June 2, 1971: The European Cup Final is held at Wembley Stadium in London. It marks a revolution in soccer tactics.
Johan Cruijff -- pronounced "KROYF," and English-speaking media usually spelled it "Cruyff" -- was born in 1947 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In 1964, having grown up a 5-minute walk away from their ground, De Meer, he made his debut for Amsterdamsche Football Club Ajax, pronounced "EYE-ax," and named for the mythical Greek hero. They were the leading soccer team in the largest Dutch city and the nation's capital.
(And to clear something up: The names "Holland" and "the Netherlands" are not interchangeable. While Holland includes the country's 3 largest and most important cities -- Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague -- it has about 1/3rd of the country's population, and about 1/6th of its area. Telling someone from Eindhoven, in North Brabant, that he lives in "Holland" is less dangerous than telling someone from Glasgow that he lives in "England," but it's still an insult.)
In 1965-66, he scored 25 goals, leading Ajax back from an awful finish the season before, their worst ever, to the league title, the 1st of 8 he would win with the club. In 1967, Ajax again won the league, and also won the Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond Beker -- the Royal Dutch Football Association Cup, usually written as the KNVB Cup. This was the 1st time Ajax had won the Dutch equivalent of "The Double," the 1st of 4 times they would do so with Cruijff.
In 1969, Ajax advanced to the European Cup Final, losing to AC Milan, led by perhaps the greatest Italian player of them all, Gianni Rivera. This may have had an effect on Cruijff and Ajax manager Rinus Michels, who began to devise what became known as "totaalvoetball" -- "Total Football."
The idea is that any outfield player -- anyone ahead of the goalkeeper -- can move to another part of the field, and another player can move to slip into the space vacated by the preceding player. This had been previously been attempted by the great Real Madrid and Hungary teams of the 1950s, both including the great Hungarian star Ferenc Puskás; and the Burnley side in England that won the 1960 Football League title, but they didn't maintain it for long.
In his book Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, David Winner described what they made Dutch soccer into as being like Dutch art: "Cruyff became the greatest exponent and teacher of totaalvoetball. His vision of perfect movement and harmony on the field was rooted in the same sublime ordering of space that one sees in the pictures of Vermeer or church painter Pieter Jansz Saenredam. It was the music of the spheres on grass."
In 1970, Ajax's arch-rivals, Rotterdam-based Feyenoord, having won the previous season's Eredivisie title, became the 1st Dutch team to win the European Cup. But Ajax again won The Double, and launched the most stunning run of soccer play Europe has ever seen.
In 1971, Ajax progressed all the way to the Final of the European Cup again (at that time, only a defending national league champion could appear in it, unless they were the previous season's European Cup winners), and were set to play Panathinaikos of Athens, Greece.
The Final of what was known from 1955 to 1992 as the European Cup and since 1992 as the UEFA Champions League has always been set for a neutral site, although it hasn't always worked out that way. For 1971, the site chosen was the original Wembley Stadium in London. This factor cannot be underemphasized: The European Cup Final was the only non-English soccer game broadcast live on British television at the time, and, because it was at England's national stadium, the BBC promoted the heck out of this game.
The Final of what was known from 1955 to 1992 as the European Cup and since 1992 as the UEFA Champions League has always been set for a neutral site, although it hasn't always worked out that way. For 1971, the site chosen was the original Wembley Stadium in London. This factor cannot be underemphasized: The European Cup Final was the only non-English soccer game broadcast live on British television at the time, and, because it was at England's national stadium, the BBC promoted the heck out of this game.
Ajax had already played Arsenal, the North London side that won the League and FA Cup Double in that 1970-71 season, in the Semifinal of the 1969-70 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, with Arsenal winning and then beating Belgium's Anderlecht in the Final.
The British interest wasn't just about fans' recent familiarity with Ajax, and how good they already believed Ajax to be. There was also intense interest in their Greek opponents. "Pana" had modeled themselves after a great British side, Glasgow-based Celtic, down to wearing green uniforms and having a shamrock as their logo; and were managed by Puskás, whose masterclass for the aforementioned Hungary side at Wembley in 1953 resulted in the England national team's 1st defeat on home soil to a team from outside the British Isles. (Scotland, Wales and Ireland had all done it by this point.)
