No more tiki-taka: Johan Cruyff loses battle to lung cancer 

     When he was a young football player, his career was adorned with three coveted Ballond’Ors. When he was the manager of Ajax and FC Barcelona, he showered the teams with achievements that proved how deep his dedication was to football. Yet another legendary football player and coach Johan Cruyff has left an enormous gap in the history of the game.

Born Hendrik Johannes "Johan" Cruijff, he was the indispensable name in Dutch professional football. Cruyff was one of the most famous exponents of the football philosophy known as Total Football, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in football history. By 1970s, Dutch football rose from near obscurity to become an absolute powerhouse whenCruyff led the Netherlands to the final of the 1974 FIFA World Cup and received the Golden Ball as player of the tournament. At the 1974 finals he executed a feint that subsequently was named after him, the Cruyff Turn, a move widely used in the modern game.

"I played 18 years in top football and seventeen times for Sweden but that moment against Cruyff was the proudest moment of my career. I thought I'd win the ball for sure, but he tricked me. I was not humiliated. I had no chance. Cruyff was a genius."—Sweden defender Jan Olsson, victim of the Cruyff Turn at the 1974 FIFA World Cup

The leading man for Ajax football club, Cruyff contributed a whole lot of effort for its progress. To understand the changes that have taken place in recent season, there’s only one person’s persistence that should be counted and that is Johan Cruyff.

SInceCruyff’s passing, one needs to remember his tremendous ability as a player. However, we must understand the strength of his footballing ideology—Total Football, something that wasglamourised by Barcelona but born, bred and brought up truly at Ajax.

Differences of opinion between the Ajax legend and the club’s board of directors came to a confrontation where Cruyffwas quoted as saying, “this isn’t Ajax anymore”. 

He felt  the club was stagnant  and settling  for mediocrity, 

producing only average players who were subsequently only usedas a source of income for the club. For Cruyff, it wasn’t good enough.

Cruyff's style of play and his football philosophy has had its influence on managers and players including Frank Rijkaard, Pep Guardiola, Michael Laudrup, Arsène Wenger, Eric Cantona and Xavi. Ajax and Barcelona have developed youth academies based on Cruyff's coaching methods. His coaching philosophy helped lay the foundations for the revival of Ajax's international successes in the 1990s. Spanish football's successes at both club and international level during the years 2008 to 2012 have been cited by many as evidence of Cruyff's impact on contemporary football.

"There have been four kings of football—Di Stéfano, Pelé, Cruyff, and Maradona."—Former Barcelona coach César Luis Menotti said in 2011, citing the legendary football player.

Cruyff was known for his technical ability, speed, acceleration, dribbling and vision, possessing an awareness of his team-mates' positions while an attack was ongoing. In 1997, Dutch journalist Hubert Smeets wrote: "Cruyff was the first player who understood that he was an artist, and the first who was able and willing to collectivise the art of sports.”Sports writer David Miller believed Cruyff superior to any previous player in his ability to extract the most from others. He dubbed him "Pythagoras in boots" for the complexity and precision of his passes and wrote: "Few have been able to exact, both physically and mentally, such mesmeric control on a match from one penalty area to another."

Throughout his career, Cruyff’s name was synonymous with the playing style of "Total Football.” It is a system where a player who moves out of his position is replaced by another from his team, thus allowing the team to retain their intended organizational structure. In this fluid system, no footballer has to remain fixed in their intended outfield role. 

Space and the creation of it were central to Total Football. Ajax defender Barry Hulshoff who played with Cruyff, explained: "We discussed space the whole time. Cruyff always talked about where people should run, where they should stand, where they should not be moving.

It was all about making space and coming into space. It is a kind of architecture on the field. We always talked about speed of ball, space and time. Where is the most space? Where is the player who has the most time? That is where we have to play the ball. Every player had to understand the whole geometry of the whole pitch and the system as a whole."

As Cruyff put it: "Every trainer talks about movement, about running a lot. I say don't run so much. Football is a game you play with your brain. You have to be in the right place at the right moment, not too early, not too late."

Barcelona's ex-president Joan Laporta was quoted saying,"As a player he turned football into an art form. Johan came along and revolutionised everything. The modern-day Barça started with him, he is the expression of our identity, he brought us a style of football we love."

"Barcelona was not born in the last couple of years. It was born, the style of play now, in the early 90s through Johan Cruyff. It took 20 years for that moment today that we see and all admire,” said U.S. coach Jürgen Klinsmann.

These quotes and opinions remind every football diehard fan about the legend that Cruyff was and how much his efforts have paid off in bringing football to the world as an art form, as a game that is beautiful and complex, a game that should be played using intellect and not just physique. La Masia, the youth academy of Barca was Cruyff’s brainchild and remains one of the most sought after football training academy. The style of play that he introduced into Barcelona called tiki-taka, characterized by short passes and minimal movement through various channels and still remaining possession, continues to be an innovative technique in the world’s most loved game.