14. La autobiografía (No Ficción)

by Johan Cruyff, Enrique Bernárdez Sanchís (Translator)

Considerado como una de las figuras más extraordinarias de la historia del fútbol, su estilo futbolístico y su filosofía han influido en entrenadores y jugadores de la talla de Pep Guardiola, Arsène Wenger, Eric Cantona y Xavi. Los recientes éxitos del fútbol español, tanto a nivel de club como a nivel internacional, han sido considerados por muchos como el evidente resultado del impacto de Cruyff en el fútbol contemporáneo.
14. La autobiografía, de Johan Cruyff, cuenta la historia personal y profesional de Cruyff, y nos revela la filosofía que definió su juego y que tanto ha marcado a generaciones de futbolistas, entrenadores y seguidores.

«El lenguaje de Cruyff es tan universal como su lógica, así que su obra trasciende a su persona, hasta convertirse en una religión cuya arma es inocua: se explica a partir de un balón y de un rondo de la misma manera que el juego depende de un centímetro y de un segundo, como se advierte en cada partido del Barça. El cruyffismo está más expandido que nunca desde que no está Cruyff. No hay un entrenador más cruyffista que Guardiola. Hasta Messi tira los penaltis como Cruyff» Ramon Besa, El País

Genres: Football, Biography, Sports, Nonfiction, Soccer, Autobiography, Ebooks

302 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Dutch professional football player and coach.

As a player, he won the Ballon d'Or in 1971, 1973, and 1974. Cruyff was the most famous exponent of the football philosophy known as Total Football explored by Rinus Michels.

His career as a player spanned from 1964 - 1984 where he played for Ajax Amsterdam, Feyenoord en Barcelona.

Reviews

[Godowd · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great footballer and one of my childhood heroes but avoid this book at all costs.

This must be one of the worst footballing autobiographies ever - in fact Cruyff in the last chapter pretty much sums it up when he says that if you are looking for someone to moan - he is your man.

I somehow made this to the end of the book but wondered why I bothered - he has quite an ego and seems to fall out with everyone (but himself). There are no amusing anecdotes, contributions from others, very little about family life, ... it is a continuous rant about how football not being played how he was taught and how he fell out with Ajax, Holland, managers......

[Sotiris Karaiskos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johan Croyf was one of the greatest footballers of all time, so certainly his autobiography is interesting for all football fans. Beginning with his childhood, the great athlete, in a simple and direct way, describes the conditions he has grown in the post-war Holland, the way he has come into contact with football through Ajax, the people who helped him, the way he has evolved as a player and he eventually managed to reach great successes. So we see through his own eyes the rapid development of Dutch football in the 1960s, which was the result of systematic work. He then talks about the next career stages and the different conditions he encountered in each of his teams, reaching his important coaching career and ending up with his other activities inside and outside football.

All this things are nteresting but the problem is that the book does not contain enough of what a sports fan awaits to read. There is, of course, a lot of information about his activity in the field of sports and many nice references to his personal life, but generally Johan Craiff barely talks about the great moments of his career, the way he lived them, for the great games, giving thus a more general description of his career without going into detail. There is, of course, enough football and many references to tactics and the way he wanted to innovate, but he is overly concerned with non-competitive issues such as the administrative problems of his teams. I have the impression that one of his main motivations for writing this book was to tell his own opinion about the controversies he had with the management of the teams and about the cases he believes he was wronged.

However, this may not be a perfect effort, but it is definitely a book of value. It is a book that gives us the opportunity to personally get to know this great footballer but above all this man who has so much contributed to our favorite sport.

Ο Γιόχαν Κρόιφ ήταν ένας από τους μεγαλύτερους ποδοσφαιριστές όλων των εποχών, για αυτό σίγουρα είναι ενδιαφέρουσα για όλους τους ποδοσφαιρόφιλους η αυτοβιογραφία του. Ξεκινώντας από τα παιδικά του χρόνια ο μεγάλος αθλητής με έναν απλό και άμεσο τρόπο περιγράφει τις συνθήκες που μεγάλωσε στη μεταπολεμική Ολλανδία, τον τρόπο που ήρθε σε επαφή με το ποδόσφαιρο μέσω του Άγιαξ, τους ανθρώπους που τον βοήθησαν, τον τρόπο που εξελίχθηκε ως παίκτης και τελικά μπόρεσε να φτάσει στις μεγάλες επιτυχίες. Έτσι βλέπουμε μέσα από τα δικά του μάτια τη ραγδαία ανάπτυξη του ολλανδικού ποδοσφαίρου τη δεκαετία του '60, που ήταν αποτέλεσμα συστηματικής δουλειάς. Στη συνέχεια μιλάει για τους επόμενους σταθμούς της καριέρας του και τις διαφορετικές συνθήκες που συναντούσε σε κάθε μία από τις ομάδες του, φτάνει στην σημαντική προπονητική του καριέρα και καταλήγει τελικά στις άλλες δραστηριότητές του εντός και εκτός του ποδοσφαίρου.

