March 11 – Milan Kick Off

AC Milan is one of the most stylish and sophisticated football clubs on the planet, but the club owes its existence to a very uncool-sounding lace-maker from Nottingham named Herbert.

Herbert Kilpin is perhaps one of the unlikeliest heroes of Italian football, but hero he is. One of ten children he was born in Nottingham in 1870 and was soon playing football for Notts Olympic and then for St. Andrews, a church team based near the Forest Recreation Ground.

In 1891 he moved to Turin to work for Edoardo Bosio, an Italian-Swiss textile merchant and the founder of Internazionale Torino, believed to be the first Italian football club. Kilpin was soon playing for the team – and became the first Englishman to play football abroad.

In 1897 Kilpin moved to Milan for work and it was there that he would truly leave his mark. Never a man to turn down a drink or two, just before Christmas Kilpin was enjoying a boozy session with some fellow Brits in Fiaschetteria Toscana, a tavern in Via Berchet. As with most men in pubs the conversation soon turned to sport and the chaps decided to start a football and cricket club. Unlike most ideas a group of drunk men come up with in a pub, they actually did follow through on their plan and the Milan Cricket and Football Club was born. “We will wear red and black,” said Kilpin. “Red to recall the devil, black to invoke fear.”

Three months later, on this day in 1898 the club played its first ever football match, with six Brits in the line-up: Kilpin, Hoode, Lees, Davies, Neville and Allison, alongside Cignaghi, Torretta, Valerio, Dubini and Formenteri. The match was played on a field to the north-east of the city where the grand Central Station now stands.

The fledgling team won the match against local rivals Mediolanum, by either 2-0 or 3-0 depending on which report you believe.

The following year Milan won their first League title and soon joined Genoa as powerhouse in Italian football. Kilpin continued to play for the team despite his slightly unorthodox refreshment tastes – John Foot claims in his book Calcio, A History of Italian Football that Kilpin was famed for his drinking and even kept a bottle of whisky in a hole behind the goal. Kilpin claimed this was to soften the blow when the opposition scored.

In 1908 the cosmopolitan feel to the club evaporated when the ex-pats left to form Internazionale, and one of the world’s great rivalries was created.

As for Kilpin, he died in poverty in 1916 aged just 46, his death a mystery and his grave thought lost until in the 1990s an amateur historian named Luigi La Rocca, after months of searching, found Kilpin’s grave in the Municipal Cemetery, Milan.

In 1999, AC Milan paid for a new tombstone and their illustrious founder and superstar, was reburied in the Monumental Graveyard in Milan.

Of course since then some notable Brits have turned out for the Rossoneri including Mark Hateley, Ray Wilkins, Luther Blissett and Jimmy Greaves, oh, and some chap named Beckham.

Another Englishman was making headlines yet again on this day back in 2005, Kevin Keegan was quitting yet another job. Find out which was the lucky club right here, and be sure to come back tomorrow for more from the best football nostalgia website this side of the Rio Grande.

March 10 – Wycombe’s Ceefax Cup Hero

POOR old Ceefax. Spare a thought for the pixelated old medium, for it was once the king of text-based instant news, sport and football scores. For many a football fan, each morning started with a cup of tea and a quick check of Ceefax page 302 to see what was happening. These days of course the internet has largely stolen teletext’s thunder, relegated it to the bench of news services.

But in 2001 Ceefax played a key role in one of the most bizarre stories from the world of football, when it helped a lowly Second Division team beat a Premiership club in an FA Cup quarter-final.

To set the scene, Wycombe Wanderers, managed by 1988 FA Cup winner Lawrie Sanchez, had beaten Sanchez’s old club Wimbledon to secure a place in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Their opponents were Peter Taylor’s Leicester City and it was the biggest game in the history of the club. The only problem was all of Wycombe’s strikers got themselves injured before the big match, away at Leicester’s Filbert Street ground.

This vexed Lawrie who, as David Brent would say, started to think outside the box and enquired as to the availability of some big names in the game for a one-off appearance for the Chairboys. Ian Wright was asked but injury prevented him from playing, and even Gianluca Vialli – at a loose end after being sacked by Chelsea – was sounded out but politely declined.

