less room in Van Gaal’s approach for opportunism and changes in positions. On the other hand, build-up play is perfected to the smallest detail.’

The Dutch interpretation of leadership is somewhat complex. The Dutch take pride in their openness and capacity for discussion, which in a footballing context means players sometimes enjoy influence over issues that, elsewhere, would be the responsibility of the coach. For example, Cruyff sensationally left Ajax for Barcelona in 1973 because Ajax employed a system in which the players elected the club captain, and was so offended when voted out that he decamped to the Camp Nou. When you consider Cruyff’s subsequent impact at Barcelona, it was a seismic decision, and one that owed everything to classic Dutch principles.

Dutch players are accustomed to exerting an influence on their manager, and helping to formulate tactical plans. As Van Gaal explained of the Ajax system, ‘We teach players to read the game, we teach them to be like coaches … coaches and players alike, we argue and discuss and above all, communicate. If the opposition’s coach comes up with a good tactic, the players look and find a solution.’ While in many other countries, players instinctively follow the manager’s instructions, a team of Dutch players may offer eleven different opinions on the optimum tactical approach, which partly explains why the national side are renowned for constantly squabbling at tournaments – they’ve always been encouraged to articulate tactical ideas. This inevitably leads to disagreements, and players in the national side only ever seem to agree when they decide to overthrow the coach.

Michels, the father of Total Football, actively encouraged dissent with his so-called ‘conflict model’, which involved him luring players into dressing-room arguments. ‘I sometimes deliberately used a strategy of confrontation,’ he admitted after his retirement. ‘My objective was to create a field of tension, and improve the team spirit.’ Crucially, Michels acknowledges he always picked on ‘key players’, and when a nation’s most celebrated manager admits to provoking his best players into arguments, it’s hardly surprising that those in future generations saw nothing wrong with squabbling.

This emphasis on voicing opinions means Dutch players are often considered arrogant by outsiders, and this is another concept linked to the nature of Amsterdam. The original Total Footballers of the 1970s Ajax team were described by Cruyff as being ‘Amsterdammers by nature’, the type of thing best understood by his compatriots. Ruud Krol, that side’s outstanding defender, outlined it further: ‘We had a way of playing that was very Amsterdam – arrogant, but not really arrogant, the whole way of showing off and putting down the other team, showing we were better than them.’ Dennis Bergkamp, on the other hand, claims it is simply ‘not allowed to be big-headed in the Netherlands’, and describes the notoriously self-confident Cruyff as ‘not arrogant – it’s just a Dutch thing, an Amsterdam thing.’

Van Gaal was arguably even more arrogant than Cruyff, and was so frequently described as ‘pig-headed’ that critics sometimes appeared to be making a physical comparison. Upon Van Gaal’s appointment as Ajax boss he told the board: ‘Congratulations for appointing the best manager in the world,’ while at his first press conference, chairman Ton Harmsen introduced him with the words, ‘Louis is damned arrogant, and we like arrogant people here.’ Van Gaal was another who linked Ajax’s approach to the city. ‘The Ajax model has something to do with our mentality, the arrogance of the capital city, and the discipline of the small Netherlands,’ he said. Everyone in Amsterdam acknowledges their collective arrogance, but no one seems to admit to individual arrogance, which rather underlines the confusion.

His long-time rival, Cruyff, was arrogant for a reason: he was the greatest footballer of the 1970s and the greatest Dutch footballer ever. His career was littered with successes: most notably three Ballons d’Or and three straight European Cups. He also won six league titles with Ajax, then moved to Barcelona and won La Liga, spent some time in the United States before returning to Ajax to win another two league titles. In 1983, when not offered a new contract at Ajax, he took revenge by moving to arch-enemies Feyenoord for one final year, won the league title, was voted Dutch Footballer of the Year, and then announced his retirement. Cruyff did what he pleased and got what he wanted, enjoying all this incredible success while simultaneously claiming that success was less important than style. He personified Total Football, which made his status – as the only true individual in an otherwise very collective team – somewhat curious. He was a popular choice as Ajax manager in 1985, just a year after his playing retirement. He won the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1987 and inevitably headed to another hero’s welcome in Barcelona, where he won the Cup Winners’ Cup again in 1989, then Barca’s first-ever European Cup in 1992 and their first-ever run of four straight league titles. A legendary player had become a legendary coach.

In stark contrast, when Van Gaal was appointed Ajax manager in 1991 after several disappointing post-Cruyff managerial reigns, supporters were unhappy. Cruyff had been heavily linked with a return and Ajax fans chanted his name at Van Gaal’s early matches, while De Telegraaf, the Netherlands’ biggest-selling newspaper, led a campaign calling for Cruyff’s return. Some believed Van Gaal was merely a temporary solution until Cruyff’s homecoming was secured, so it would be understandable if Van Gaal harboured resentment towards him based on those rumours. In fact, the tensions had their origins two decades earlier.

Van Gaal was a relatively talented footballer, a tall and immobile player who started up front, more playmaker than goalscorer, and later dropped back into midfield. He enjoyed a decent career, primarily with Sparta Rotterdam, but considered his playing career something of a disappointment, mainly because he had expected to become an Ajax regular. He’d joined his hometown club in 1972 at the age of 20 and regularly appeared for the reserve side, but he failed to make a single first-team appearance before being sold. The player in his position, of course, was Cruyff, and therefore Van Gaal’s entire Ajax career was spent in Cruyff’s shadow: first as his understudy when a player, then unpopular second-choice as coach.