Ενδιαφέροντα όλα αυτά αλλά το πρόβλημα είναι ότι το βιβλίο δεν περιέχει αρκετά από αυτά που περιμένει ένας φίλαθλος να διαβάσει. Υπάρχουν φυσικά πολλές πληροφορίες για τη δραστηριότητά του στο χώρο του αθλητισμού και πολλές ωραίες αναφορές στην προσωπική του ζωή αλλά γενικότερα ο Γιόχαν Κρόιφ ελάχιστα μιλάει για τις μεγάλες στιγμές της καριέρας του, για τον τρόπο που τις έζησε, για τα σπουδαία παιχνίδια, δίνοντας έτσι μία γενικότερη περιγραφή της καριέρας του, χωρίς να εμβαθύνει στις λεπτομέρειες. Υπάρχει φυσικά αρκετό ποδόσφαιρο και πολλές αναφορές στην τακτική και στον τρόπο που ο ίδιος ήθελε να καινοτομήσει, ασχολείται υπερβολικά, όμως, με μη αγωνιστικά ζητήματα όπως τα διοικητικά προβλήματα των ομάδων του. Μου δίνεται η εντύπωση ότι ένα από τα βασικά του κίνητρα για το γράψιμο αυτού του βιβλίου ήταν να πει τη δική του άποψη για τις διαμάχες που είχε με τις διοικήσεις των ομάδων και για τις περιπτώσεις που θεωρεί ότι αδικήθηκε.

Παρόλα αυτά μπορεί να μην πρόκειται για μία τέλεια προσπάθεια αλλά σίγουρα είναι ένα βιβλίο που έχει την αξία του. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μας δίνει την ευκαιρία να γνωρίσουμε προσωπικά αυτόν τον σπουδαίο ποδοσφαιριστή αλλά πάνω από όλα αυτόν τον άνθρωπο που είχε τόση συνεισφορά στο αγαπημένο μας άθλημα.

[Michael Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of Johan Cruyff, the footballer and the football coach. I know some call him plainly JC. I have also read third-hand accounts of bits of his life, and in particular the anecdotes collected from Ștefan Kovacs (Covaci) by Ioan Chirila. So, after his death in March 2016, I pre-ordered his auto-biography at the first occasion, then waited patiently until the October 2016 release in the Netherlands. Overall, JC's auto-biography is surprisingly good and learnful, albeit at times self-servient and not very well edited.

The main strength of the book is direct access to Johan Cruyff's experiences and thoughts about them, especially in what concerns management of top-flight organizations. Cruyff was known not only for amazing football skills and success in winning trophies, but also for a particularly argumentative style at human level (he would say in this book that this is what it means to be working class Amsterdammer) and for spectacular rows with many at Ajax and Barcelona. I like how Cruyff describes not only his views about football, but also his interpretation of the process that led to these rows and how they were resolved. Checking my notes taken while reading the book the book, it seems JC has had strong disagreements with fellow players since 1973 (he would leave Ajax for Barcelona at the end of a spat, and later he will leave his second spell at Ajax for a move to bitter rivals Feyenoord in 1983-4), with KNVB (the national football federation of the Netherlands) since 1974 (he retired early from national-team football in 1977-8, but ascribes this in part to an unrelated incident in his personal life), and with upper management since at least 1986 (after disagreeing on vision, he will depart in 1987-8 from Ajax and move almost immediately to Barcelona). It would have been easy for Johan Cruyff to do a mere hatchet job on his "opponents". However, he actually explains, albeit with enough self-serving words, the entire process and analyzes from multiple points of view each event. He admits in several cases his mistakes, among which ambition and inexperience. What surfaces is how a great player feels about merely mediocre, judgmental, and political management (Cruyff is very careful to always stay on the side of the players, and praises even mediocre teammates). His stories especially about Dutch management at Ajax are very interesting and match what I have heard from many top-level professionals in the country.