What to try next? Sanchez asked his press officer to put out an SOS on the club website asking anyone who thought they could play at that level, and who wasn’t cup-tied to get in touch. Enter a journalist from Ceefax, who spotted the plea and published the story on Ceefax.

It was spotted by the agent of little-known striker Roy Essandoh who had played for Motherwell for a time and spent a few years playing in Finland for VPS Vaasa. Sanchez signed him up on a week-to-week contract and tried him in a reserve match and then a first team game against Port Vale. According to Sanchez: “He did ok. He didn’t set the world alight but he wasn’t the worst centre forward you’d ever seen.” he had done enough to warrant a place on the bench for the big game at Leicester, on this day in 2001.

Paul McCarthy put the visitors into a shock lead but Muzzy Izzet soon equalised for Leicester. With the score tied at 1-1 and 20 minutes left to play Sanchez sent on Stuart Castledine and Essandoh, telling them both to try to keep the ball away from Leicester to secure a draw.

Minutes later Sanchez was sent off for arguing with the referee and was forced to watch the remainder of the match on a tiny television monitor in the bowels of the Filbert Street stadium.

In injury time Wycombe got a free-kick and after the initial ball into the box was parried by Leicester keeper Simon Royce, it was punted back in. “Next thing I know, the ball’s right in front of me,” Essandoh said, and he rose highest to nod in a famous and extremely unlikely winner. The Wanderers fans went crazy in the stands while Lawrie Sanchez was doing likewise in the small room he had been consigned to.

“I thought ‘I don’t believe this – it’s awesome’,” Essandoh said after the match – the man plucked from obscurity and elevated to hero status. “Crazy, isn’t it?” He said. Perhaps Motty has been right all along – maybe the FA Cup still is magic.

He said afterwards: “It was like surreal. You watch the FA Cup all the time and you would like it to be you. But even before the game it’s not the sort of thing you expect to do. You think it will be someone else. Then you do it and it’s the sort of thing you want to do every week.”

But the magic had to end sometime and Wycombe were put out by eventual winners Liverpool, narrowly losing the semi-final at Villa Park.

As for Essandoh, he remained with the club for the rest of the season but failed to win a contract and thereafter embarked on a journeyman’s tour of lower-league and non-league clubs. He turned out for Barnet, Cambridge City, Grays Athletic, Billericay Town, Gravesend & Northfleet and Kettering Town before signing for Conference South club Bishop’s Stortford in 2006 where he now plays his football.

He might not be in the big time anymore, but he does have one helluva story.

That’s all for today sports fans, have a look at what else was happening on this day in football here, and pop back tomorrow for more from us. Until then…

March 9 – Jock Stein Takes Over Celtic

THE suits at Celtic made a very wise decision today in 1965, as they handed the top job at Celtic Park to the soon-to-be legendary Jock Stein.

Prior to Jock’s arrival Celtic were in a bit of pickle. With a trophy cabinet that had been picking up nothing but dust for the last eight seasons (see kids, Scottish football was competitive once!) something needed to be done to revitalise the team.

Stein had been a former club captain during his playing career at Celtic, with his most notable successes being a League and cup double in 1954 and victory in the Coronation Cup a year earlier. When the Glasgow giants came a-calling he left his position as manager of Hibs and became Celtic’s first ever non-Catholic manager.

Within six weeks Stein had already delivered the Scottish Cup, with a 3-2 win over Dunfermline and in his first full season he guided the Bhoys to the title and got them to the semi-finals of the European Cup Winners’ Cup, where they lost to Liverpool on away goals.

Stein then began to turn the screw. A domestic treble followed the next season and his achievements in the 1966/67 season defined his reign at the club.

Not only did Celtic become the first British club to win the European Cup, defeating Helenio Herrera’s suffocating La Grande Inter side in Lisbon, they did it with a side consisting entirely of players born with 30 miles of Celtic Park.

