At the end of the 1972-73 season, things should have been perfect at Ajax. They had just retained the Eredivisie title, their sixth national championship in the previous eight seasons and been crowned European champions for the third successive year after defeating Juventus. Ștefan Kovács had just left the club to take charge of the French national team, but with the culture of totaal voetbal engrained in a squad of outstanding players, there was little reason to expect anything but a continuation of success and more trophies arriving in Amsterdam. There’s a tendency within Dutch football, however, that at such times, someone always wants to turn the table over and kick everything into the air. Ajax’s domination of Dutch, and European football was rapidly drawing to a close – and their talismanic leader, Johan Cruyff, was about to depart.

There are many different accounts about the events leading up to that acrimonious divorce, but the one that Cruyff himself describes in his autobiography is largely uncontested, at least as far as it goes. Although, it may well have just been the trigger factor rather than the underlying cause for his departure.

At the beginning of each season, Ajax players held a poll to elect the captain for the coming term. Cruyff had been voted in for the season just completed, taking over from Piet Keizer, and assumed he would maintain the role for the new season. It wasn’t to be. He offered to just stay in the post, without going through an election, but his suggestion was rejected. That there was even an election was sufficient to rattle a man who considered leadership to be his obligation as much as his right and, when the numbers were tallied and Keizer was elected to retake the captaincy that he had lost to Cruyff the previous year, his frustration was all-consuming. He recalled the events in the book. ‘It was a terrible shock. I immediately went to my room and phoned Cor Coster [his father-in-law and agent] and said he needed to find me a new club straight away. That was it. I had suffered the kind of injury that you can’t see with the naked eye. Coster delivered. On 19 August 1973, the former captain, wearing the number fourteen shirt, delivered his curtain call at the De Meer as they thrashed FC Amsterdam 6–1. He wouldn’t pull on an Ajax shirt again for eight years. Instead of the iconic white shirt with the broad red stripe down its centre, his new workwear would be Blaugrana, as a world record transfer fee took him to Catalunya and FC Barcelona.

It was the perfect move for Cruyff, leading some to suggest that it was an unspoken desire to move to Spain, rather than any problems with his Ajax team-mates, that was the real driver for his transfer. Rinus Michels had guided led Ajax from relative obscurity to domestic success and their first European Cup victory in 1971. Cruyff’s mentor and keeper of the eternal flame of totaal voetbal, had preceded Cruyff’s journey to the Camp Nou following the triumph over Panathinaikos two years earlier. Pioneering teacher and his most studious and dedicated pupil were now reunited, and facing the task of making Barça successful again after more than a dozen years without the cules being able to celebrate a La Liga title at the Camp Nou. Years earlier, another former Ajax coach, Englishman Vic Buckingham had also tried to secure the services of Cruyff during his time coaching Barcelona, but he had fallen foul of the Spanish ban on non-national players. Where Buckingham had endured disappointment, Michels would celebrate success and reap the rewards.

Cruyff’s relationship with the KNVB had never been cordial, often veering giddily between mutual distrust and outright disdain. The Dutch transfer window closed in July, whilst the one in Spain remained active until the end of August. It allowed Barcelona to comply with Spanish regulations in completing the transfer, but the situation was different in the Netherlands. The KNVB insisted that, as the move had been completed after their window had closed, the transfer could not be effected and Cruyff was ineligible to play in any officially UEFA sanctioned fixture for his new club. It would not have been surprising if there had been a measure of schadenfreude at the association that the association was now in a position to frustrate the plans of player, who had been a growing thorn in their side.  The stand-off would last for two months.

Keen to both keep their expensive new asset match fit, and begin to recoup the revenue laid out in bringing him to the club, Barcelona arranged a series of Friendly games, alongside their domestic fixtures, at the Camp Nou. It placed an additional work load on the other members of the playing staff, but proved to be invaluable, as the cules flocked to see Cruyff wearing the famous blaugrana colours.

His debut came on 5 September against Belgian club Cercle Brugge, with the new man scoring twice in a 6-1 victory. ‘Every game was a sell-out.’ Cruyff remembered about the Friendlies. ‘After only three matches the club had earned back my transfer money.’ Given the expenses of putting on such games, that estimation may be a little contentious, but the revenue certainly helped to offset the 6 million guilders that had moved from Barcelona’s coffers to those of Ajax, as Cruyff travelled in the opposite direction.

