The source of Dutch rule is not a particular team or a player, but the embodiment of a certain football philosophy, which we can call all-around football, Total Football.
If 1992 was the starting point of modern football, then the king of European football at that time was the Netherlands, the European Champions Cup had just been won by Barca led by Dutch coach Johan Cruyff, and Ajax won the European Cup of Winners, although the Netherlands failed to defend the European National Cup that year, but they played a different trend from the defensive trend of this year, especially free-spirited style. The most dominant player in Europe at the time was also from the Netherlands, Marco Van Basten (who won the Ballon d'Or that year, and the third-place finisher was another Dutchman, Dennis Bergkamp).
However, the source of Dutch rule is not a particular team or a player, but the embodiment of a certain football philosophy, which we can call all-around football, Total Football. All-around football began in Amsterdam in the 1970s (the Dutch national team led by John Cruyff in the 1974 World Cup can be said to be the best epitome of all-around football), and the Dutch capital was the center of European liberalism at that time, and it was also the mecca of hippies everywhere, and this atmosphere also influenced the football of Amsterdam. The players of Ajax (and later the Dutch national team) did not seem to have a specific offensive and defensive position on the field, as if allowed to move freely, to create a football full of momentum, creativity and beauty.
Arrigo Sacchi, the 1980s AC Milan coach, once made the idea that there was only one real revolution in Dutch all-around football, and that was the shift from individual to collective game. This debate about the nature of Dutch football (individual vs. collective) continued for a long time, and by the 1990s two camps formed: one represented by johan Cruyff, the golden boy of all-around football and then barca coach, and the other led by Louis Van Gaal, then coach of Ajax. While both of them are mentored by Rinus Michels and share Ajax's tradition of focusing on possession and formation, Cruyff wholeheartedly believes in (or indulges in) superstars, while Van Gaal relentlessly emphasizes the importance of the collective, and in Van Gaal's system, there is less opportunism or flexibility to change positions, but the system is relatively focused on details at both ends of the board.
Dutch players are very accustomed to influencing the decisions of the coaches on the team, such as assisting in the tactical planning of the idea, as Van Gaal said: In the Ajax system, we teach the players to interpret the game, we encourage them to think about the game as a coach, the coach and the player can discuss and communicate with each other, while in other countries, the player usually only follows the coach's instructions. Sometimes in a game, the upcoming Dutch international will even offer as many as 11 different tactical opinions, which partly explains why the Dutch national team always has a bad reputation for constantly arguing during the competition, because players are always encouraged to express their opinions on tactics, and the only moment when there is a common opinion is usually when the players decide to let the head coach step down!
Rinus Michels, the father of all-around football, has a so-called conflict model, and he actively encourages dissent and argument in the lounge, hoping to create a tense environment that he believes will enhance the spirit of the team. Of course, such a tradition often makes outsiders think that dutch players are particularly arrogant, and interestingly, this is another concept that can be associated with Amsterdam. The Ajax of the 1970s, described by Johan Cruyff as a natural Amsterdam-style team, were arrogant, but not really arrogant, they were just a little bit of a showman, like to let opponents know that Ajax is much better than them! Junior Dennis Bergkamp also said that the confident Cruyff is not arrogant, it is just an Amsterdam thing... Van Gaal is even considered more arrogant than Cruyff, and many people directly refer to him as "pig's head". When he was named head coach of Ajax, he told the board: Congratulations, you have just appointed the best football head coach in the world! And at his first press conference, the team also introduced Van Gaal as particularly arrogant, but we like arrogant guys here!
Louis Van Gaal and Johan Cruyff have been rivals who have been looking down on each other for years, and there is a reason for Cruyff's arrogance, after all, he is the greatest player in the history of Dutch football (and one of the greatest footballers in the world in the 1970s), and his football career has been full of success and glory, including three Ballon d'Or and three consecutive European champions. He won six Eredivisie titles for Ajax, moved to Barcelona to win La Liga, then spent some time in the United States, returning to Ajax and winning two more Eredivisie titles. And in 1983, when Ajax did not offer him a satisfactory contract, Cruyff retaliated by joining Ajax's nemesis in the Dutch League, Fei Yan Nord, of course, he also won the Dutch League championship, was selected as the Dutch Footballer of the Year, and announced his retirement after the end of the season!
Johan Cruyff does what he wants and gets what he wants, and he always claims that style is more important than success, he "personalizes" all-around football: in a team that emphasizes collectivity so much, he is a prominent and indispensable individual, and in this regard, it is already a bit of a miracle or myth. Not only that, but when he became a coach, he first led Ajax to the European Cup of Winners in 1987, moved to Barcelona where he won the 1989 European Cup winners cup and the more grand European Cup (1992), and set a Barca record for four consecutive Years in La Liga, a legendary star, and became a legendary coach.
As for Louis Van Gaal, he was almost the opposite of Cruyff, who first spent a little success in his playing career, and when he took over as Ajax manager in 1991, the supporters were not happy, and even in some of the games that Van Gaal coached in the early days, fans would chant Cruyff's name. This reminds me of Katsuya Nomura, the famous superintendent of Japanese professional baseball, who once said: Shigeo Nagashima and Sadaharu Wang are like sunflowers blooming in the bright sun, and I am like a primrose blooming silently in an inconspicuous corner. After being transferred to supervision, Nomura's biggest opponent in his heart was Shigeo Nagashima, because he was the complete opposite of Nagashima (Nagashima would wear a helmet that was not suitable for the Japanese head shape, the big one, and constantly practiced in front of the mirror, so that the helmet could land perfectly when he swung the stick; he would constantly stage gorgeous defensive skills in the third base defense area, and his arm would even make flying movements when the ball was passed, which was simply both strength and popularity), and he believed that the layout of Coach Nagashima Shigeo had always been to look at talent and intuition. And ID Wildball is absolutely theoretical, if he loses to Nagashima's intuition baseball, for him, it is equivalent to his whole being denied...
