Johan Cruyf f was the shining
light in an Ajax team full of
stars that faced Celtic in 1971
Words: Stephen Murray
The 'Cruyff turn' was a revolutionary move he instigated at
the 1974 World Cup finals that had left the watching millions on
television open-mouthed in disbelief at his talent and audacity.
The great Argentinean manager Cesar Luis Menotti was recently
quoted as saying there were four kings in football history -
Di Stefano, Pele, Cruyff and Maradona. He claimed that there was
no way of separating these four greats and johan Cruyff more than
deserves his place in such exulted company,
In March 1971, Celtic and Ajax met in the quarter-final of the
European Cup, The great Ajax team of that time was just coming
to the fore and won 3-1 on aggregate, Three thousand Ajax fans
invaded Glasgow for the second leg in which was the biggest ever
convergence of foreign supporters to Scotland for a football match
at that time,
They were a good-natured if noisy bunch with their distinctive
hunting horns and the game had to be moved to Hampden to
accommodate the 83,000 spectators as Celtic Park was not big
enough to hold the expected crowd,
The local Glasgow media were out in force to meet the visiting
Dutch and they found that the Ajax fans had two complaints -
firstly they were perplexed at seeing the Glasgow pubs shutting
from two o'clock in the afternoon until five
and then shut again at
ten at night, Amsterdam
was obviously always
more liberal in its
licensing laws,
Secondly they
complained that the
hotels and restaurants
where they went to eat
had served them very little
in the way of vegetables,
not what they were used
to back home,
One hopes that the
current Ajax supporters
will enjoy their latest visit
to Glasgow (apart from the
result!) and that they will
find the city's licensing hours
and gastronomic delights
more to their liking in the
twenty-first century.
FOR those of us who were football-mad kids in the 1970s,
the name Ajax of Amsterdam will always have a special
ring to it. Celtic and Ajax at that time had a lot in common -
both teams valued attacking football and had perhaps the
most distinctive strips in world football.
No-one can witness Celtic's green and white Hoops and Ajax's
famed broad band of red on white and not know instantly who
those teams are,
Ajax won three consecutive European Cups from 1971 to 1973
and stamped their class on the continent with a brand of play that
had us engrossed,
They had a list of considerably talented footballers whose names
are still recognisable to this day - the cool defending of Ruud Krol,
the industrious midfield work of Johan Neeskens, those powerful
long-range shots of Arie Haan, the prodigiously talented striker
Johnny Rep, However, the jewel in the crown of this Ajax team was
always the brilliant artisan that was Johan Cruyff.
As boys we always argued about who was the greatest player in
the world and after Pele's abdication there was no argument. The
greatest player on the planet was Cruyff. He was the superstar of
his day, a global phenomenon who was the biggest name in football,
With both Ajax and Holland he enjoyed tremendous success
and was probably the first millionaire footballer with the list of
lucrative sponsorship deals he enjoyed, Although Holland didn't
win the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, Cruyff's performances
cemented his reputation as the greatest player of his generation,
Although Ajax were very much a
tremendous team and
played as a unit, Cruyff
provided a different
dimension on the field
of play, giving the
Amsterdam side a distinct
advantage over every
other side they faced.
He never had a set
position and in his unique
No,14 shirt, he played
wherever he wished as
the other players pivoted
around him, Cruyff had pace,
vision, close control and
several moves in his locker
that were unique to him.
THE
DUTCH
MASTER
Celtic v Ajax 43