The KNVB were unhappy with the situation, feeling that Barcelona were skirting around the rules and made their feelings known. It was hardly an ideal situation for Barcelona and Cruyff either, but the player held an ace card, and wasn’t reluctant to play it. The qualification process for the 1974 World Cup was nearing completion with the Netherlands facing a crucial final fixture against Belgium that would decide which of the two countries would make the short trip to West Germany for the tournament. Cruyff let it be known that, as he was being prevented from playing competitive football for his new club, he would not be available to play for the Oranje.

It would surely have meant Cruyff missing his first – and what would turn out to be his only – World Cup if he delivered on the threat but, when you’re holding an ace, there’s no need to bluff. The KNVB had already experienced the dogged determination of Cruyff when he felt he had right on his side, and accepted that it was more than likely he would be prepared to pull the Oranje temple down on all their heads, including his own, if he considered it appropriate. They relented, and on 28 October, Cruyff played his first league game for the Blaugrana.

By this time, Barcelona had been compelled to play the first seven La Liga fixtures with their expensive acquisition a frustrated spectator sitting alongside the club’s hierarchy in the posh seats and holding a watching brief. Not being able to play, wasn’t the only thing frustrating Cruyff. It had hardly been an encouraging opening to the new season. After losing their opening fixture 1-0 away to lowly Elche, they played out a goalless draw at home to Racing Santander and then lost 2-1 to Celta Vigo in the northern region of Galicia. It wasn’t until their fourth fixture, a home game against local rivals Español that they achieved their first win. Even then, it had taken more than an hour of frustrating action until Marcial, who had moved from Los Periquitos across the city to the Camp Nou, opened the scoring. The game finished 3-0 and Barcelona’s season had its first win.

It was a false dawn of kinds. In the next game they lost again. This time, 2-1 to Real Sociedad in San Sebastian. On 7 October, they entertained eternal rivals Real Madrid in the first Clásico of the season, and a goalless draw was probably seen as an achievement given their early stumbles. There was just one more league game to play before Cruyff could make his official bow, and a 0-2 win away to CD Castellon raised hopes of better times to come.

Barça’s record of two wins, the same number of draws and three defeats hardly suggested that, at the end of the season, they would top the table by a clear ten points, having scored 50% more goals than any other club in the league, but Cruyff was now about to turn such far-fetched fantasies into the tangible reality of trophies.

Granada were the unwilling sacrificial lambs on 28 October as Cruyff celebrated his official unveiling with a brace of goals, and Barcelona cantered to a 4-0 win. Across the next 23 league games, running up to the end of April, by which time the league title had been assured, Barcelona were undefeated, and, only on six occasions, were they denied victory. Undoubtedly, the sweetest of the 21 victories achieved that season came three days after St Valentine’s Day, when Cruyff took his team to the capital and the return Clásico fixture against Real Madrid, although the tactics Michels deployed in that game were governed by a chance conversation in a Madrid apartment block.

Theo de Groot, who had played alongside Michels during his time as a forward at Ajax was now living in Madrid on the same floor of an apartment block as Real Madrid defender Gregorio Benito. Goyo, as he was affectionately known, was an outgoing character, and as he knew De Groot to be a former player, often chatted to him, as they had much in common. One thing Goyo was not aware of however, was that De Groot’s relationship with Michels had endured over time, and they still spoke often, especially since the coach had moved to Spain.

A few days ahead of Barcelona’s visit to the capital, the two men met, and conversation inevitably drifted towards the big game coming up. The importance of Cruyff to the resurgent Barcelona team, with De Groot being a fellow countryman of the club’s star player, was obviously a point of interest. Unfortunately for Real Madrid and their coach Luis Molowny, who had arrived at the club the same time as Cruyff joined Barcelona, Goyo apparently openly regaled his neighbour with the plans that Molowny had devised to try and negate Cruyff’s influence in the game. On that February evening at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu, the indiscretion would prove to be very costly. Three days after St Valentine’s Day, the result would be less about love, and more reminiscent of the massacre that took place on 14 February 1929 in Chicago.

Molowny had decided that, rather than deploy one of players to man-mark Cruyff – a ploy many other coaches had tried without success across the season – he would deal with his threat zonally. , The backline of Los Blancos would share responsibility for the task, with each defender picking him up as he entered their area and staying with him until he was passed on. Aware of the plan, Michels instructed Cruyff to play much deeper than usual, operating more as a midfield player than a forward.