By the early 1990s Cruyff was Barcelona manager and Van Gaal was Ajax manager, and the two were not friends. ‘We have bad chemistry,’ Cruyff confirmed. Initially, as coaches, they’d been on good terms. In 1989, when Van Gaal was Ajax’s assistant coach, he studied at a coaching course in Barcelona over Christmas and spent many evenings at the Cruyff family home, getting along particularly well with Cruyff’s son Jordi, then a Barca youth player. This, however, is supposedly where things turned sour. Van Gaal received a phone call from the Netherlands, bringing the news that his sister was gravely ill, and he rushed back to Amsterdam to see her before she died. Much later, Van Gaal suggested Cruyff was angry with him for leaving without thanking the Cruyffs for their hospitality, something Cruyff strongly denies, claiming they had a friendly encounter shortly afterwards in Amsterdam. It seems implausible that Cruyff would use Van Gaal’s tragic news to start a feud, and more likely that there was a misunderstanding at a moment when Van Gaal was emotional. But the truth is probably much simpler: this was a clash of footballing philosophies, and a clash of egos.

Cruyff devoted a considerable amount of time to winding up Van Gaal, while increasingly becoming wound up himself. By 1992 journalists were inevitably comparing Cruyff’s Barcelona to Van Gaal’s Ajax, the European Cup winners and the European Cup Winners’ Cup winners respectively, which prompted a furious response from Cruyff. ‘If he thinks Ajax are much better than Barcelona, then he’s riding for a fall, he’s making a big mistake,’ he blasted. ‘When you look at Ajax at the moment, you can see the quality is declining.’ He became increasingly petty. In 1993 he said he wanted Feyenoord to win the league ahead of Van Gaal’s Ajax. In 1994, when asked which teams across Europe he admired, Cruyff replied with Auxerre and Parma – the two sides that had eliminated Ajax from European competition in the previous two seasons. In February 1995, when a journalist suggested that Ajax might be stronger than Barcelona, his response was blunt: ‘Why don’t you stop talking shit?’ But Van Gaal’s Ajax demonstrated their superiority by winning the Champions League that year.

Van Gaal eternally stressed the importance of collectivism: ‘Football is a team sport, and the members of the team are therefore dependent upon each other,’ he explained. ‘If certain players do not carry out their tasks properly on the pitch, then their colleagues will suffer. This means that each player has to carry out his basic tasks to the best of his ability.’ Simple stuff, but you wouldn’t find Cruyff speaking about football in such functional, joyless language. Cruyff wanted his players to express themselves, to enjoy themselves, but for Van Gaal it was about ‘carrying out basic tasks’. When Ajax failed to win, Van Gaal would typically complain that his players ‘did not keep to the arrangement’, effectively accusing them of breaking their teammates’ trust by doing their own thing. However, Van Gaal’s sides were not about grinding out results – they would play in an extremely attack-minded, if mechanical, way. ‘I suspect I’m fonder of playing the game well, rather than winning,’ he once said.

A fine example of Van Gaal’s dislike for individualism came in 1992, when he controversially sold the exciting winger Bryan Roy, which prompted criticism from Cruyff, who complained that his rival didn’t appreciate individual brilliance. Van Gaal’s reason was intriguing; he ditched Roy because ‘he did not mind running for the team, but he could not think for the team’. He was hardly the first autocratic manager to become frustrated with an inconsistent winger, but whereas others eschewed them entirely in favour of narrow systems, Ajax’s approach depended heavily on width, and Van Gaal needed two outright wingers.

Left-sided Marc Overmars and right-sided Finidi George were given strict instructions not to attempt dribbles past multiple opponents: in one-against-one situations they could beat their man, but if faced with two defenders they were told to turn inside and switch the play. Ajax supporters, accustomed to wingers providing unpredictability and excitement, were frustrated by their lack of freedom, as were the players themselves. Finidi eventually left for Real Betis, where he spoke of his delight at finally being able to express himself. Van Gaal, though, hated dribbling; not only did he consider it inefficient, he thought it was the ultimate example of a footballer playing for himself. ‘We live in a laissez-faire society,’ said Van Gaal. ‘But in a team, you need discipline.’

Van Gaal’s schoolmasterly approach was entirely natural considering he’d juggled his playing career with teaching for 12 years, following in the footsteps of his hero Michels, who was also a schoolteacher. Van Gaal was by all accounts a hard taskmaster who worked in a tough school with difficult pupils, often from poor backgrounds, and this shaped his managerial philosophy. ‘Players are really just like big children, so there really is a resemblance between being a teacher and being a coach,’ he said. ‘You approach students in a certain way, based on a particular philosophy, and you do so with football players in exactly the same manner. Both at school and in a football team you encounter a pecking order and different cultures.’ Before becoming Ajax’s first-team coach, Van Gaal took charge of the club’s youth system, where he coached an outstanding group featuring the likes of Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kluivert. This, rather than managing a smaller Eredivisie club, served as his bridge between being a teacher and becoming a first-team coach. He enjoyed working with youngsters precisely because they were malleable; once a footballer was 25, Van Gaal believed, he could no longer change their identity. The only veterans in Ajax’s 1995 Champions League-winning side were defenders Danny Blind, in his ninth year at the club, and the returning Frank Rijkaard, who had initially risen through the club’s academy in the 1980s. Van Gaal wouldn’t have countenanced signing a fully formed, non-Ajax-schooled superstar, even if they were individually superior to an existing option. ‘I don’t need the eleven best,’ Van Gaal said. ‘I need the best eleven.’

