Johan Cruyff grew up five minutes from Ajax, and his mother cleaned its lockers
Johan Cruyff's childhood home sat a short walk from Ajax's stadium in Amsterdam. When his father died suddenly, his mother took a job there cleaning the lockers. The boy from that working-class street became a three-time Ballon d'Or winner and one of the most influential thinkers the game has produced, as a player and as a coach.
He was born in Amsterdam in April 1947 and raised in Betondorp, the concrete village, a plain east Amsterdam district. His father ran a vegetable shop and supported Ajax. School went badly; he repeated two years and later suspected he had ADHD. His older brother Henny was first thought the more gifted player, but in Johan's view never put football first. Their father's fatal heart attack in 1959 left the family struggling, gave Johan a lifelong fear of dying young, and pushed him to earn as much as he could to secure his relatives.
He broke into the Ajax team in 1964 and helped transform Dutch football from a semi-professional sideshow into a force. Under Rinus Michels's Total Football, in which players swapped roles fluidly, Ajax won six league titles and three European Cups with him. He moved to Barcelona in 1973 and delivered their first league title in 14 years. At the 1974 World Cup, the Netherlands' first in 36 years, he scored three and set up three, and although they lost the final to West Germany he was named player of the tournament. He skipped the 1978 edition after a kidnap attempt on his family at their Barcelona home.
Later spells took him to Los Angeles and Washington, back to Ajax, and even to rivals Feyenoord, where he won a league and cup double in his only season. As a manager he won a Cup Winners' Cup with Ajax, then four Spanish titles and a European Cup with Barcelona.
Talkative and famously sure of himself, he coined so many quirky sayings that the Dutch gave them their own label, Cruijffiaans. In 1999 historians voted him European player of the century, second only to Pelé worldwide. His foundation, set up in 1997, supports disadvantaged children and those with special needs.
Source: Johan Cruyff