Perhaps as unwilling to accept defeat and want to be denied like Nomura Supervisor, Louis Van Gaal poured all his energy into coaching, and opened up a different path from Johan Cruyff and Rinus Michels, and eventually became a generation of famous coaches. And in the next episode, we'll start with Ajax, who is coached by Van Gaal...
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > sunshine, shadow, post-90s (European) football: Van Gaal, Ajax</h1>
Louis Van Gaal's philosophy of football emphasizes the importance of collectivism, football is a team sport, so players rely on each other on the field, Van Gaal explains: if some players do not properly perform the tasks they are given on the field, then their colleagues will suffer, which means that every player has basic rules and responsibilities to follow! These are functional, uninteresting words that you'll hardly hear from Johan Cruyff, who wants his players to be able to perform themselves and enjoy the game (but Van Gaal is to abide by the "basic rules and responsibilities").....
Johan Cruyff and Louis Van Gaal have been at odds for years, not so much because they hate each other as from the philosophy of football that they wrestle with each other. For example, in 1992, people liked to compare Barca led by Cruyff to Ajax led by Van Gaal, when Barca won the European Cup and Ajax won the European Cup Winners' Cup. If he (Van Gaal) thinks Ajax is better than Barca, then he is really wrong, and when you look at Ajax's squad at the time, you can easily see that their talent and quality are declining! Cruyff gave the media inquiring such a "violent" response. In 1993, Cruyff publicly declared that he wanted Ajax, who was flying in Nord, rather than Van Gaal, to win the Eredivisie title; in 1994, when asked which European teams he admired the most? Cruyff replied: Auxerre and Parma, because these two teams have just eliminated Ajax in the first two seasons in Europe. What's more, in 1995, when Cruyff heard that a journalist thought Ajax was stronger than Barca? He was furious, and he unceremoniously told reporters: Why don't you stop talking shit?
But in fact, Van Gaal's Ajax won the European championship that year...
Louis Van Gaal's philosophy of football emphasizes the importance of collectivism, football is a team sport, so players rely on each other on the field, Van Gaal explains: if some players do not properly perform the tasks they are given on the field, then their colleagues will suffer, which means that every player has basic rules and responsibilities to follow! These are functional, uninteresting words that you'd hard to hear from Johan Cruyff, who wants his players to be able to perform themselves and enjoy the game (but Van Gaal is to abide by "basic rules and responsibilities"). When Ajax loses, Van Gaal will complain that his players have no way to comply with the team's tactical requirements, they just do what they want, and they destroy the efficiency and trust of the team.
Van Gaal doesn't like individualism, but that doesn't mean Van Gaal's Ajax are a boring team, in fact their style of play is extremely attacking. In 1992 he sold the team's wing wing, Bryan Roy, which drew criticism from Cruyff, who argued that Van Gaal did not appreciate the individual abilities of the players at all, although it was dazzling, but Van Gaal defended himself, saying that the reason he would abandon Brayan Roy was because Roy did not think about the team.
Van Gaal's tactical system is not narrow, he needs wing forwards, at that time Ajax's left wing is Marc Overmas, and the right wing is Finidi George, they are given clear instructions: after playing, if they face a single defender, then they can play a single game, but if there are more than two defenders, then they must restrain themselves and focus on team tactics. Such instructions overwhelmed Ajax fans who were already accustomed to providing passion and individual performances on the left and right wings, complaining that Van Gaal's system had deprived Overmas and George of their freedom, and eventuallyFinidi George left the team to join Spain's Real Betis, who also said that leaving Ajax allowed him to finally express himself! But Van Gaal hates too much dribbling because not only is that inefficient, it means players care more about themselves than the team. We live in a laissez-faire society, but in a football team, what you need is discipline, says Van Gaal.
Before taking over as head coach of the Ajax first team, Van Gaal was in charge of the team's youth system, where he developed many football stars who would later become globally renowned such as Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Patrick Kulivert... Van Gaal enjoyed his time with the academy because the players of this period were the most malleable. In 1995, when Ajax beat AC Milan to win the European Championship Cup, the only veteran in the squad at that time was Danny Blind, a defender and captain who had been in Ajax for 9 years, and Frank Rijkaard, a youth product from Ajax who had returned from overseas, Van Gaal would not sign any "off-the-shelf" superstars who were not from Ajax, even if those stars were better than existing players, because Van Gaal always said: I don't need the eleven Best, what I need is the best eleven!
In contrast to Van Gaal's skeptical individualism, Cruyff is obsessed with the glamour of superstars, playing as a player (because he himself is the biggest star), and in the coaching stage, like the Barça period that made him famous, he introduced and relied on the following superstars such as Michael Laudrup, Hristo Stoichkov, Gheorghe Hagi and Ramario. We can say that Cruyff's rise and fall in charge of Barca depends on how he treats those superstars, which is very different from Van Gaal in this article, and in the next article, we will start with Cruyff's Barça Dream Team Dream Team...
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