Whereas Van Gaal was a teacher, Cruyff wasn’t even a student. He’d been appointed Ajax manager in 1985 despite lacking the requisite coaching badges: Cruyff was Cruyff, and so, as always, an exception was made. And whereas Van Gaal was highly suspicious of individuals, Cruyff was delighted to indulge superstars, and his Barcelona side featured far more individual brilliance in the final third because he could, at various stages, count on four of the most revered superstars of this era: Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Romario and Gheorghe Hagi. The rise and fall of Cruyff’s Barcelona depended largely on his treatment of these players.

The most fascinating individual was Laudrup, effectively the Cruyff figure in Cruyff’s Dream Team. Cruyff had been his childhood hero, and at World Cup 1986, a tournament for which Holland failed to qualify, Laudrup was the outstanding player in the fabulous ‘Danish Dynamite’ side that drew comparisons to the Dutch Total Footballers of the 1970s. Laudrup signed for Barca in 1989 and immediately became the side’s technical leader, dropping deep from a centre-forward role to encourage midfield runners into attack. He could play killer through-balls with either foot, and possessed an uncanny ability to poke no-look passes with the outside of his right foot while moving to his left, leaving defenders bamboozled. He would finish his career, incidentally, with a one-year stint at Ajax in 1997/98.

On one hand, Cruyff adored Laudrup’s natural talent. When Laudrup scored a stupendous last-minute equaliser at Real Burgos in 1991/92, flicking the ball up with his left foot and smashing it into the top-right corner with his right, Laudrup rushed over to celebrate with a delighted Cruyff, among the warmest embraces between player and manager you’ll witness. But Cruyff also labelled him ‘one of the most difficult players I’ve worked with’, believing that Laudrup didn’t push his talents hard enough, and he constantly complained about his lack of leadership skills. Cruyff used Michels’s ‘conflict’ approach, but it only served to annoy the Dane, who was a nervous, reserved footballer requiring more delicate treatment.

The beneficiary of Laudrup’s measured through-balls was another supremely talented superstar, Bulgarian legend Stoichkov. ‘From more than 100 goals I scored, I’m sure that over 50 were assisted by Michael,’ Stoichkov said of his period at Barca. ‘To play with him was extremely easy – we found each other by intuition.’ That was a telling description; in a Van Gaal side attacking was about pre-determined moves, in a Cruyff side it was about organic relationships.

Like Laudrup, Stoichkov idolised Cruyff and still owned videos of the Dutchman when he agreed to join him at Barcelona, but he was completely different from Laudrup in terms of personality: aggressive, fiery and unpredictable. He’d been handed a lifelong ban from football in his homeland, later reduced to a year, for fighting at the 1985 Bulgarian Cup Final. After impressing Cruyff by scoring a wonderful chip over the head of Barcelona goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta for CSKA Sofia in the Cup Winners’ Cup, he arrived at the Camp Nou in 1989. ‘He had speed, finishing and character,’ Cruyff remembered. ‘We had too many nice guys, we needed someone like him.’ But in Stoichkov’s first Clásico he was shown a red card, stamped on the referee’s foot on his way off and was handed a ten-week ban. At another club Stoichkov might have been sacked, but Cruyff kept faith and he scored the winner on his return, then the following week scored four in a 6–0 victory at Athletic Bilbao. Stoichkov was worth indulging, even if he received ten red cards while at Barca, an incredible tally for a forward.

Unlike Laudrup, Stoichkov was well suited to Cruyff’s ‘conflict model’, perfectly understanding the purpose of his manager’s attacks. ‘In front of the group he told me that I was a disaster, that I wasn’t going to play the next game and that he was going to sell me,’ Stoichkov explained. ‘But at the end of training we would go and eat together.’ He repeatedly professed his hatred for Real Madrid, and supporters loved his attitude – Stoichkov would refuse to sign autographs, yet fans would just laugh at his anarchic nature. ‘He shook things up,’ said Zubizarreta. ‘Although he sometimes went too far, I am grateful for people like him who are capable of breaking the monotony of everyday life.’

Yet by 1993/94, when Cruyff won his final league title, Stoichkov wasn’t even the most arrogant forward at Barcelona, because Cruyff had raided Ajax’s rivals PSV to sign Brazilian striker Romario, an extraordinary talent who also had a reputation for skipping training sessions. ‘People say he’s a very difficult individual,’ suggested a journalist upon Romario’s arrival. ‘You could say the same thing about me,’ Cruyff fired back, delighted to sign a footballer who possessed his individualistic nature. Romario declared himself the world’s best-ever striker, announced he would score 30 league goals (he did, winning the Pichichi Trophy as La Liga’s top goalscorer), then spent the season promising that the 1994 World Cup would be ‘Romario’s tournament’ (it was, and he was then voted World Player of the Year). Whereas at PSV Romario was regularly involved in build-up play, at Barcelona he would vanish for long periods before providing a ruthless, decisive finish. His acceleration was incredible, he had a knack of surprising goalkeepers with toe-poked finishes and he unashamedly celebrated goals solo, even when he’d simply converted into a gaping net after a teammate had done the hard work.