I was also positively impressed by Johan Cruyff, the person. Johan Cruyff identifies three main traits (honest, gritty, brave), which he calls the essence of being Dutch, Amsterdammer in particular. There is much more in the book. Desire for control, need to explain each action as logical even when inconsistent with previously formulated principles, identity tied with family life, etc. I liked in general his ability to formulate a progressive vision about life (including a full list of guidelines -- "The Fourteen Rules of Johan Cruyff" -- around the end of the book), about responsibility, about guiding others to success. I also liked two important aspects of his testimony: on life at the top of a very competitive and international activity; and on his ability to develop an international identity, while still being inlove with the Netherlands and feeling Dutch, is something that is explored just enough in the book and in my view worthwhile reading about.

The main issues I had with the book limited my own pleasure in discovering this auto-biography. First, and perhaps not unexpectedly, the author is at times self-servient. He claims not being interested in positions of power or his disdain for others abusing them, but in several occasions he is caught in clear conflicts of interest (coaching his son, being a commissioner at Ajax while others are forced to resign, etc.) I particularly disliked how in most situations he expects his view to be unquestionable, as in this paragraph (page 296 in the Kindle edition):

There’s no one in football who knows more about tactics, technique and youth training than I do, so why are you debating with me? It’s utterly pointless and you’ll only do it wrong, so listen to me, benefit from it. How big must your ego be if you can’t see that?


Second, this auto-biography could have been edited better. Several of the chapters, and in particular the last, include long rambling text of a quality much lower than the rest of the book. There are also a few English translations of Dutch idiomatic expressions, which should have been complemented by footnotes explaining them for the general public (some of them are delicious sentences, perhaps worthy of inclusion in I always get my sin). Last, the chapters are chronological, but the structure could have benefited from a good introduction and several testimonials, perhaps from Wim Jonk (who is praised in the book) and Marco van Basten (who is not).

Now it's your turn to read this book. Recommended to all who are interested in football, in competitive and international activities, in living abroad or in a multi-culti environment in the US/EU, and in Dutch management and organizational issues.

[Igor Guzun · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cea mai emoționantă pagină a acestei autobiografii a lui Johan Cruyff – „Driblingul meu” (Publica, 2017) – este această istorie scurtă în care un mare fotbalist a fost și un mare om, puternic și sensibil.

„Când am ajuns la Washington Diplomats, mi s-a spus că la fiecare meci jucat în deplasare va trebui să țin câte o sesiune de antrenamente pentru copiii cu dizabilități. După câteva luni am spus că voiam să renunț, fiindcă oricum nu avea nici un rost. De fiecare dată când le spuneam să lovească mingea într-o direcție, ei o trimiteau în partea cealaltă”, își amintește disperarea de atunci Johan Cruyff.

Iar după ce le-a spus asta organizatorilor, aceștia l-au rugat pe Cruyff să se uite la o înregistrare video din timpul unei astfel de ședințe. „Mi-au spus să nu mă uit unde ajungea mingea și, în schimb, să privesc în ochii copilului, ochii mamei și ochii tatălui. Și să văd în ochii lor bucuria pe care le-o ofeream când loveau pur și simplu mingea, ceea ce nu mai reușiseră să facă până atunci”, scrie autorul driblingului Cruyff.

„Dintr-odată, am descoperit fericirea pe care o produceam. Am început să mă bucur de aceste ședințe; am început să văd altfel lucrurile și să gândesc altfel. În locul frustrării, aveam parte de uriașa satisfacție a ceea ce făceam… Atunci mi-am dat seama că, ajutând puțin câte puțin, pe ici și pe acolo, poți schimba viața unui copil. Iar recompensa e atât de mare, în schimbul unui efort atât de mic”, povestește Johan Cruyff în autobiografia sa „Driblingul meu”.

[Mac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not an autobiography, but rather a brief and detail-free look at early life, playing career, and management followed by page after page of score-settling and self-aggrandizement and endless detours into tactics and philosophies on life and business. A miserable read.

[Harsh Arya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Considering the legacy of Cruyff - the total football, the philosophy, I had set too high expectations from this book. Though it feels like an honest, direct account of Cruyff's life - right from his Ajax youth team days to Barcelona, the book just manages to rush through his life at different stages. Such an interesting life, which almost started sporting revolution in the world of football deserves certainly a better account of the philosophy on which it was based. If only Cruyff had a co-author to help him through this - just like he mentions ("I generally hire the person most suitable for job and don't poke into his matters"), this book could have turned out to be a complete masterpiece.
An exceptional life, failed by an ordinary book.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book about his life as a football player and coach but mostly inspiring about the things he did after. It has been interesting from the start till the end which was something I did not expect. The insights he gave about soccer management and Ajax/Barcelona were very interesting to read. He can sometimes come off as a bit arrogant but that is mainly about his soccer insights and views.