Bill Shankley, who knew a thing or two about the game, said at the time: “John, you’re immortal now.” He wasn’t wrong. The Queen honoured Stein with a CBE, which allegedly would’ve been a knighthood if Celtic hadn’t have had four players sent off in an Intercontinental Cup final match against Racing Club.

At the end of Stein’s tenure at Celtic he had won more trophies than you can shake the proverbial stick at. As you’re asking, his final haul read: ten League Championships, eight Scottish Cups, seven Scottish League Cups and the cherry on top, one European Cup.

Eventually though, the trophies slowed down, particularly after Jock was badly injured in a car crash in 1975. In 1978 he moved south to take over at Leeds United, another team that were on a downward spiral, but he would only last for 44 days, just as Brian Clough had four years earlier. Sequel to The Damned United anyone?

Maybe not. Stein’s departure came not from the bickering, in-fighting and ego’s that marked Cloughy’s time at Elland Road, but because he had been offered the Scotland job.

After leading his country to the 1982 World Cup and Scotland’s inevitable first round exit, Stein would tragically suffer a heart attack at the end of a World Cup qualifier against Wales at Ninian Park in September 1985. He died shortly afterwards, aged 62.

Since his death, Stein has received almost constant plaudits for his achievements at Celtic and now has a stand at Celtic Park named after him. See Scottish fans paying tribute to the great man following his death and see what was happening to Jock’s most famous victims today here.

March 8 – England’s First Win

INTERNATIONAL football produced it’s first set of winners and losers today in 1873, when England and Scotland faced off for the second time following their 0-0 draw three months earlier.

The two old foes met at the Oval in London in front of an excitable crowd of around 3,000 that would repeatedly spill onto the pitch, holding the game up on several occasions.

Scotland were forced into selecting three London-based residents for the game, as the ‘Scottish International Fund’ only stretched to eight return tickets to London. Forward Arthur Kinnaird qualified by being a Perthshire landowner.

The match began at a frantic pace, as both sides adopted a 2-2-6 formation and England scored in the first minute through William Kenyon-Slaney – and yes, before you ask, that’s the very same William Kenyon-Slaney who was MP for Newport Salop all you history buffs.

One of Scotland’s London-based ringers earned his place in the side just a minute later, as Henry Renny-Tailyour of the Royal Engineers equalised. The two teams traded goals through Alexander Bonsor and William Gibb and at the half-time turn-around – just a quick change of ends back in those days – the sides were level at 2-2.

England went on to boss the second half, with the Rt Hon. Kenyon-Slaney scoring his second and England’s third before Charles John Chenery completed a 4-2 victory for the England, who could celebrate their first ever win.

Setting a precedent for their successors in the Three Lions shirt that continues to this day, England dashed their fans’ new-found confidence by failing to win again for six matches. Same old England.

Unfortunately Sky Sports and the like weren’t on hand to film the likes of Pelham G. von Donop and his England team mates in their historical win, but we’ve dug out some superb old footage from what is technically known as the days of yore. Enjoy that, check out what else was going on today here and come back tomorrow if you can’t hack another Monday morning at work.

March 7 – They think they’re all MBEs…

IN recent years the establishment has seen fit to award honours to David Beckham and Steven Gerrard, the former an OBE in 2003 and the latter an MBE in 2007. While they have both won trophies with their clubs, Beckham and Gerrard have won precisely diddly with their country.

In that light it is shocking that so many members of England’s 1966 World Cup winning team were not honoured in the same way for more than 30 years. Today in 2000 that wrong was finally righted when the so-called ‘forgotten five’ members of the side that secured England’s greatest sporting hour went to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen.

Nobby Stiles, Alan Ball, Roger Hunt, Ray Wilson and George Cohen were all made Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) at a service at the Palace. It was of course the second time they had received medals from Her Majesty, at it was she who presented them with their World Cup winners’ medals at Wembley all those years ago.

In the years since the World Cup all the other members of the team had been recognised, knighthoods for Sir Bobby Charlton, Sir Geoff Hurst and manager Sir Alf Ramsey, OBEs for Bobby Moore, Gordon Banks and Jack Charlton, and an MBE for Martin Peters.