In those days, teams generally didn't seek out foreign players or managers. Puskás wasn't Greek, but all of his players were. Sweeper Velibor Vasović, a Serb from Yugoslavia, and substitute defender Horst Blankenburg of Germany, were the only non-Dutch players to get into this game for Ajax. The others: Goalkeeper Heinz Stuy; defenders Wim Suurbier and Barry Hulshoff; midfielders Cruijff, Nico Rijnders, Johan Neeskens, Gerrie Mühren and substitute Arie Haan; and forwards Sjaak Swart, Piet Keizer and Dick van Dijk -- yes, his name was pronounced like "Dick Van Dyke."
van Dijk scored in only the 5th minute, and Pana desperately held on, looking for an equalizer, and not finding it, before Haan put the game away with a goal in the 87th. Ajax won, 2-0, and had become Champions of Europe for the 1st time.
Despite manager Michels being lured away by the money of Spanish club FC Barcelona, Ajax repeated in 1972 under Romanian manager Stefan Kovacs, winning the Netherlands' 1st European Treble: the national league, the national cup, and the European Cup. They lost only 1 game all season long, including knocking Arsenal out in the European Cup Quarterfinal.
The 1972 European Cup Final proved to be Total Football's finest hour. They faced Internazionale of Milan, a team which had won the European Cup in 1964 and 1965, and lost to Celtic in the 1967 Final, with a system called catenaccio (a word meaning "padlock"): Defense above all. "Il Grande Inter" had been so successful with the system, in contrast to the free-flowing format of their groundsharing rivals AC Milan, that they were considered the hallmark of soccer defense.
Italian sportswriter Gianni Brera, a man often thought of as an Inter fan (he denied it), reflected the dominant thought of the Italian game at this point, writing that the perfect game of "calcio" (what the Italians call soccer) would end 0-0.
No such luck for Inter on this night: Despite having the great Sandro Mazzola and world-class defenders Giacinto Facchetti and Tarcisio Burgnich, Cruijff controlled the game from first whistle to last, scoring in the 47th and 78th minute to provide the 2-0 margin of victory.
"The Death of Catenaccio" was reported all over Europe. The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad wrote, "The Inter system undermined. Defensive football is destroyed." To make the moment all the sweeter, the venue was Stadion Feijenoord in Rotterdam, home ground of hated Feyenoord.
Ajax did it again, as Johnny Rep scored in the 5th minute for the only tally in the 1973 European Cup Final, defeating another Italian side, Turin-based Juventus, 1-0 at the Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia). Three straight European Cups would be done again by Bayern Munich in the next 3 years, but it hasn't been done in the 40 years since.
van Dijk scored in only the 5th minute, and Pana desperately held on, looking for an equalizer, and not finding it, before Haan put the game away with a goal in the 87th. Ajax won, 2-0, and had become Champions of Europe for the 1st time.
Despite manager Michels being lured away by the money of Spanish club FC Barcelona, Ajax repeated in 1972 under Romanian manager Stefan Kovacs, winning the Netherlands' 1st European Treble: the national league, the national cup, and the European Cup. They lost only 1 game all season long, including knocking Arsenal out in the European Cup Quarterfinal.
The 1972 European Cup Final proved to be Total Football's finest hour. They faced Internazionale of Milan, a team which had won the European Cup in 1964 and 1965, and lost to Celtic in the 1967 Final, with a system called catenaccio (a word meaning "padlock"): Defense above all. "Il Grande Inter" had been so successful with the system, in contrast to the free-flowing format of their groundsharing rivals AC Milan, that they were considered the hallmark of soccer defense.
Italian sportswriter Gianni Brera, a man often thought of as an Inter fan (he denied it), reflected the dominant thought of the Italian game at this point, writing that the perfect game of "calcio" (what the Italians call soccer) would end 0-0.