Stoichkov and Romario had a love–hate relationship throughout their 18 months together. Cruyff said they had ‘the same problem’, thinking the side was built around them, and they sometimes appeared to be competing to score the most goals rather than combining as a traditional strike partnership. Yet it spurred both on to new heights, and they struck up a surprising friendship. ‘It seems bizarre and even now I ask myself how it was possible,’ Stoichkov said later. ‘But we became good friends right from the start; we were inseparable.’ Their wives became best friends, their children went to school together, Stoichkov became godfather to one of Romario’s sons and acted as a minder when Romario visited the hospital to visit his newborn, getting a photographer out of the way by punching him.

On the European stage their most memorable display was a 4–0 thrashing of Manchester United at Camp Nou in November 1994. Stoichkov scored the first, Romario grabbed the second, then Stoichkov dribbled forward, slipped in Romario, who backheeled a return pass for Stoichkov to smash in the third. Full-back Albert Ferrer rounded off the scoring. ‘We just couldn’t handle the speed of Stoichkov and Romario,’ admitted United manager Alex Ferguson. ‘The suddenness with which they attacked was a new experience.’ But for Barcelona fans the 5–0 thrashing of Real Madrid earlier that year meant more. Romario hit a hat-trick, including an opener featuring him outwitting Real centre-back Rafael Alkorta with an incredible move that became known as ‘the cow’s tail’: receiving the ball with his back to goal, then turning on the spot by touching the ball twice in one movement, dragging it around into his path and finishing. ‘It will go down in history,’ said Stoichkov, referring to Romario’s move when he could have been speaking about the scoreline. But Barca were hugely inconsistent at this point, and only an excellent late run meant they pinched the title from Deportivo on goal difference, the second straight season they’d triumphed courtesy of a rival slipping up on the final day. That wasn’t, in itself, disastrous – but a 4–0 loss to Milan in the 1994 European Cup Final was.

Things started to fall apart. Cruyff and Laudrup’s relationship had broken down, the Dane was omitted from the squad for that Milan final and his contract wasn’t renewed. He promptly imitated Cruyff’s controversial switch to Feyenoord in 1983, joining Real Madrid and inspiring them to the league title while Cruyff, intriguingly, claimed Laudrup had become too individualistic. ‘He lacked discipline,’ Cruyff protested. ‘If you have a lot of stars in a team, there has to be a limit as to what each does as an individual.’ This was something of a curious explanation, though, considering that Laudrup was evidently a selfless player who loved assisting others. The reality was that Barcelona simply now had brighter stars, and with the three-foreigner rule still in place, Laudrup had become fourth in the pecking order behind Romario, Stoichkov and centre-back Ronald Koeman.

Romario, meanwhile, was proving equally problematic, and his friendship with Stoichkov had broken down because of his complaints about the Brazilian’s increasingly hedonistic lifestyle. Other Barca players became equally exasperated. Having won the 1994 World Cup, Romario inevitably spent a month partying in Rio and returned to Barcelona late. Cruyff wasn’t too bothered by his tardiness, but Barcelona’s committee of senior players, including Koeman, Zubizarreta, José Bakero and Txiki Begiristain, demanded a meeting to address the situation. Cruyff reluctantly agreed, and sat down with the players, asking them to spell out their grievances. Romario listened attentively, before launching into an angry tirade. ‘You, you and you got knocked out early,’ he fired at the Spanish trio, before turning to Koeman and reminding him, ‘You got eliminated by me. You guys lost! I am the winner here! I thought this meeting would be to welcome me, to congratulate me, that you would give me a trophy. What am I doing answering to you guys? Go shove it up your arse!’ Cruyff’s response was typical: ‘Right, back to training.’

Meanwhile, in response to Laudrup’s departure, Cruyff recruited another absurdly talented attacker, Hagi, a magnificent player sometimes regarded almost interchangeably with Stoichkov, as two glorious number 10s who inspired their country to their peak in the mid-1990s. Only Cruyff would be crazy enough to pair them, and he welcomed the Romanian’s arrival by directly comparing him with Laudrup: ‘If you exchange Laudrup for Hagi, you have to assume you’re not trading down … I bet that Hagi scores at least double the number of goals Laudrup managed, and provides at least as many assists.’ Cruyff was wrong, and it was unusual to witness a manager so directly comparing the output of two footballers, especially considering he was denigrating a player so fundamental to his Dream Team.

Hagi was signed on the strength of his World Cup performances, which meant Cruyff had assembled three of that tournament’s All-Star Team XI: Romario, Stoichkov and Hagi. The Romanian was a tempestuous character: individualistic, aggressive, inconsistent, arrogant and lazy, but capable of producing genuine moments of magic. His injury-hit Barcelona spell was disappointing, but Hagi considered it successful because of the freedom he was granted. ‘There were several rumours and discussions about me, but Johan Cruyff had faith in me and gave me the opportunity to show what I could do. I repaid his confidence,’ he declared. Hagi produced a moment of genius in a 4–2 victory at Celta Vigo, taking the ball straight from kick-off in thick fog and shooting directly from the halfway line into the net, surely the ultimate example of individualism.