The move not only saw the Madrid defenders dragged out of position, in turn, as they followed the coach’s instructions, it also created swathes of space for the Barcelona forwards and midfield to exploit. A 0-5 victory was the reward for de Groot’s old club. In his autobiography, Cruyff says that Michels’ plan ‘worked perfectly,’ and, at the time, he had been hugely impressed by the coach’s decision to play a system that ‘had not been used before.’ It wasn’t until years later that he discovered the reason for the tactics, and about how the detail of Goyo’s conversation with de Groot had found its way to Michels.

The result brought tumultuous celebrations in Catalunya and underscored the affection that had quickly been achieved by the Dutchman in his new city. It was strengthened further when Cruyff bucked the overseeing powers of the Spanish authorities when he gave his son the name of Jordi, Catalunya’s patron saint. This was still in the era of Franco’s fascist government who had outlawed such things and, initially, the authorities declared that the name could not be registered. In typical Cruyff fashion however, never one to be denied  by rules and regulatinos he considered to be wrong, he had the birth registered in the Netherlands, and thrust the Dutch document under the noses of the reluctant bureaucrats, who were forced to give way.

Although Dutch connections had worked in favour of Cruyff and his team against Real Madrid, they would conspire against Barcelona when the club were denied a glorious “double” by finishing as runners-up in the Copa del Generalísimo (now restyled as the Copa del Rey). Cruyff had fulfilled his obligation to the Oranje and played in the final qualifying game for the 1974 when a goalless draw at the Olympisch Stadion against the Belgians, saw the Dutch over the line. If a highly contentious offside decision, that denied the visitors a last gasp winner, had gone the other way however, the history of World Cup football would have looked very different. Russian referee Pavel Kazakov disallowed the goal though and the Netherlands qualified.

The national team had been coached to qualification by the Czechoslovakian-born coach František Fadrhonc, but not for much longer. Concerned by the way the team had struggled to achieve qualification despite containing the stars of Ajax and Feyenoord – plus of course Cruyff who was now in Spain – who, between them, had lifted the last four European Cups, Fadrhonc was moved on and Michels invited to take charge of the Oranje for the World Cup. For Cruyff, it was the perfect decision but, as always there were complicating factors.

The tournament began on 14 June and, although the Spanish league programme had been completed by then, the same was not true of the domestic cup competition, with Barcelona having a two-legged semi-final to play against the previous season’s league champions, Atlético Madrid. Spain had failed to qualify for the World Cup, so the season running into June presented no major problem for the RFEF (Spanish FA). Releasing the few foreign players engaged by Spanish clubs at the time who were called up for the World Cup, including Cruyff, was required, but that wasn’t so much the case with regard to coaches.

Initially, Barcelona were reluctant to allow Michels leave to take up the post as it would inevitably conflict with his role in Catalunya. Eventually, however, an agreement was reached whereby he could go to West Germany, but was required to return to Spain for Barcelona’s games. It meant that, on 29 June, the day before the Oranje faced East Germany in the second group stage, instead of being with his team at the World Cup, he was back in Spain, taking charge of a Cruyff-less Blaugrana that lost the final 4-0 to Real Madrid.  Later in 1974, following his exploits in Spain, and the oh-so-near Netherlands bid for World cup glory, Cruyff was crowned as European Footballer of the year. The award, plus the Spanish league title may have softened the blow of falling agonisingly short of World cup glory, but perhaps not by a great measure.

Although Michels returned from the World Cup with a gift for the cules in the shape of another Dutch signing, Johan Neeskens, the glories of that first season were never truly repeated. He scored 16 goals across 26 games in that first truncated season, and wouldn’t surpass that figure in the following four seasons, despite playing in more games. The 1973-74 triumph would be Cruyff’s only league title across the five seasons he played for Barcelona. A Copa del Rey success in 1977-78, defeating Las Palmas in the final, is the only other trophy he won with the club. One league title and one domestic cup triumph seems a small haul of medals, especially after such a glowing start to his time in Spain. Success however, is always relative and, if asked, any cule will probably reassure you that the time of Cruyff’s first season wearing Blaugrana, was truly one to treasure.

(This article was originally produced for the ‘Cruyff’ magazine from These Football Times).