Ray Wilson said he had given up hope. He said: “To be honest though I had stopped being bothered by it any longer, those times when the honours came out and you saw certain people getting awards and I’d ring up George (Cohen) for instance and say, ‘I see we’ve missed out again, mate’. It had just gone on too long.”

Before the ceremony the five staged an ‘impromptu’ kick about in St James’ Park for the media which looked about as unplanned as a plan; but no matter, their day had arrived. “It has been a long time coming but it is here now and we are all very happy,” George Cohen said. “We haven’t seen each other for a while. It means that we are the most honoured squad in British sporting history.”

So why had it taken so long for this to happen when even Ian Wright has an MBE? The late Alan Ball, at least in part, blamed the FA. “If anything disappointed me it was our own FA who didn’t put us up,” he said. “So if we’re going to criticise anyone for the fact that this has taken so long then let’s just say the FA should have done more without a shadow of a doubt. It was only last week that I discovered that if you played more than 50 games you were entitled to a pair of tickets for Wembley matches. You would have thought that someone might have bothered to let me know. But there you are.”

Wilson added: “You know if people had had a vote on this over the last 20 or 30 years we probably would have had this award by now.”

The assembled hacks couldn’t resist asking five of the men who were closest about one of the most controversial and disputed moments in sporting history: was it a goal? “Of course the ball crossed the line,” said Hunt. “I was desperate to score and I would have knocked it in otherwise.” That clears that up then.

That’ll just about do it for today sports fans, we hope you have a fabulous footballing weekend, but if not, come back tomorrow for a tale from yesteryear to take your mind off it. Until then, here is our humble offering from this day last year.

March 6 – Taking the Mick

IN March 2003 Sunderland were rooted to the bottom of the Premiership, on a horrible run of form, dead certs for relegation, and heading for a record low points haul for the season. The board’s response? To sack manager Howard Wilkinson and replace him with Mick McCarthy.

Exactly three years on and Sunderland were rooted to the bottom of the Premiership, on a horrible run of form, dead certs for relegation, and heading for a record low points haul for the season. The board’s response? Well, given that last time their solution was to hire Mick McCarthy, this time they probably felt they ought to try a different tack. And so it was that today in 2006 Mick was given the elbow by the Black Cat’s fat cat chairman Bob Murray.

In the intervening time the club had been relegated back into Division One but Mick then decided he’d had enough and set about rebuilding the team and the following season he cajoled them to the play-offs where Palace ended their promotion hopes thanks to a penalty shoot-out.

The following season however, Mick’s boys romped to the First Division title with an impressive 94 points. It was then that things started to go wrong. McCarthy’s considered strategic plan to keep Sunderland in the Premier League was to bring in Jon Stead, Andy Gray, Daryl Murphy and Anthony Le Tallec to fire the team to safety.

When McCarthy was sacked Gray had managed just one goal while Stead had not found the net at all. Even worse the club did not have a single home League win (not one!) and had been knocked out of the FA Cup by Brentford.

Just as he had impressed by guiding Sunderland to the First Division title, McCarthy now looked out of his depth in the top flight. Bob Murray could stand it no longer and gave him the boot.

Perhaps the funniest effect his sacking had was the response of the man McCarthy had replaced as manager in 2003. Howard Wilkinson blamed the board for the club’s fate. He said: “In the last three years Sunderland have had three managers. Peter Reid’s record before I took over was very good, Mick McCarthy’s record was very good and my record, some would argue, was decent.

“All three went but the board who appointed them remained and still remain. So you sometimes question whether the directors should take responsibility in these matters. One has to question whether they have the right strategy or if they’ve got one at all.”

Sorry Howard, could we just back up there a sec, “and my record, some would argue, was decent”? Really? That would be the Premiership record that read: played 20, won 2. Do me a lemon, not even his mum could claim that was a decent record.

After McCarthy left Kevin Ball was placed in temporary charge as Sunderland went down with a new record-low points total of 15 – beating the previous record set by the club in 2003. So that’s something.