No such luck for Inter on this night: Despite having the great Sandro Mazzola and world-class defenders Giacinto Facchetti and Tarcisio Burgnich, Cruijff controlled the game from first whistle to last, scoring in the 47th and 78th minute to provide the 2-0 margin of victory.
"The Death of Catenaccio" was reported all over Europe. The Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad wrote, "The Inter system undermined. Defensive football is destroyed." To make the moment all the sweeter, the venue was Stadion Feijenoord in Rotterdam, home ground of hated Feyenoord.
Ajax did it again, as Johnny Rep scored in the 5th minute for the only tally in the 1973 European Cup Final, defeating another Italian side, Turin-based Juventus, 1-0 at the Red Star Stadium in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (Serbia). Three straight European Cups would be done again by Bayern Munich in the next 3 years, but it hasn't been done in the 40 years since.
But all good things must come to an end. In August 1973, due to infighting at Ajax, Cruijff wanted out, and he got it: His former manager Michels brought him to Barcelona, for what was then a world record transfer fee, worth about $2 million at the time. Barça fans, known as cules, were ecstatic, getting the man then generally regarded as the best player in the world, something their arch-rivals, Real Madrid, had previously had with Puskás and Alfredo Di Stéfano. Now, it was La Blaugrana who had this advantage over Los Merengues.
Cruijff would lead the Netherlands' national team, with their bright orange shirts seeming to stand for their style, into the 1974 World Cup Final in Munich. But hosts West Germany, with their all-white kits suggesting the contrasting, defense-first, very dull style, won, 2-1. The Netherlands, this time without Cruijff, would repeat in 1978: Reaching the Final, but losing to the host nation, Argentina.
Cruijff and Ajax had a stormy relationship over the years, making peace and breaking it again. He served as manager for a time, then left, and went back to Barcelona, building them into one of the greatest teams in the world well into the 21st Century. He died in 2016.
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June 2, 1971 was a Wednesday. These Major League Baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox, 6-1 at Yankee Stadium. Stan Bahnsen outpitched Sonny Siebert. Bobby Murcer hit 2 home runs, 1 off Siebert, 1 off Bill Lee.
* The New York Mets beat the San Francisco Giants, 5-2 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Willie Mays went 0-for-2 with 3 walks. The winning pitcher for the Mets was Charlie Williams. A year later, the Mets traded Williams for the 41-year-old Mays, even-up. The losing pitcher was Juan Marichal, who gave up a home run to Art Shamsky.
* The California Angels were leading the Washington Senators, 2-1 at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, after 8 innings, when the game was called due to rain, a win for the Angels.
* The Atlanta Braves beat the Houston Astros, 3-1 at Atlanta Stadium (later renamed Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium). Hank Aaron went 2-for-4.
* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the St. Louis Cardinals, 10-1 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. Roberto Clemente went 1-for-2 before being replaced. Willie Stargell went 2-for-4 with a walk and 3 RBIs. Lou Brock went 1-for-5.
* The Chicago Cubs swept a doubleheader from the Cincinnati Reds, 6-3 and 4-1 at Riverfront Stadium in Cincinnati. In his last season, Ernie Banks went 1-for-4 with a home run and 3 RBIs in the opener, then sat out the nightcap. Over the 2 games, Pete Rose went 3-for-6 with 2 walks and an RBI, and Johnny Bench went 0-for-7.
* The Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox, 3-2 at Comiskey Park in Chicago. Terry Forster threw a wild pitch in the top of the 12th inning, allowing Frank Robinson to score. Frank went 1-for-5. Brooks Robinson went 2-for-4 with a walk and 2 RBIs.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Milwaukee Brewers, 4-2 at Milwaukee County Stadium.
* The Detroit Tigers beat the Minnesota Twins, 5-4 at Metropolitan Stadium in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota. Al Kaline went 1-for-4 with a walk. Harmon Killebrew went 0-for-4, but Rod Carew went 2-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
* The San Diego Padres beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-0 at San Diego Stadium (later renamed Jack Murphy Stadium and Qualcomm Stadium). Steve Arlin pitched a 5-hit shutout.
* The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Montreal Expos, 7-1 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
* And the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics were not scheduled.
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