AMSTERDAM--The Dutch soccer player Johan Cruyff, who revolutionized the game with the concept of Total Football, has died. He was 68.A spokeswoman for the Cruyff family, Carole Thate, confirmed to The Associated Press that he had died. Joaquin Muñoz of the Cruyff Foundation in Barcelona said Cruyff had died of lung cancer.
Renowned for his positive thinking, Cruyff said last month that his recovery was going well. “I have the feeling that I am 2-0 up in the first half,” he said. “The game is not over yet. Still I know that in the end, I will win.”
Cruyff won the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League, three times with Ajax as a player in the early 1970s and once with Barcelona as a coach in 1992. He was European player of the year three times and, in 1999, was named Europe’s best player of the 20th century.
Though a World Cup title eluded him, he was the pivotal figure on the Dutch national team that electrified the sport in the 1970s with Total Football, a tactic that involved players constantly interchanging roles. The style influenced the game worldwide.
Cruyff smoked cigarettes for most of his life, but quit after undergoing an emergency bypass operation in 1991. After more heart trouble in 1997, he vowed never to coach again, though he remained a vocal critic and analyst of the sport.
Cruyff’s wiry frame housed surprising athletic talent, unpredictable bursts of speed and agility, and precise ball control that allowed him to trick opponents, ghosting around them with ease. His genius lay in his eyes and mind, in his instinctive feel for how a move would develop.
He could pass the ball with uncanny accuracy and would appear time and again at the right spot at the climax of an attack.“Speed and insight are often confused,” he said. “When I start running before everybody else, I appear faster.”
But his influence reached far beyond creating goals, thanks to his qualities as a leader, thinker and speaker. With a brash Amsterdam accent, he put across his views about soccer and everything surrounding the game with irresistible force.
His commentary turned into oft-quoted classics: “Every disadvantage has its advantage” was one; “You can’t win without the ball” was another.
Cruyff was heavily involved in tactics from the start of his career. Along with Rinus Michels, his coach at Ajax and Barcelona, he helped develop the Total Football style.
Under the strategy, players pass the ball with mesmerizing frequency in search of openings, and they switch positions seamlessly to adjust to the flow of play. Latin American admirers referred to the Dutch national team and its distinctively colored shirts as the Clockwork Orange.
Cruyff was the personification of a total football player, operating deep or high up the pitch as the moment required, as deadly from the wings as he was from a central position. He was among the first to see defenders as part of the attack.
With Cruyff on the field, Ajax won the European Cup for three consecutive years from 1971 to 1973. He moved to Barcelona midseason in 1973 and led the struggling team to its first national title in a decade.S
That season was crowned with a 5-0 away win at Barcelona’s archrival Real
Madrid. That victory was so sweet to Catalans that they still sometimes refer to Cruyff as el Salvador, or the Savior.
The transfer fee paid by Barcelona was a world record for the time and is seen as a milestone in the commercialization of soccer. He was also one of the first players to take on corporate sponsorships.
The British sportswriter Dave Miller, who once called Cruyff “Pythagoras in boots” for his ability to calculate the geometry of players in motion, wrote that “few have been able to exact, both physically and mentally, such mesmeric control on a match from one penalty area to another. ”Many players — both amateur and professional — take inspiration from his moves, particularly the Cruyff turn, a technique he used for passing defenders by faking one way, then flicking the ball in the opposite direction and darting after it.
Cruyff’s pronouncements on the game skirted the line between profundity and nonsense. Criticizing overly defensive play, he once said: “Italians can’t beat you, though you can lose to them.”
Other much-quoted lines were: “You can’t score if you don’t shoot” and “Before I make a mistake, I don’t make it.”
He was at the beginning of a tradition of great strikers coming out of the Netherlands, including Marco van Basten in the 1980s, Patrick Kluivert in the 1990s and Ruud van Nistelrooy in the 2000s.
Cruyff is survived by his wife, Danny; his daughters, Chantal and Susila; and his son, Jordi, who also played soccer professionally._