[Steve Marley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Like many who’ve read this book I grew up watching Cruyff. He will always be one of the best footballers ever to have graced the turf. But this book is quite simply awful. Littered with moans about former players, managers and chairmen; it’s badly written and darts about in many directions. Three hundred pages long, the last 100 pages are just gripes about the modern game.

Very disappointed

[Shatterlings · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and he seems like a good egg. I would have liked more about his football career and less about the administration of Ajax but that might just be me.

[Viktor Stoyanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Няколко отрезвяващи урока. Няколко ценни за футбола идеи, разказани достъпно - как са се зародили и изпълнили. Някои ценни идеи и извън самата игра. Излишно издребняване в голям период от книгата за управленски и игрови неразбории около Аякс. Личи се, че на човека това му е било голяма тема. Като цяло изповядва много от болките си, както и обяснява избори, които е правил в забележителната кариера, повлияла толкова много хора и самата игра.

[Judy Abbott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anlatımı yüzeysel buldum. Oyunculuk ve teknik adamlık kısımları hop diye geçti. Asıl güzel olan o efsane yıllar değil mi? Sonra uzun uzun amlattığı Ajax'ı yeniden yapılandırma yıllarında için daraldı. Daha kısa olmalıymış bence kitabın ikinci yarısı.
*** Kitabın tupturuncu olması hoş, yani sayfaların kenarını turuncu yapmışlar, kitaba hangi yönden bakarsanız bakın hep portakal rengi görüyorsunuz.

[Ari Damoulakis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Incredibly boring, uninsightful, hardly goes into any depth or interesting details about anything. So disappointing and really hardly worth reading at all.

[Freddie Briggs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Decent baller and I do love his takes on total football

[Tom Hendrikx · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prima leesbare biografie van een soms onnavolgbaar en lekker eigenwijs mens. 'Je bent net zo lang gestoord tot je een genie bent' vat dat mooi samen.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this book. Johan invented the Cruyff turn and as he says in this book he did it instinctively. He hadn’t been rehearsing it for hours in the field. It happened in an instance. It’s one of the most famous moves in the football game and it came to him in a flash. The book is about the young player who was born into a footballing world and lived within hearing shot of Ajax. He was often just go over to the club so got to live and feel the game from a very very young age. The other thing that Yohan says added to his greatness and one thing that we don’t let our kids do enough these days is the free-flowing unsupervised street football that he did hour after hour after hour. The social cohesion this bought and the way it developed his social skills is something that cannot be underestimated. Johan effects the game today. His footballing philosophy has been copied impeccably by Pep Guardiola in Manchester city, Bayern München and of course Barcelona. Yohan was really interested in the space and was uncannily good at mathematics. The poetics of space. I learnt a great deal about the game and here are the best bits:
• I want to stress that it isn’t the man on the ball who decides where the ball goes but the players without the ball. Their running actions determine the next pass. That’s why I go crazy when I see players standing still on the pitch. To play like that for me is out of the question. In possession 11 men must be in motion. BUSY FINETUNING DISTANCES. It’s not a question of how much you run but where you run to. Constantly creating triangles means that the ball circulation isn’t interrupted.
• Football may be a game of mistakes, but someone has to have the quality to rise above them. He’s got to be mentally and physically up to the job.
• You had to have an idea of the space around you and where each player was before you made your move. No football coach ever told me that i had to know where I was going to pass the ball before I had received it, but later on when I was playing the football professionally the lessons from baseball - to focus on having a total overview – came back to me and became my strength.
• This is how I thought the game should be played. Every match was about trying to get closer to be the best, whichever team I was playing for.
• The turn wasn’t something that i had ever done in training or practised. The idea came to me in a flash, because at that particular moment it was the best solution for the situation I was in. there are impulses that arise because your technical and tactical knowledge has become so great that your legs are able to respond immediately to what your head wants them to do.
• In Europe schooling is one thing, sport is something else. That’s an error. They’re the same, except that in sport you learn on a different level. In American they’ve worked that one out really well.
• I suggested we use Len del ferro an opera singer who specialise in breathing techniques, to help players get the maximum return on every inhalation and every exhalation. That’s a very important in top level sport. Later in Barcelona I bought in a reflexologist because all the energy in the body always comes out through the feet.

