Johann Cruijff is born in Amsterdam on April 25th, 1947 with the mark of the predestined (his house was close to the Amsterdam Ajax FC stadium). Ever since he is a child he delights everybody with his very precocious talent, he gets to Amsterdam Ajax FC youth team when he is 10. He is as tall and slender as a reed, he has a very elegant pace and ball control but also a delicate build. Vic Buckingham, an Englishman who coaches the “Lancers” takes care of him personally.

A specific training with weights, and young Johann gets an iron body even if he maintains his long-imbed characteristics. When he is 14 he gains his first title in the “youth” category, when he is 17 he becomes a regular player in the first team, at 19 years of age he wins the Dutch league with Amsterdam Ajax FC and makes his debut with the national selection scoring a goal against Hungary. Together with an unrepeatable hatch of extraordinary talents he sets up the legend of Amsterdam Ajax FC, that gain the European Champions Cup three times in a row, an Intercontinental Cup and a European Super Cup.

In his country Cruijff leads his team to gain six national titles and four domestic cups. Those are the golden years of Dutch football, and Johann Cruijff is the undisputed prophet of it with his inseparable shirt number 14. France Football awards him the Ballon d’Or as the best European player three times in 1971, 1973 and 1974. Nobody will do better than he did (in 1971 he is the first player to get more than 100 preferential votes).

But Cruijff has a restless and despotic character, not always he gets on well his team-mates, and does not play that much with the national selection. In 1973, the year before the World championship in which the Netherlands are called to consecrate their technical and tactical superiority, he leaves Amsterdam Ajax FC after winning the third European Champions Cup and moves to Barcelona FC to cash their billions.With the Catalans he wins a national title and a Spanish Cup. However, he fails to win the world title in 1974 as Dutch national team loses the final with Germany by 2 to 1. In the following European championship in 1976 because of serious problems with his team-mates he definitively leaves the national selection, as he considers inadequate the remuneration (25 million liras of that time) granted by the Federation to him for his participation. The player, who has been considered the best heir of Pelé after Alfredo Di Stéfano, can, then, add neither the world nor the European title to the honours got during his career.

In 1978 he leaves also FC Barcelona to try the North American adventure. In 1981 when he is 34 he tries to sign a contract with AC Milan after playing a match of the Mundialito with the Milan shirt. He falls back, instead, on a Spanish second division team, then returns to Amsterdam Ajax FC (two national titles and a Netherlands Cup) and ends his career at Feyenoord Rotterdam in 1984 gaining his umpteenth national title when he is 37. An extraordinary player, very difficult to label from a tactical point of view, a real interpreter of “total football”, the prophet of goal will be remembered for his deadly speed that allowed him to baffle any marking also the closest. Only the tough back Berti Vogts was able to control him in the final in München in 1974, but Cruijff got into the history of football anyway.