Barcelona was far from a happy place when Johan Cruyff walked back through the door as coach in 1988. More than 25 years on, his legacy is keenly felt at the Nou Camp and beyond
“Johan Cruyff painted the chapel, and Barcelona coaches since merely restore or improve it” – Pep Guardiola
It’s 7pm on April 28, 1988. The Hesperia hotel on the Carrer dels Vergos, a tight street to the north of Barcelona city centre and five minutes by car from the Nou Camp, is abuzz.
Twenty-one Barça players, plus head coach Luis Aragones, sit behind a conference table in a plush meeting room. “President Josep Lluis Nunez has deceived us as people and humiliated us as professionals,” reads square-shouldered captain Alexanko from a statement. “In conclusion, although this request is usually the preserve of the club’s members, the squad suggest the immediate resignation of the president.”
The declaration is as shocking as it is unprecedented. “Nunez doesn’t feel the colours of this club, nor does he love the fans,” adds midfielder Victor Munoz. “He only loves himself.” The club is openly at war. With itself. Over money. The Spanish treasury is investigating every Blaugrana contract, believing tax to be owed because each squad member must have separate playing deals and image rights agreements. When club officials insist the players make up the difference to the taxman, the squad demand president Nunez’s head.
The so-called Hesperia Mutiny is the lowest point in what has been Barcelona’s worst season since 1941/42. Coach Aragones is suffering with depression and will leave at the campaign’s end. Barcelona have gone from European Cup finalists in 1986 to a laughing stock in just two years. To turn things around, and ensure his re-election in June’s upcoming presidential vote, Nunez plays the one card available to him.
Six days later, on May 4, 1988, Johan Cruyff is announced as Barcelona coach. Los Cules had won one league title in 14 years. By the time the board sacked the Dutchman – amid much acrimony – eight years later, Barça had won 11 trophies. The greatest Total Footballer of his generation had saved the club on the pitch in the late 1970s; a decade later, he did it again from the dugout. Many Barça fans still believe the side he built, the Dream Team, is their best ever. All those years after he began that first season in the Nou Camp dugout, FFT reveals the inside story of how his passion for beautiful football, sometimes cantankerous character and will to win made today’s Barça great. You know La Masia? That’s pretty much his gig.
“A kid of 23, my doors were opened to the sky”
Cruyff’s post-Hesperia rebuilding job began immediately. Fifteen players were sold, including first-team favourites – and principal mutineers – Victor Munoz, Ramon Caldere and Bernd Schuster, the latter to Real Madrid. In their place came 12 additions, of whom winger Txiki Begiristain, attacking midfielder Jose Mari Bakero, centre-forward Julio Salinas and defensive midfielder Eusebio became crucial cogs in Cruyff’s future Dream Team. “I was proud that a player of such worldwide standing was interested in me,” Eusebio tells FFT. “His years as a player at the Nou Camp changed Spanish football and Barcelonismo. I was a kid of 23, and my doors were opened to the sky. He brought through a group of young, hungry players who weren’t weighed down by the club’s recent unstable history.”
Much to Nunez’s chagrin, Cruyff retained chief mutineer Alexanko, despite the 32-year-old being booed by a packed Nou Camp at the squad’s pre-season unveiling. “Alexanko did nothing except what was his duty as captain,” Cruyff huffed. “He was the spokesman – he didn’t let his players down. That’s character. The messenger often gets killed. Not with me. Although not a regular, he’s a leader, and there was a unity.” The inference was obvious. To hell with you, Mr President, I’m the boss here. The ‘hands-on’ approach with which Nunez ran the club, in a similar fashion to his construction and hotel businesses, would also end. “If you want to talk to me,” Cruyff told the president, “I’ll come to your office. You don’t come to my dressing room.” Cruyff’s and Nunez’s marriage was always destined to be one of convenience.
“I much prefer to win 5-4 than 1-0”
Next came stylistic restructuring. Gathering his newly assembled squad for a first-team meeting in early July 1988, El Flaco (‘the skinny one’) outlined the system he wanted to employ.
"We couldn’t believe how many attackers were in the team, and how few defenders. It was a revolution- Barcelona midfielder Eusebio"
He got a blackboard and drew three defenders, four midfielders, two out-and-out wingers and a centre-forward,” recalls Eusebio. “We looked at each other and said: ‘What the hell is this?!’ This was the era of 4-4-2 or 3-5-2. We couldn’t believe how many attackers were in the team, and how few defenders. He single-handedly introduced a new way of playing football in Spain. It was a revolution.” The 3-4-3 – adapted from the 4-3-3 Cruyff played under Rinus Michels for Ajax and Holland in the 1970s – was born.
“If you have four men defending two strikers, you only have six against eight in the middle of the field: there’s no way you can win that battle. We had to put a defender further forward,” Cruyff later explained.
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I was criticised for playing three at the back, but that’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard
- Johan Cruyff
“I was criticised for playing three at the back, but that’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. What we needed was to fill the middle of the pitch with players where we needed it most. I much prefer to win 5-4 than 1-0.” Indeed, defensive thinking didn’t enter Cruyff’s mind. At one point keeper Andoni Zubizarreta asked his coach how he wanted the team to defend a set-piece. “How should I know?” came the curt reply. “You decide. You’re more interested in how to defend a corner than me.”
Further forward, the players revelled in the system’s freedom. “I loved the 3-4-3,” recalls Eusebio, who went on to make more than 250 appearances under Cruyff. “I struggled in other systems more than at Barcelona.
“Without Cruyff, the Xavis and Iniestas of this world wouldn’t exist”
But there was a problem. Cruyff’s squad was thin on the highly technical artists needed to implement his shift to a cerebral style. A possession-hungry production line was needed. La Masia had to be overhauled.
Incredibly for a club that has gone on to produce Xavi, Iniesta and Messi, they selected players not on ability, but potential physique. In 1986, one 15-year-old undertook his prueba de la muneca, or ‘doll’s trial’, whereby only those who would grow up to measure 1.80m (5ft 9in) would be kept on. “I’ll be taller than 1.80m,” he screamed. “I’m going to be a professional footballer.” His name? Pep Guardiola.
“He reinvented the concept of football in Spain”
Cruyff may be long gone, but, 27 years on from his Nou Camp dugout debut, his footballing legacy endures.
“At the very least, Johan installed our way of playing, an idea of continuity throughout the club,” says Eusebio, who was Barcelona B coach until February 2015. “I could feel his DNA in my team. Every player knew the system already. It penetrated every part of the club. The success of La Masia has proven him right. Every time a youngster reaches that group or the first team, it’s a success that Johan is part of.”
He believes even Cruyff’s greatest defeat serves as an inspiration. “It’s no coincidence that Pep Guardiola was in charge of an incredibly successful generation, because he knows what we were missing in the 1994 Champions League Final: hard work and respecting the opposition. I have no doubt that Pep thought about Milan before any game he was expected to win as Barça coach.”
Espousing possession and restoring La Masia’s importance, it’s fitting that Guardiola overtook his great mentor as Barcelona’s most successful coach. It doesn’t end there, either. Spain’s dominance of international football since winning Euro 2008 serves notice that Cruyff’s philosophy has permeated every sector of football in the peninsula. National boss Vicente del Bosque has acknowledged as much.
“Cruyff reinvented the concept of football in this country,” says Miguel Angel Nadal. “Today, Barcelona and Spain are the ultimate modern testimonies to his spell as coach.”
The forefather to arguably the greatest club and national teams ever. That’s quite some legacy to have.
Source: Fourfourtwo
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