Johan had this way of holding his head up when he talked to you, of raising his chin. It wasn’t arrogance; it was more an expression of the natural superiority he had about him. Yet at the same time, despite his incredible worldwide fame, he was a hugely humble man. I loved that.
We became friends after Arsenal played Ajax in the early 70s. We’d beaten them in the Fairs Cup in 1970 and two years later they beat us in the European Cup. We played against each other in friendlies and in a Scotland-Holland game as well.
Later, we met up on holiday on the Algarve. We’d be on the beach, Johan with his kids, me with my kids. We’d talk about football and life. One day, when we were kicking a ball around, Eusébio, the great Portuguese player, turned up and joined in.
There’s a picture of the three of us together. I have a shirt on, which is just as well because those two had six-packs like Tarzan! I still have a picture in my office Johan sent me of himself later. Under it he’d written: “Don’t you wish you had a body like mine? Your joking friend, Johan Cruyff.”
If you asked an artist to sculpt the perfect body for football it would probably be his. He was built like a racehorse or a greyhound. His lower legs were slim but the power in his thighs was like a Jaguar sports car. That’s what gave him his amazing acceleration. Unfortunately, the other thing we got to know was that he smoked like a chimney. Sadly, I think that’s ultimately what killed him.
People often say Johan liked to do all the talking: actually, he was a great listener. He had his ideals, though, and it was a struggle when you tried to put up an argument to get him to change his mind. I’d say: “Look, there are times when you have to just lump the ball into the box, play percentages.” But he wasn’t having that. He always believed football should be beautiful and creative and fun. It was no surprise when he went on to be a great manager.
If he had a temper, I never saw it, but he did have a unique way of dealing with problems. Like when Johnny Rep, who was very young at the time, came into the Ajax team and started scoring a lot of goals. Naturally, Rep started getting attention, and he began to get ideas above his station, telling everyone he was now the main man. But Johan was the one laying on those goals and he didn’t like Rep’s attitude. So he started putting a bit more pace on his passes, or some backspin, just little things so it was impossible for Rep to score – but it looked like Rep’s mistake.
I can’t remember if it was Johan or Cor Coster, who was his father-in-law and agent, who told me that story, but I believe it. Ajax were winning matches easily against everyone at the time, so Johan could afford to make his point. And he was capable of making the ball do anything.
He was the most complete player I’ve ever played against. He mesmerised the football, ran the game and made the whole team tick. Actually I’d put him higher than Pelé and Maradona and Lionel Messi because he did things no other player could do.
Of course, whenever I played against him I always had a lot to do, but, strangely, Johan never managed to score a goal against me. It became a joke between us.
I was considered a crazy goalkeeper because I was always throwing myself headfirst at forwards’ feet. I sustained awful injuries: I had my left ear virtually torn off. I had a punctured lung. I broke God knows how many ribs. I broke my arm. I dislocated my elbow. But it worked for me, it looked spectacular and, after one match, Johan said I was the best goalkeeper he’d played against. It was absolutely outrageous, of course! But it’s still my favourite quote.
Soon after he’d moved to Barcelona in 1973 we played them in a friendly. For some reason he wasn’t allowed to play in the league at first, so the club organised matches for him to get used to his new team-mates. During the first half he bent the ball around me, it hit the post and bounced back into my hands. He stood there with this look on his face that said: “You lucky so and so!” and I grinned. For the second half our manager, Bertie Mee, put on all the reserves and I went back on the bench. Johan ran over to Bertie and demanded: “Put Bob back on! I need to score against him!”
Main photograph by AFP/Getty