In the summer of 2006 the club was taken over by Niall Quinn’s consortium and when he got around to appointing a permanent replacement for Mick he chose none other than his nemesis Roy Keane.

That’s all for today folks, but check out what everyone’s favourite football club (from a milk advert) were up to on this day right here.

March 5 – Stan Sets His Standard

EVEN without a playing career that saw him rise from the non-league to the international scene Stanley Victor Collymore has fit more into his 38 years on this rock than most. A former tabloid favourite, Collymore has since been on the big screen opposite Sharon Stone and now appears to be a fully-fledged Twitter-addict.

Today in 2000 though, Stan the Man was doing his talking on the pitch, as he scored a hat-trick on his Leicester City debut.

Collymore had just come off the back of a three-year spell at Villa following his £7m move from Liverpool in 1997. His time at Villa was marred by poor form and clinical depression that saw him only score 15 goals.

Villa manager John Gregory’s patience ran out, so he allowed Collymore to leave the club on a free transfer to Leicester City where he would hook up with Martin O’Neill. A week after he signed though, Stan was up to his same old antics, this time in a fire extinguisher-related incident in Spain, as we’ve told you before.

O’Neill would stand by his new signing and when he handed him his debut it looked for a while like he might be worth the trouble. Collymore looked back to his devastating best when he fired in his debut treble as Leicester downed Sunderland 5-2.

Opening his account with a magnificent 25-yard strike, Collymore headed a second home, before a close-range finish sealed his hat-trick with a close range strike, as it looked as though he would form a formidable partnership with Emile Heskey.

Sadly for the Foxes fans, Heskey was soon sold to Liverpool and Collymore would break his leg against Derby County. O’Neill completed a triple-whammy by leaving the club that summer and his replacement Peter Taylor, like so many of Collymore’s managers, appeared not to know how to get the most out of the striker.

When Taylor left the former Southend striker on the bench at the start of the 2000/01 season Collymore left the club, joining Bradford City, where he would score another memorable goal when he fired in an overhead kick in the West Yorkshire derby against Leeds United.

Bradford would then realise that paying huge wages to the likes of Collymore, Benito Carbone and Dan Petrescu wasn’t the best idea for long-term success and Stan jetted out for a short spell in Spain with Real Oviedo. After three games in sunny Spain he would hang up his boots and announce his retirement, much to the chagrin of Oviedo who moved to sue him for breach of contract.

See what other dodgy dealings were going on today here and we’ll be back tomorrow for another nugget of footballing history so make sure you click yourself back here then. If, like Stan the Man, you’re rocking Twitter, follow us here.

OTFD’s Top 5 Football Books

WE’RE going all Nick Hornby on your ass now – no, not by slagging off Gus Caesar for 250 pages – but by coming up with the top five football books we’ve read recently here at OTFD towers.

Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson

A book detailing the history of football tactics from Victorian Britain to the present day may sound like one of the stattos and anoraks out there, but Eastern European expert Wilson brings alive the developing forces that have shaped us with the game that we have today. Wilson takes the reader through the deep-thinkers of the 1920s Austrian coffee houses, Puskas’s Mighty Magyars, the suffocating Catenaccio, Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s scientific approach in the Soviet Union, Brazil’s samba-freestyling, Holland’s Total Football, English ‘pragmatic’ long-ball approach right through to what he sees as a centre forward-less future.

Read the thought-provoking study and hang your head in shame at how one-dimensional tactical football has been here in England ever since the rest of the world cottoned onto the beautiful game.

Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper

Remarkably, this William Hill Sports Book of the Year winner was Kuper’s first book, written in his early twenties. Looking at the game from an ‘anthropologic perspective’ he trekked across the world looking at football’s effect on politics, national and cultural identities, bringing us the skinny on the secret football mafia in the former Soviet Union, the shameful behaviour of the Argentine government when they hosted the 1978 World Cup, the internal bickering of the Cameroon team that came to prominence in Italia 90 and even has a stab at getting stuck into the Old Firm rivalry.

