How should we remember Johan Neeskens? Three years ago, Ajax released a video to celebrate the 70th birthday of one of their famous sons. The clip mostly consists of three things: Neeskens tearing around the pitch clattering into others, Neeskens tearing around the pitch getting clattered by others and Neeskens absolutely leathering the ball into the net. It’s important to clarify that one doesn’t become the midfield linchpin behind Johan Cruyff in three of the most iconic teams – Ajax, Barcelona and the Netherlands – just by being a midfield enforcer that likes to kick lumps out of his opponents and kick the spots off an Adidas Telstar. But there is a special kind of love from football fans for someone that masters both the beautiful and ugly sides of the game, someone who perfectly walks the line between artist and soldier. “If something is really broken, then I’ll tell you not to do it,” Neeskens once explained with a straight face. “But you can always play with pain.” If that Dutch side was famous for its Total Football, then Neeskens was their most complete player, a Swiss-Army knife of a midfielder that could do a bit of everything. Cruyff could only be Cruyff if he had the ball, and it was one of Neeskens’ many jobs to win it. “If someone passes me, he’s basically walking away with a chunk of my salary,” Neeskens later remarked. Nicknamed “The Dutch Lung”, “Johan the Second” and at Barcelona, “El Toro” – Neeskens can claim to be the godfather of modern pressing alongside his former Ajax midfield partner Velibor Vasovic. Given the job of shadowing the opposing playmaker, Neeskens would relentlessly and unusually pursue his prey deep into enemy territory. Almost accidentally in 1970, the rest of Rinus Michels’ Ajax team started to follow Neeskens, compressing the pitch. “Without studying it, they started to play offside,” revealed Bobby Haarms, Ajax’s legendary assistant manager. “It was a kind of miracle. Michels saw it and said: ‘Yes! This is how we have to do it.’ One minute we were playing the old system and the next the new way was there.” |