This Saturday marks 50 years since the first game of the Mechanical orange, the Dutch team that revolutionized the game with that disorganized organization baptized as total football. Under the leadership of Johan Cruyff and the direction of Rinus Michels, the impact caused in the 74 World Cup still endures despite losing in the final (2-1) to Franz Beckenbauer’s host Germany. “I poked my father by telling him that they hadn’t won and he always responded that it is one of the few times that people remember the loser more than the winner and that that was a great victory. ‘We changed the way we play,’ he told me proudly,” recalls Jordi Cruyff.
On June 15, at the Hannover stadium, 58,000 fans watched for the first time as a disoriented Uruguay was overwhelmed and defeated (2-0) by players who swapped positions all over the field, breaking the traditional boundary patterns. Broad outlines of the implemented paradigm still survive, such as pressure after a collective loss, advanced defense, libero goalkeeper, “They were kamikazes when throwing offside”, adds the offspring of Johan Cruyff, or the taste for combined play at high speed.
The legacy of the Mechanical orange was as disruptive as the Stanley Kubrick film, released in 1971, which gave it its name. That refreshing selection was not only countercultural on the field of play. Even the appearance of its soccer players, with their long hair and sideburns like aesthetic tails of the libertarian spirit of May ’68, was groundbreaking. A book turned into an incunabulum by the passage of time, World Cups 74 (Sedmay), written by Johan Cruyff himself as soon as the World Cup concluded, reveals in first person the construction of a team for history and the day-to-day life of the transgressive concentration in a bucolic hotel in the northern German town of Hilstrup , a few kilometers from the border with the Netherlands.
“It was a positive measure that we were authorized to receive our wives in the hotel. The measure raised some criticism against the eternal football immobilizers who cling to traditional prejudices, but it was very positive for our mental and physical balance. We didn’t drink wine or beer. We were authorized to smoke in moderation, in varying doses, according to each person’s conditions. “I, for example, smoke very little, about ten cigarettes a day, but two hours before each game I feel the need to smoke one,” Cruyff wrote.
In the Waldhotel that is still in service, and under strong security measures due to the memory of the attack at the 72nd Munich Games in which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team died, that desideratum of football and coexistence was forged. “They set up a very strict surveillance device. On the other hand, several anonymous people had arrived announcing their intention to kidnap me, and I think the same thing happened with other players. When we wanted to go fishing, in addition to the rod, we took the corresponding secret agent. There were more police than fish,” Cruyff said. He not only described in the book how they combated the tension and pressure, he also revealed that when the concentration began the pattern of play had not been defined: “The first truth that I proclaim is that there was no national team in Holland worthy of this name, nor had any work been done on it. The team spirit was not forged, nor the game tactics rehearsed. We had no confidence, we lacked the desirable physical conditions, and we did not see how such an uninspiring situation could be turned around. The team was an entelechy, we had to start from scratch to build a framework that would allow us, at least, to play a worthy role.”
The physical issue was resolved by Michels with tough sessions in the first ten days that included marathon races through the forests. In the design of the tactics he had to impose himself, according to Cruyff: “There was an excess of worship of the club from which the players came. The Dutch team used to be created with five players from Ajax and four or five from Feyenoord. Both teams play different tactics, and the Ajax players do not want to accept Feyenoord’s game system nor do they want to accept Ajax’s, which made it impossible to achieve a homogeneous block. Michels said what his tactics were going to be and that anyone who was not willing to abide by it could go home, but first they could stay a few days to study and understand it.
The Entete cordiale de Michels included the mix of two attacking playmakers, Cruyff himself and Willem van Hanegem, the star of the 1970 European champion Feyenoord who preceded Ajax’s continental reign from 1971 to 1973. “The initial team of 74 players was made up of three Feyenoord footballers: Wim Rijsbergen, Wim Jansen and me. For us it wasn’t a question of Ajax and Feyenoord and it certainly wasn’t a choice of one way to play. At that time, Feyenoord played attacking football, just like Ajax. I knew Cruyff well, we often shared a room and played cards,” Van Hanegem disagrees. “There was no confrontation between my father and Van Hanegem, they got along very well. I have photos in which Willem has me holding him in his arms,” adds Jordi Cruyff.
“There were also many technical and positional problems. In the first game against Uruguay we lined up five players who were new to their position and it was the first time that we all played together. The goalkeeper (Jongbloed) was new, Haan, who had always played as a midfielder, was making his debut as a libero, Rijsbergen also had no experience as a scorer. The position of Jansen (midfield) and Neeskens (inside) were new for them,” Cruyff warned in his book.
“It really wasn’t the establishment of a system, that’s romantic talk. Neither Cruyff, nor Michels, no one said: ‘now we are going to the World Cup and we are going to play Total Football’. How does someone get there? That ends up happening. We simply had very good players and Cruyff was the best, but he couldn’t do it alone either. Johan Neeskens and I could go from midfield to attack. Wim Jansen covered us from behind. In defense, full-backs Wim Suurbier and Ruud Krol stepped up whenever possible. And we had a great trio in attack with Rob Rensenbrink, Johan and John Rep. The pieces of the puzzle just fell into place,” says Van Hanegem.
Sweden (0-0) was, along with Germany, the only team that did not succumb to a Clockwork Orange. Uruguay (2-0), Bulgaria (4-1), Democratic Germany (2-0), Brazil (2-0) and Argentina (4-0) were defeated with that total football that the Argentine Roberto Perfumo defined like this: “ On the field I didn’t know who number 5 or number 10 was. I was disoriented, in the middle of a storm of football and rain in which I only saw orange shirts that passed by me at full speed.” Van Hanegem also does not forget that helplessness that he observed in his opponents. “We noticed that many rivals couldn’t stop us. The best example was Brazil. Parreira, the Brazilian who gave Neeskens a huge kick, told me that they had had months of preparation for the World Cup and that it was frustrating that a country that was previously quite modest in football was better. A Clockwork Orange was not only better, it was an eternal revolution.
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