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.
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