But Cruyff’s obsession with individualistic players was spiralling out of control. Romario’s attitude upon returning from the World Cup was a sign of things to come, and he spent most of his time in Barcelona partying, permanently renting two hotel suites to entertain guests. ‘Have sex every day, but three times at the most,’ was his self-declared motto. Throughout that second season, various Barcelona players suggested that Romario turned up for training barely able to move, having been up all night. Cruyff was forced to send him home, and Romario was frequently late for team meetings having overslept. ‘Romario never came back after the World Cup. His body was there but his mind was still in Rio’, sighed Stoichkov, while Cruyff simply complained that ‘he lacked discipline’, the exact words he’d used to describe Laudrup. The beginning of the end came exactly a year after Barcelona had defeated Real Madrid 5–0. Now, they lost to Real Madrid 5–0, with Laudrup sensational. Stoichkov was dismissed in the first half, while a desperately useless Romario was hauled off at the interval, never to play for Barca again. Cruyff had kept faith in the wrong individuals.

The following week Romario was voted World Player of the Year, while Stoichkov came second, the Bulgarian also winning the Ballon d’Or, which was then only open to Europeans. This was the starkest demonstration of Cruyff’s problem: Barcelona officially had the world’s two greatest players, but they were barely speaking to one another, or their manager, and their most recent performance saw neither making it into the second half of a 5–0 defeat. Cruyff was angry that Stoichkov even wanted to attend the presentation and made him train on the day of the ceremony, meaning he arrived late. ‘Something has gone wrong between me and the coach,’ bemoaned Stoichkov when he finally arrived, before referencing the individual versus collective dilemma again. ‘When we lose I am always the one singled out for blame. When we win, the whole team get the praise.’ Later he said something similar, but hardened his attack on his manager. ‘When we win it’s down to Cruyff, when we lose it’s the players’ fault.’ Cruyff’s conflict model had finally worn him down.

By the summer Stoichkov was gone, Romario had already returned to Brazil, Laudrup was celebrating a title victory in Madrid and only the underwhelming Hagi remained. Cruyff’s management had been undermined by his feuds with superstars and he responded, perhaps having enviously noted Van Gaal’s model at Ajax, by promoting from within, extending his trust to a host of youth products – Iván de la Peña, brothers Roger and Óscar García and his son Jordi – none of whom fulfilled their promise. New signing Luís Figo wasn’t yet ready to lead the side, while up front was the unspectacular and very un-Barca Bosnian Meho Kodro, who managed just nine goals. Cruyff was dismissed at the end of 1995/96 amidst a fall-out with club president José Luis Núñez, but arguments with star players had been equally decisive.

The Cruyff versus Van Gaal debate continued when Van Gaal took charge of Barcelona only a year after Cruyff’s departure. He proudly declared ‘Louis van Gaal is the star now’ at his presentation, and attempted to import his Ajax model, including several of his old players. This initially proved successful, as Van Gaal won the Double in his first season and retained the league title in his second. But, predictably, he couldn’t cope with Barcelona’s big names, and in particular Rivaldo, the bandy-legged Brazilian genius who was briefly the world’s greatest player. Compared with Stoichkov and Romario, Rivaldo was a true professional, and whereas Cruyff’s rows with star players were largely about off-field discipline, Van Gaal’s problems with Rivaldo were about tactical discipline.

In their third season together at Barca, Van Gaal became infuriated by Rivaldo’s determination to dribble past opponents, a quality that would have been worshipped in the Dream Team, not least by Cruyff. In an incident that recalled Stoichkov’s row with Cruyff, Rivaldo openly criticised his manager on the day he was confirmed as European Footballer of the Year, explaining he would no longer play wide-left. ‘It’s different in Brazil – there, people don’t talk about tactics, and that means freedom,’ he said. ‘Here’s it’s a bit complicated, it’s more tactical … for years I have been doing things for the team, and I’ve done nothing for myself. I want to enjoy it more. I have played on the wing for a while, and now I want to play in the centre, not just with the shirt number 10, but as a number 10.’

Van Gaal couldn’t tolerate this level of self-importance, and so for the trip to Rayo Vallecano two days later he omitted Europe’s best footballer from his 18-man squad. Barca could only draw. Rivaldo was also omitted for a 3–1 win over Real Sociedad, before Van Gaal relented, with the Brazilian coming off the bench to score the second in a 2–0 win over Celta Vigo. He didn’t miss a minute for the next seven games. Rivaldo had won the power struggle, which was the beginning of the end for Van Gaal. ‘I’ve given him too many chances,’ he later rued. ‘The equilibrium in the dressing room is gone – that was my biggest mistake this season. This culture needs stars. Now, I have two players who rank among the ten best in the world [Figo was the other]. At Ajax in 1995, when I did not lose a single game, I had nobody on that list.’ A dressing room lacking stars suited him much better. Van Gaal also rowed with Sonny Anderson and Geovanni, two of Rivaldo’s teammates and, significantly, compatriots. Brazilian footballing culture places emphasis on individual attacking inspiration, which simply didn’t register with Van Gaal, and he was dismissed at the end of the campaign.