[Taufique Hussain · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my perspective, it is a must read for every FC Barcelona fan if he/she doesn't have clear idea of how much influence this guy had on the team's today's position. This book turned out to be lot more engaging than it seemed from the review before starting it.

[Piyal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Both as a player and a manager, Johan Cruyff’s quality was the most monumental among his peers. However, if you pick up this book expecting the same quality in writing, you’d be disappointed. If you pick up this book expecting to probe into his incredible tactical knowledge and how he came to develop them, you’d be disappointed too. It’s not that they’re not there; it’s that you have to sift through at times tedious and repetitive pages full of his complaints to get to them.

Cruyff was often misunderstood and had trouble working with people. Most parts of this book are full of him explaining why he was right. The problem is not that he was not right because he was; the problem is that it does not make for an exciting read. The result is this raw, unscripted, and unedited monologue-like writing. It doesn’t also help that none of the chapters is titled or concise. So, this feels like seeing the world in Cruyff’s eyes, including even the uninteresting parts, instead of watching a well-crafted documentary based on his account. It's a shame because he also goes into great detail about his personal life. One can only wonder; what height could this book reach with the help of a competent editor?

Recommended: For people willing to know the person 'Johan Cruyff' instead of the legend 'Johan Cruyff.' It does a good work of demystifying the aura surrounding him.

Not Recommended: For people looking to read a good work of literature or his tactical analysis.

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cruyff's autobiography was published in 2016, just after his passing from lung cancer in March. It reads very much like the text was recorded and typed up later. J.C. admits that he had little recall of individual games in his career. Sadly that is evident in this book. It differs from the usual sporting memoir, especially most footballing books, where a player documents the playing successes of the team(s) he is with. In 'My Turn' the playing career barely takes up a third of the text.
Johan Cruyff's testament centres on his philosophy of 'total football' to which he was fully committed both as a player and a coach at Ajax and Barcelona, and it is this subject that he devotes most of the pages in his autobiography. He was clearly a very strongly opinionated person, but who could argue with his results on the field, or his own style of play. A player and coach much admired by many 'greats' of the game, past and present.

[Христо Блажев · Rating 4 out of 5]

Йохан Кройф – роденият лидер, който преобрази футбола: http://knigolandia.info/book-review/m...

Мачове, мачове и пак мачове – “Ливърпул”, “Реал”, “Милан” и кой ли не още футболен колос излиза по тези страници срещу “Аякс” и макар че пътят далеч не е еднопосочно победоносен, то кулминацията идва с вдигането на Купата на европейските шампиони през 1971 г., следват триумфи и през следващите две години – пълна хегемония в Европа за тима на Кройф. Той не влиза в детайли за мачовете, още по-рано в книгата признава, че не помни толкова много от конкретните мачове отвъд крайния резултат. В тази часто от разказа за живота си футболистът се спира относително малко на личния си живот и проблемите в него, но пък отделя внимание как се е научил по трудния начин какво да прави с парите си и как да отстоява своето в преговорите с мениджърите и ръководството.

CIELA Books
http://knigolandia.info/book-review/m...

[Chantal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Como autobiografía, se me ha quedado corta. Y mira que me da rabia, ya que fue el precursor de lo que es el Barça hoy en día, y la persona a la que debo mi nombre. Pero es que como biografía se me ha quedado muy escasa... Se centra demasiado en aspectos técnicos, en la gestión y en su organización, en vez de en su parte futbolística y la cantidad de an��dotas que nos podría haber contado... Pero bueno, no está mal y al ser la obra póstuma de Cruyff (al menos en España), había que leerla sí o sí.

[Jim Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfectly written autobiography about one of the greatest players in the world. I found it fascinating to read about his life, family, trials and tribulations and also the work he did outside of the sport. He gave a detailed vision of how the game should be played and why it should be played that way. This was far more than I expected it to be (from reading other autobiographies). He dedicated a lot of his time helping other people and setting up various sport charities to leave a legacy behind. Wonderfully written and a must read for any fan of the beautiful game.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sehr gute und ehrliche Biographie von und über Johan Cruyff. Neben den Stationen seines Lebens geht es vor allem um seine Lebensphilosophie, seine Auffassung vom Fußball und die Liebe zu Ajax und Barcelona.
Seine Aussagen wiederholen sich leider nachdem der Teil seiner aktiven Karriere vorbei ist, immer wieder, aber man bekommt ein sehr klares Bild des Mensches Cruyffs vermittelt.
Für Fußball-Fans definitiv zu empfehlen.