This book is the more incredible when you consider how much the game, and indeed the world, has changed since its publication in 1994. Any chance of a sequel Kuper? We’ve yet to find a better mix of football, politics and travel.

The Beautiful Game? By David Conn

If ever you need a slap in the face as to the direction that football has been heading for some time now, this is the book to read. Investigative reporter Conn delivers a stunningly in-depth look at how money, greed and failure from the game’s leaders is failing the average fan. Focusing on Hillsborough as football’s major turning point, Conn tells a tale of the rich clubs getting richer, while the wealth fails to trickle down and puts the very existence of the game’s lifeblood at risk. Among the doom and gloom stories from lower league-strugglers Conn restores your faith in the power of football to unite communities, particularly with his rousing story of York City being saved from property developers with designs on their ground. After reading this we firmly believe that Conn should be put in charge of football, rather than the collection of failed businessmen or politicians that are crowded around the buffet tables of the FA, Uefa and the sport’s other governing bodies.

The Ball is Round by David Goldblatt

An absolute beast of book, clocking in at nearly 1,000 pages and offering an epic story of how football has evolved from it’s Chinese origins over 2,000 years ago and into the world’s biggest form of entertainment. Tying in politics, economics, culture, Goldblatt has an acute eye for detail as he scours the planet leaving no stone uncovered, mixing in stories of the world’s greatest players, managers and those that have played their part shaped the game as it is today. Truly one to take away on that desert island with you.

Carra by Jamie Carragher

As the above selections can get a tad heavy at certain points, we thought it’d be rude not to include the old classic, the not-yet retired footballer’s autobiography. Normally we’d agree with Joey Barton’s critical musings (“‘We got beat in the quarter-finals. I played like shit. Here’s my book.’ Who wants to read that?”) on the genre, but Bootle’s finest son’s tome released in 2008 bucks the trend.

Carragher’s refreshingly honest look at his career brings up a good mix of amusing anecdotes such as nights on the lash with Didi Hamann or Sven’s dating advice and controversial confessions like him crunching Rigobert Song in training or calling off an attack on Lucas Neill in the Trafford Centre when his mates spotted the Blackburn defender soon after he broke Carra’s leg. Carragher isn’t afraid to offer his honest and blunt opinions about the game, singling out managers past and present for criticism.

Have you read any literary works of genius about the game we all love recently? Let us know your favourite reads below, and we can’t let this chance to plug our own OTFD book pass, so click yourself silly right here to get your copy.

March 4 – The Delightful United

WITH the film adaptation of David Pearce’s incendiary novel ‘The Damned United’ about to hit cinema’s in the UK, we’ll no doubt be hearing more and more about the Leeds United of the 1970s over the coming weeks.

Whilst Peace’s story dwells on Brian Clough’s dislike for Don Revie’s ‘dirty Leeds’ side that Ol’ Big ‘Ead believed bullied, fouled and cheated their way to success, today in 1972 Leeds played some of the most sublime football ever seen on these shores.

Southampton were the visitors to Elland Road as Leeds were tussled with Cloughy’s Derby County for the Division 1 title. In their last game two weeks earlier Leeds had demolished their fiercest rivals Manchester United 5-1, with Eddie Gray’s nutmeg of George Best in front of the dug-outs a particular highlight.

Playing what Don Revie would describe as the best match of his reign, Leeds set about Southampton from the get-go. Goals flooded in through Mick Jones, an Allan Clarke brace, a Peter Lorimer hat-trick and a seventh courtesy of Jack Charlton, as Leeds were let off their leash, proving that behind their hard-tackling physical game they could pay a bit as well.

Towards the end of the game Southampton were chasing shadows as Leeds jumped all-aboard the showboat, with a series of nonchalant feints and flicks, including a 30-pass move that brought about English football’s reported first use of the ‘Ole’s’ from the delighted Elland Road crowd.

Barry Davies was lapping it up in the commentary box, but spared a thought for Saints: “To say that Leeds are playing with Southampton is the understatement of the season. Poor old Southampton just don’t know what day it is.