For two legendary coaches both obsessed with promoting the classic Ajax style, Cruyff and Van Gaal were remarkably different in almost every respect. Consider, for example, their approach towards match preparation. Cruyff backed his players to outplay anyone, and didn’t even think about the tactical approach of the opposition. In stark contrast, Van Gaal would study videotapes of upcoming opponents and explain, in extensive detail, their build-up play and how to disrupt it, while his assistant Bruins Slot constantly surprised the players with his level of knowledge about specific opponents.

It was Cruyff’s art versus Van Gaal’s science. The latter sat in the dugout with a tactics notepad on his lap, depended on data to measure his players’ performance and employed a man named Max Reckers, who was generally described as a ‘computer boffin’ in an era before statistical analysts were common. When Van Gaal moved between clubs, his ‘archives’, including endless piles of dossiers and videotapes, needed to be physically moved across the continent at great expense. This was anathema to Cruyff, who once said that his great footballing qualities ‘were not detectable by a computer’, said his football understanding was a ‘sixth sense’, and repeatedly admitted he had a dreadful memory and wasn’t big on detail. He was all about instinct, and embodied a philosophy in the truest sense of the word. Van Gaal believed in a studious approach, and developed robotic footballers discouraged from demonstrating flair.

The Van Gaal versus Cruyff saga continued over the next 15 years. Van Gaal was appointed Holland coach in 2000 and immediately ripped up Cruyff’s plans for developing Dutch youth talent. The Netherlands’ failure to qualify for the 2002 World Cup, however, meant that his tenure proved disastrous and he returned to Ajax as technical director in 2004, where he infuriated a young striker who boasted the requisite arrogance for Amsterdam. ‘Van Gaal wanted to be a dictator,’ Zlatan Ibrahimović wrote in his autobiography. ‘He liked to talk about playing systems. He was one of those in the club who referred to the players as numbers. There was a lot of “5 goes here” and “6 goes there” … the same old stuff about how number 9 defends to the right, while number 10 goes to the left. We knew all that, and we knew he was the one who came up with it.’ By this point, Cruyff had been retired from coaching for eight years but continued to repeat a familiar message in interviews. ‘What I notice particularly is that policy-makers in football are never really concerned about individuals, all they’re concerned about is the team as a whole,’ he said. ‘Yet a team consists of 11 individuals, who each need attention.’

In 2009 Van Gaal took the Bayern Munich job, leading them to the Double and the Champions League Final. ‘My team has a bond and a trust in me that I have never experienced before,’ he raved, and he attracted rare praise from Cruyff. But his old rival pointedly suggested that ‘Bayern Munich and Van Gaal is a particularly good match – the management and players at the club were prepared to accept his way of thinking and operating.’ Which, coming from Cruyff, was barely disguised criticism, an accusation that Van Gaal was more Bayern than Ajax, more German than Dutch.

Van Gaal later even linked himself with the German national team job. ‘I dream of winning the World Cup with a team that can do it, and Germany is one of them,’ he admitted. This fitted with constant complaints in the Dutch media that Van Gaal was simply not very Dutch, and was more typical of the joylessly efficient Germans, traditionally Holland’s biggest rivals. Van Gaal was repeatedly considered ‘a dictator’, and in an intriguing biography of the coach, Dutch journalist Hugo Borst entitled one of the chapters ‘Hitler’ and examined the similarity between the two men. It’s a slightly unsettling part of the book, featuring Geovanni, the former Barcelona playmaker, referring to Van Gaal as ‘sick’, ‘crazy’ and ‘a Hitler’, and containing the story that a Romanian newspaper once ran a headline simply reading ‘Van Hitler’, stating that this was a common nickname for Van Gaal in the Netherlands. It was completely false, yet the fact it seemed plausible speaks volumes about his reputation.

The last squabbling between the two old foes came in 2011, after Van Gaal was announced as Ajax’s general director. Cruyff, by this stage, was on Ajax’s board of directors but Van Gaal’s appointment was made when he was on holiday in Barcelona. He objected so strongly that the issue ended up in court, which ruled against him. Yet in a sense Cruyff won, because Van Gaal never started his job, instead taking charge of the Dutch national side for a second time, an appointment that led to another round of mudslinging between the two old foes.

‘Van Gaal has a good vision on football,’ accepted Cruyff. ‘But it’s not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I don’t. I want individuals to think for themselves, and take the best decision on the pitch that is best for the situation. He wants to control all these situations as a coach. We need to make the club successful, including the youth academy, and that means individual coaching and not straitjacket tactics. If Louis comes to Ajax, I won’t be around for long. We think differently about everything in life.’

Van Gaal was more pragmatic, although he couldn’t resist one final wind-up. ‘There is no more a “Cruyff line” than there is a “Van Gaal line,”’ he insisted. ‘There is only an Ajax line, and it has been in place for at least 25 years. I have contributed to that, just as Cruyff has – with the difference that I was there longer.’

2
Space

The Netherlands, by its very nature, is based around the concept of space. A country whose name literally means ‘lower countries’ is a remarkable construct, gradually reclaimed from the sea through the revolutionary use of dikes. Seventeen per cent of the Netherlands’ landmass should be underwater, and only around 50 per cent of the country is more than one metre above sea level.