[ger · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible Autobiography. A couple of good chapters at the start on philosophy of life and chapter 13 is interesting on football. The rest is repetitive, poor on detail and emotion. I know possibly nothing more about the man other than he wanted his way all the time.
What he writes about the possibility of 'Wimbledon fc' coming to Dublin in the 90's and how it would aid protestants and Catholics is so badly informed that it didn't reflect well on other issues he wrote about.

[Thomas Pruijsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Een boek dat twee maanden in beslag nam. Meestal niet zo'n goed teken. En om eerlijk te zijn viel het ook tegen. Ik kwam er niet lekker in. Het waren saaie beschrijvingen. Weinig onthullingen en veel herhalingen en veel dingen die al bekend waren. Alsnog voor de held Johan Cruyff kon niet minder dan drie sterren geven en was het een aardig feel good verhaal. Maar nee, geen hoogtepunt van 2017.

[Adrian White · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little self-serving but fascinating to see that everything Pep Guardiola is hoping to achieve at Manchester City is based on Cruyff's footballing philosophy.

[Pauline Stroosnijder · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ik had me hier veel van voorgesteld. Cruijff, een van mijn jeugdidolen. Maar vond het een vreselijk vervelend en langdradig verhaal. Teleurstellend.

[Fran Cormack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much as I love books about football, Cruyff's sense of self importance and arrogance comes through too much to really enjoy this book.

[Blake · Rating 2 out of 5]

Johan Cruyff is regarded as one of the greatest footballers of all time, yet he was also incredibly successful in his post-playing career. In addition to his many honours and accolades, he contributed immensely to the tactical side of football, so much so that the modern game is heavily rooted in the ideas that Cruyff espoused. As such, the European patron saint of ‘beautiful football’ may well go down as football’s single-most influential figure.

Cruyff’s autobiography My Turn, finished shortly before his death at the age of 68, is a typically Cruyffian and frank account of his body of work. Like any man who has truly earned the right to own the soapbox, he writes without filter and without humility. His writing is often illuminating, prophetic, divisive, idealistic, and rooted in that wonderful arrogance that made him such an iconoclast. This is by no means a by-the-numbers autobiography—it is rather a manifest, a thesis defence, and a rallying cry. It is truly his turn.

“The good player is the player who touches the ball just once and knows where to run; that is what Dutch football is about. I have always said that football should be played beautifully, and in an attacking way. It must be a spectacle.” (pg. 29)

My Turn also reads like a mournful eulogy. Cruyff wrote My Turn whilst battling lung cancer, and although there is one mention of this in his book, his health is a subject that he was always highly conscious of. He remarks upon his previous heart problems with a certain casualness, having realised at a young age that his health problems would eventuate. Cruyff’s quiet acceptance of this flows through his writing, and read posthumously My Turn is an incredibly personal recounting of a man who lived and died for football. Even his often-disengaged style is somewhat endearing and displays that brilliant single-mindedness endemic in genius.

Fervent adherents to Cruyff’s philosophy will undoubtedly gain a great insight into his thoughts on Total Football and his turbulent relationship with the Ajax board in his later years. His honesty ranges from brutal, particularly in reference to his failed personal relationships (“That’s happened to me often if my life—people I had a special bond with suddenly letting me down. Like with Michels, but also with Piet Keizer, Carles Rexach and later Marco van Basten…When I think about it, I’ve learned a lot from them all, but they’ve never been willing to learn from me. I think that’s a very telling difference.”); to the tragic, encapsulated by his reasons for refusing to be part of the Dutch national team for the 1978 World Cup and in his description of son Jordi’s injury-plagued career. My Turn is the work of an idealist with unshakeable principles who refuses to be caught up with the material and transient—he merely regards medals and honours as things to put in his grandchildren’s toy box” and he writes that the past is “not something that I think too much about”.