“Every man jack of this Leeds side is now turning it on – oh, look at that! It’s almost cruel,” he continued. “For the second home match running Leeds United are turning on a brilliant show and the other team are just not on the park. One has some sympathy for Southampton, but the gap between their position and Leeds is an absolute chasm.”

Hat-trick hero Lorimer would later claim that Leeds felt sorry for their opponents, but it sure as hell didn’t show as Leeds were not at all flattered by the 7-0 final scoreline.

The papers were quick to praise the performance, with the Daily Telegraph opining that Leeds “had more than a passing resemblance to Real Madrid in their prime.” This will have been music to Revie’s ears, as 11 years earlier he had ditched their blue and yellow kit with the hope of emulating the achievements of the Spanish giants.

Despite this vintage performance from Leeds they were pipped to the title by Derby, much to Clough’s delight. See a priceless meeting between Cloughy and the Don just after Clough’s 44-day spell as Revie’s successor had ended below.

Read about a cup final of biblical proportions that was happening today here and if you’ve all over the Twitter bandwagon, follow us here. Until tomorrow you lucky people…

March 3 – The Total Manager

“I ALWAYS greatly admired his leadership. Both as a player and as a coach there is nobody who taught me as much as him. He was a sportsman who put the Netherlands on the map in such a way that almost everybody still benefits from it. There is no one I learnt from more than Rinus Michels. I often tried to imitate him, and that’s the greatest compliment one could give.”
Johan Cruyff

Today in 2005 Rinus Michels passed away aged 77.

His impact on football was immense. He was the inventor of Total Football and he is the reason Holland is considered such a world power in football today.

When he was a player all football in Holland was amateur and in 1965 when he became Ajax boss he was the first ever full time professional Dutch manager. The directors of the club could hardly have foreseen the impact his appointment would have but he provided a clue in his very first match in charge. Up until that point the club were struggling and in a relegation battle but in his first game they trounced MVV 9-3. This was no ordinary coach.

His appointment coincided with the emergence of Europe’s best ever player Johan Cruyff from the Ajax youth team and Michels began building his exciting new side around the 17-year-old wunderkind.

The year after he took over Ajax thrashed English champions Liverpool 5-1 in a European Cup match – a prelude to the continental success the team would have in later years. Domestically he made Ajax just about invincible and they swept to the league title in 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1970 and picked up the Dutch cup in 1967, 1970 and 1971.

And how. Michels’ vision of football was a completely versatile team of players who would move the ball around and fill in for each other where ever a gap appeared. Anyone of the players could pop up in any position on the pitch, knowing his position was in turn being filled. Total Football, or Totaalvoetbal in Dutch.

It was a revolutionary system and it soon meant Ajax were challenging in Europe for the top prize. They reached the final in 1969 but the team were not quite there and Milan beat them 4-1. It was a different story in 1971 when the team beat Panathinaikos at Wembley by two goals to nil.

It was Michels cue to leave but the club carried on with the foundations he had laid and not only retained the European Cup in 1972, but did it again in 1973 for the hat-trick.

Meanwhile Michels had gone to Barcelona where he won La Liga and was joined by his protege Cruyff in 1973.

In 1974 he transferred his skills to the national side and wowed the world with the ‘Clockwork Orange’ team that stormed to the final of the 1974 World Cup only to be denied at the last by West Germany who beat them 2-1. It was a bitter blow but Michels had established Holland as one of the most technically gifted and entertaining teams in the world.

Michels achieved a certain amount of retribution at Euro 88 when he was again taking charge of the Netherlands team. This time they beat West Germany 2-1 i the semi-final on their way to lifting the trophy.

In later years Michels became something of a godfather figure to former clubs Ajax and Barcelona and Dutch football in general, not actually managing any of them but wielding a strong political power over all; a position that his protege Cruyff now fulfills in much the same way as his mentor once did.

In 1999 Fifa took time off from coming up with ridiculous new rules and decided to name the Coach of the Century. Unlike the endless and largely pointless Pele/Maradona debate, there were few arguments about this one and Michels took the crown.

Also on this day, the Milan derby got a bit tasty.