The Netherlands is also Europe’s most densely populated major country (excluding small countries such as Malta, San Marino and Monaco) and worldwide of countries with similar-sized or larger populations only South Korea, Bangladesh and Taiwan boast higher population densities. The history of the Netherlands has therefore been about increasing the perimeters of the nation, and then desperately trying to find space within those perimeters.

This is, of course, reflected in Dutch football. It’s through the prism of the country’s geography that David Winner explains Total Football in his seminal book Brilliant Orange. ‘Total Football was built on a new theory of flexible space,’ he begins. ‘Just as Cornelis Lely in the nineteenth century conceived and exercised the idea of creating new polders, so Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff exploited the capacities of a new breed of players to change the dimensions of the football pitch.’

It was Michels who introduced the ideas, and Cruyff who both epitomised them and explained them most poetically. He outlined the importance of space in two separate situations: with possession and without possession. ‘Michels left an indelible mark on how I understood the game,’ Cruyff said. ‘When you’ve got possession of the ball, you have to ensure that you have as much space as possible, and when you lose the ball you must minimise the space your opponent has. In fact, everything in football is a function of distance.’ This became the default Dutch footballing mentality, ensuring everything was considered in terms of positioning and shape. Some nations considered the characteristics of footballers most important (‘strong and fast’), some focused on specific type of events (‘win fifty–fifty balls’), others only considered what to do with the ball (‘get it forward quickly’). But, from the Total Football era onwards, Dutch football was about space, and gradually other European nations copied the Dutch approach.

Michels considered Total Football to be about two separate things: position-switching and pressing. At Ajax, the latter was inspired by Johan Neeskens’ aggressive man-marking of the opposition playmaker, combined with Velibor Vasović, the defensive leader, ordering the backline higher to catch the opposition offside. It became the defining feature of the Dutch side at the 1974 World Cup.

‘The main aim of pressure football, “the hunt”, was regaining possession as soon as possible after the ball was lost in the opponents’ half,’ Michels explained. ‘The “trapping” of the opponents is only possible when all the lines are pushed up and play close together.’ Holland’s offside trap under Michels was astounding, with the entire side charging at the opposition in one movement, catching five or six opponents offside simultaneously, before interpretations around who exactly was ‘interfering with play’ made such an extreme approach more dangerous in later years.

This tinkering with the offside law notwithstanding, pressing remained particularly important for Cruyff and Louis van Gaal during the era of Dutch dominance, with both managers encouraging their players to maintain an extremely aggressive defensive line and to close down from the front. Cruyff’s Barcelona and Van Gaal’s Ajax dictated the active playing area, boxing the opposition into their own half and using converted midfielders in defence because they spent the game close to the halfway line.

‘I like to turn traditional thinking on its head, by telling the striker that he’s the first defender,’ Cruyff outlined. ‘And by explaining to the defenders that they determine the length of the playing area, based on the understanding that the distances between the banks of players can never be more than 10–15 metres. And everyone had to be aware that space had to be created when they got possession, and that without the ball they had to play tighter.’

Van Gaal’s approach was similar, with speedy defenders playing a high defensive line, and intense pressing in the opposition half. ‘The Ajax number 10 is Jari Litmanen, and he has to set the example by pressuring his opponent. Just compare that with the playmaker of ten years ago!’

The best representation of the Dutch emphasis on space, however, was in terms of the formations used by Cruyff’s Barcelona, Van Gaal’s Ajax and the Dutch national team. The classic Dutch shape was 4–3–3, although in practice this took two very separate forms.

The modern interpretation of 4–3–3, epitomised by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona, prescribes one holding midfielder behind two others, effectively a 4–1–2–3; the Dutch would often flip the triangle, creating a 4–2–1–3, but would still consider this a 4–3–3. Nowadays it seems curious that the two can be conflated, especially considering this is essentially the difference between 4–3–3 and 4–2–3–1 formations, the two dominant shapes of the 2010s. But during this earlier period, 4–3–3 was a philosophy as much as a system, and with other major European countries generally preferring boxy 4–4–2 systems or sometimes a defensive-minded 5–3–2, the concept of a three-man attack spread across the field was in itself audacious. The precise positioning of the midfielders was a minor detail.

But both Cruyff and Van Gaal became even bolder. Upon his appointment at Ajax, Cruyff reduced the four-man defence to a three-man defence, explaining that the majority of Eredivisie sides played two up front, and therefore a trio of defenders could cope. He effectively replaced a defender with a number 10, forming a diamond midfield between the three forwards and three defenders. This was the Dutch 3–4–3, which was very different from the Italian-style 3–4–3 with wing-backs that would later be popularised, for example, by Antonio Conte at Chelsea. Cruyff’s holding player would move between defence and midfield, and the number 10 would move between midfield and attack, with two box-to-box players either side. ‘Cruyff put up with the risks connected to this decision,’ Michels outlined. ‘The success of the 3–4–3 is dependent upon the individual excellence that serves this spectacular but risky style of play … it places high demands on the tactical cohesion of the central players, and it demands that they have a high level of football intelligence.’