“In the end, the time will surely come when the club [Ajax] realizes things need to change…At any rate, it’ll happen when the right people start being listened to. People who hold the club in their hearts and who know what Ajax represents. If that happens, our struggle will not have been in vain.” (pg. 239)

However, his self-serving style of writing and what he chooses to focus on (and omit) will invite criticism and polarise readers. It may be a great loss to football history that he glosses over his magnificent playing career, and his dismissal of the greatest of the great losses—the 1974 World Cup Final loss—is infuriating in its blitheness (“That said, I got over it quickly enough. In fact it wasn’t much of a blow. Much more important was the vast amount of positivity and admiration for our play that our performances had generated all over the world.” (pg. 60)). He defends himself from the many criticisms levelled at him, including the standing-over of then-Ajax coach Leo Beenhakker and his insensitive remarks to Edgar Davids by claiming that what he did was for Ajax’s betterment. He writes his disdain for the ‘gutter press’, yet used his column to kickstart a war of attrition against the Ajax board. His frequent use of imperatives (“we must”, “we have to”) and arrogant language (“I’ve never been driven by rancour”; “I’m a very idealistic person who knows what he’s talking about”; “I looked in the mirror and came to the conclusion that I should be the model for this”) can make for some difficult reading.

Yet this is what made Cruyff essentially Cruyff—an unshakeable belief in his own ideology, and his determination to make the game ‘beautiful’ to watch, where winning is merely derived from spectacle. Therefore, My Turn cannot possibly encapsulate the depth of Cruyff’s ideology, and it reads much like an unpolished draft. As such, there are some grating contradictions. He writes “You can’t be a top sportsman unless you are intelligent” and later writes that “information is more important than intelligence”. He claimed to have an affinity with numbers and numerology, yet flexes that he doesn’t know how much money he has (“I wouldn’t be able to tell you. Not a clue. Let me know if there are any problems. I don’t live in that world. It’s not my thing.”) It all comes across as conceited, and to a fan who struggles to pay for a ticket to watch a game—let alone the beautiful game—such remarks are insulting and out of touch. Several chapters, especially his meandering descriptions about his battles with the Ajax powers-that-be, are heavily unedited and may have been an effort by the publisher to maintain Cruyff’s ‘voice’.

My Turn ends with a touch of lament. Cruyff bemoans the state of his beloved Ajax, writing that “It’s incredibly sad that, at the age of sixteen, I was there for the beginning of the ascendancy, and now, at nearly seventy, I have to witness the decline. No one wants to listen. Or rather, hardly anyone wants to listen. Everyone has his own agenda.” It would have been unlike Cruyff to question his own relevancy at any time, but to admit his sadness shows a man taking stock near the end of his life. Readers may even pick up some regret in his refusal to even acknowledge the ’74 World Cup loss as a failure in his footballing life, despite bemoaning the circumstances involving his self-exclusion from the ’78 World Cup tilt (that they may have won had he played) and his dejection in not being able to coach the Dutch national team in the 1990 World Cup (Michels “cocked it up”).

Perhaps the charm of My Turn lies in the obstinacy, the inconsistencies, and the unanswered questions. Cruyff set himself high standards, and expected the same of others. His autobiography is written in the same vein—he writes assuming that the reader already understands. In a way, My Turn is engaging in its combativeness and self-importance, for Cruyff certainly earned the right to be unashamedly forthright. However, My Turn is a tragic missed opportunity by Cruyff and his publisher to leave behind a final, unforgettable testimony of one of football’s greatest personalities. We, as football fans, are worse off for what has been omitted, ignored, or downplayed.

HIGHLIGHTED PASSAGE

“The World Cup [1974] turned us into cult figures around the globe. People warmed to our image of gritty bravura. Our strength lay in our honesty. We weren’t acting; that was really how we were. Dutchmen by birth, and definitely Amsterdammers by nature.” (pg. 62)

STARS: 2.5/5
UNDER 20: A disappointing and uneven autobiography by a bona fide footballing legend at the end of his wonderful life.
FULL-TIME SCORE: The undoubted star of the team dictates play, but his end product is unusually lacking in a bore 1-1 draw against a more pragmatic team.
RELATED READING: Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football by David Winner (2000)

[Radek Gabinek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Osinskipoludzku.blogspot.com

Autobiografia Johana Cruyffa zapowiadana była jako jedna z najważniejszych publikacji jeśli chodzi o biografie sportowe w ostatnich latach. Nic w tym dziwnego, wszak ten legendarny już piłkarz i trener ma tak bogate CV, że można się było spodziewać tylko i wyłącznie fascynującej opowieści Czy taką historię otrzymaliśmy rzeczywiście? Czy książka ta spełnia poukładane w niej oczekiwania?



