Some great quotes
Cruyff on football
“If I wanted you to understand it, I would have explained it better.”
“Jack [Charlton] makes out he is not really interested in football, and tells the world he’s going fishing. But we know what he’s thinking about when he’s fishing. Football.”
“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.”
“Liverpool are like Bayern Munich, they are all about name and prestige. In footballing terms, we are talking about two horrible sides. In my opinion, a team is horrible if it is incapable of putting three passes together” – on the Champions League and Uefa Cup winners of 2001.
“I only decided to become a manager when I was told I couldn’t.”
“Look, the thing about [Filippo] Inzaghi is he can’t actually play football at all. He’s just always in the right position.”
“I find it terrible when talents are rejected based on computer stats. Based on the criteria at Ajax now I would have been rejected. When I was 15, I couldn’t kick a ball 15 meters with my left and maybe 20 with my right. My qualities technique and vision, are not detectable by a computer.”
“Why couldn’t you beat a richer club? I’ve never seen a bag of money score a goal.”
“We showed the world you could enjoy being a footballer; you could laugh and have a fantastic time. I represent the era which proved that attractive football was enjoyable and successful, and good fun to play too.”
You play football with your head, and your legs are there to help you.”
“Sadly they played very dirty. This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style... If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they lost” – on the Netherlands’ 2010 World Cup finalists.
“Italians can’t win the game against you, but you can lose the game against the Italians.”
“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” – Jan Olsson, the Sweden defender who was tricked by the Cruyff Turn at the 1974 World Cup.