Van Gaal disagreed with Cruyff on many topics, but he largely followed Cruyff’s basic formation, using 3–4–3 throughout his tenure at Ajax. Michels, Cruyff’s old mentor, was himself a convert and utilised the system when taking charge of the Dutch national side at Euro 92, although he considered 3–4–3 a mere variation on his old 4–3–3. At this tournament, the uniqueness and fluidity of the Dutch shape confused foreign observers, and the same system was described as, variously, 4–3–3, 3–4–3 and even 3–3–4, a notation that looks absolutely ludicrous on paper compared with the dominant 4–4–2 and 5–3–2 systems of the time, but shows how the Dutch were thinking about the game in an entirely different manner to German, Italian and Scandinavian sides.

The crucial, non-negotiable element of these systems was width. Regardless of the number of defenders, the tilt of the midfield or whether or not the centre-forward was supported by a number 10, Dutch coaches insisted on two touchline-hugging, chalk-on-the-boots wingers. Again, this was unfashionable at the time, with the 4–4–2 system requiring midfielders who tucked inside, and the 5–3–2 relying on overlapping runs from wing-backs to provide width. The Dutch, though, intrinsically believed in the importance of stretching play and prising the opposition defence apart to create gaps for others. Michels spoke about the importance of using ‘true flank players who have great speed and good skills … they must be selected and trained at a very young age,’ he said. ‘The Netherlands is one of few countries that actually develop this kind of player in the 4–3–3 system.’

Van Gaal’s 1992 UEFA Cup-winning side depended on right-winger John van ’t Schip, a classic old-school winger who boasted the three classic qualities: a turn of speed, a drop of the shoulder and a good cross. Van ’t Schip would never receive the ball between the lines, nor would he cut inside; he was a winger and stayed on the touchline. Left-sided Bryan Roy was similar, albeit quicker and less of a crosser. He was supposed to perform an identical task to Van ’t Schip, although he infuriated Van Gaal by drifting inside too frequently. The contrast in systems in their 1992 UEFA Cup Final victory against Torino was particularly stark: the Italian side played 5–3–2, the Dutch played 3–4–3.

Roy also played wide-left for Michels’ Netherlands side at Euro 92, although the right-winger was Ruud Gullit, an atypical player for this system, essentially a central player that had to be accommodated somewhere because he was too important to omit. By the 1994 World Cup the Dutch were coached by Dick Advocaat, who continued with Roy but also discovered the exciting Gaston Taument – and, more significantly, Ajax’s Marc Overmars.

Overmars was the most typical, and most accomplished, Dutch winger of this period. He offered searing acceleration, was happy on either flank because of his two-footedness, loved riding a tackle, and could cross and shoot excellently. He was exciting yet efficient, a winger based around end product rather than trickery, which made him perfect for Van Gaal.

‘I was a coach who wanted to attack with wingers – there aren’t a lot of good wingers around, and Overmars was one of the best,’ remembered Van Gaal. ‘He was a good dribbler who could beat people one-on-one and that was important for a winger in our system, but he also had a very good assist record and he could score goals. Every season he got 10–15 goals and they were nearly always important goals. We need his kind of player to maintain the game as an attractive spectacle.’ If Van Gaal could have fielded two Overmarses, one on either flank, he would have. Instead, he fielded him wide-left, and the speedy Nigerian Finidi George on the opposite flank.

The curious thing about Van Gaal’s use of wingers, however, was that they were almost decoys, part of the overall framework rather than star performers. Something similar can be observed of the centre-forwards: the likes of Stefan Pettersson and Ronald de Boer (who was also used as a midfielder) were tasked with leading the line rather than dominating the goalscoring, instructed to stretch play and occupy opposition centre-backs. Van Gaal’s reasoning was simple: if the wingers dragged the opposition full-backs wider, and the centre-forward forced the opposition centre-backs backwards, it would create more space for the star – the number 10.

For both Ajax and Holland during this period, that meant one man: Dennis Bergkamp. While not necessarily the best Dutch footballer of this period – Marco van Basten won the Ballon d’Or in 1992, while Bergkamp came third and then second in 1993 – he was certainly the most typically Dutch footballer of the 1990s, because his entire mentality was based around that familiar concept. ‘On the field, my greatest quality was seeing where the space was, and knowing where you can create space,’ he explained. Throughout his autobiography, Bergkamp explains everything about his game, and everything about his career path, with the same word: space. Why was he so obsessed with scoring chips? ‘It’s the best way – there’s a lot of space above the goalkeeper.’ Why did he struggle to connect with his Inter Milan teammates during his spell in Serie A? ‘There was a huge space between us, and it was dead space.’ Why did he transfer to the Premier League? ‘I knew you could get space in England.’ What was the key to his legendary 1998 World Cup winner against Argentina? ‘It was a question of creating that little space.’ And, even, what did he dislike so much about aeroplanes? ‘There was hardly any space – it was so cramped it made me claustrophobic.’

Bergkamp was an Amsterdammer who had risen through Ajax’s academy, although his journey to becoming the club’s number 10 was curious. As a teenager he was considered a pure centre-forward, and initially appeared under Cruyff in 1986/87 as a right-winger. ‘Wingers played a simpler game back then,’ Bergkamp recalled, confirming the accepted manner of wing play at the time. ‘You weren’t expected to get into the box and shoot – you had to stay wide, feel the chalk of the touchline under your boots. Your job was to stretch their defence, get past your man at speed and cross the ball.’