Po książkę Cruyffa sięgnąłem długo po premierze powodowany głodem kibica piłkarskiego i umysłem chłonnych prawdziwej futbolowej przygody. Liczyłem na dużo gdyż w odróżnieniu od biografii, które powstały chyba tylko i wyłącznie ze względu na topniejące środki na koncie akurat Cruyff zasłużył na uznanie w postaci własnej biografii. Tym bardziej zapowiadało się na wartościową książkę gdyż Cruyff opowiedział swoją historię samemu, a nie zlecił jej komuś innemu. Moje oczekiwania nie zostały jednak spełnione. Z jednej strony otrzymujemy tu kawał historii nie tylko holenderskiego futbolu, a z drugiej strony tylko początek zaspokoił moją ciekawość i trzymał mnie w ciekawości, bo im dalej tym bardziej Johan Cruyff wchodzi w dziwne dywagacje i filozofuje. Można wręcz odnieść wrażenie, że za punkt honoru postawił sobie on udowodnienie, że we wszelkich sporach tylko on miał rację.



Dziwna jest ta biografia gdyż wątków autobiograficznych tak naprawdę jest tu bardzo mało. Johan Cruyff znany jest przecież przede wszystkim jako piłkarz i trener a jak się okazuje akurat o tych wątkach jest tutaj bardzo niewiele. Brakowało mi anegdot z szatni, wspomnień z wielkich meczy, sympatii i antypatii, boiskowej perspektywy. Tak jak wspomniałem tylko początek dotyka tych najbardziej przecież nurtujących piłkarskiego kibica aspektów. Zbyt dużo moim zdaniem jest tutaj rozważań na temat struktur związków i organizacji piłkarskich jak też na temat taktyki. Paradoksalnie konkretów na temat futbolu totalnego, którego wszak Johan Cruyff był propagatorem jak na lekarstwo. Za dużo też jest poczucia krzywdy, żalów w kierunku piłkarzy, działaczy Ajaxu czy Barcelony. Mało ciekawe są też wątki odnośnie nieudanych prób biznesowych Cruyffa. W pewnym momencie ta autobiografia staje się bardziej zbiorem felietonów na tematy ogólnopiłkarskie i każdy kto tak jak ja liczył na lekcję historii piłki nożnej będzie odczuwał spore rozczarowanie. Szkoda, bo samo wydanie tej książki wygląda bardzo zachęcająco. Niestety po jej przeczytaniu nadal wiemy bardzo mało o Cruyffie jako piłkarzu i człowieku.



Podsumowując, myślę że tak czy inaczej warto sięgnąć po autobiografię Johana Cruyffa jeśli jesteście maniakami piłkarskimi natomiast brak tej pozycji na liście przeczytanych nie będzie stanowił wielkiego wyłomu. Ciekaw jestem, czy moje rozczarowanie tą pozycją to efekt wygórowanych oczekiwań czy rzeczywiście Cruyff gdzieś się pogubił jeśli chodzi o to co chciał przekazać. W każdym razie wyszło całkiem przeciętnie.

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Johan Cruyff's football. I admire him as person and as a footballer. He loved the game and mostly, he cared that the fans enjoye it before anything else. In his book, he talks less about himself as a footballer, which are the chapters I enjoyed most, and more about football reformation, the obstacles he faced, his vision and his philosophy. The most unfortunate thing for me was that he had to miss the 1978 World Cup, and that he missed the opportunity to become the national team's manager. I would have loved to see that team!
However, the unfortunate event that took place was Van Basten's ankle problem. It hurts me in particular as a Milanista. Although I admire that Cruyff took the responsibility of it.

I am a big Orenje fan. I was surprised to see that Cruyff hasn't mentioned the 2010 World Cup in his book. When I looked it up, my heart sank. I've read how harsh he was on the national team. It was such a shame for a figure like him to say these words. He could have expressed his opinion in a critical, professional way. As a fan, I was proud of the 2010 Orenje squad, and I enjoyed their journey during the World Cup! The ending was so heartbreaking for me, and I thought they deserved better. Cruyff's always talked about how the fans come first. The players should entertain the audience, and that's exactly how I felt during that time, despite the painful loss. I don't think he had the right to shame or diminish the national team just because they didn't match his vision of how Dutch football should be played. His words were really disturbing and disappointing, and it changed how I look at him. I still think highly of him though. He's not perfect of course, but he was a great man nonetheless.

As a big football fan, I enjoyed this book. It just made me want to delve more into Cruyff's mind even though I did disagree with him in some opinions and at some points.

After all, football lost a great man with a unique mentality. We were lucky to have him.