Good god Wickedbark, your love of Cruyff seems to take you beyond reason. Firstly you give no credit to the men in suits for balancing the books across the seasons. Yet you are ready to blame them for the ill judged signings, the most spectacularly awful of which was Sulemani. But he was signed at the request of the greyest of non-footballing grey men in suits, Marco van Basten. By in large, these players were signed by directors of football at the behest of managers. the job of the men in suits was to make sure there was enough money. You also miss the point about the other clubs. Ajax have remained strong through a cautious policy of developing and selling players. The other clubs over extended themselves, and can't compete any more. It means that the teams that de boer's squad now face, just aren't anywhere near as good as the opponents that the pre 'velvet revolution' teams had to face. But That doesn't matter to Cruyff, he doesn't really care what he uses to attack his enemies, so he can use one thing to attack his enemies at ajax, and then turn around and attack his enemies at Barcelona using exactly the opposite. He can praise one barcelona president, and excoriate another barca president for doing exactly the same thing. This is not good.
The reason that Cruyff became involved again was apparently because he saw ajax lose 2-0 to real madrid and only have one shot. Now in response he prepared an action plan for Ajax, and eventually came back with something. Now like all plans created by individuals, it had its good points and its bad points, however, cruyff insisted that every single part of his miraculous plan had to be implemented or nothing at all. The plan also insisted that the board had to go. So he publicly destroyed them, and then brought in his buddies. Now you think that cruyff is wearing a white hat and his allies are the goodies, and that his enemies were wearing the black hats, and are the baddies. But the story doesn't end there does it?
What you have neglected to mention is that when the people he brought in as his buddies disagreed with him, he forced them to resign as well. You see Ajax needed to apoint a chief executive, johan's plan was to appoint
the unbelievably inappropriate Ling Tshen La., and the people he had on the board with him were horrified at this completely insane suggestion, but were also big fans of louis van gaal, and they decided that they'd like him to be chief executive. But Cruyff absolutely refused point blank. So these allies of cruyff took advantage of the fact that he never actually turned up to meetings, decided to try and bring in van gaal behind his back and when cruyff discovered such betrayal he completely blew his top and launched a courtcase to prevent van gaal from being appointed, he succeeded and for the second time in a year, everyone resigned. so Ajax had no chief executive, and no board, all because johan wanted his way and didn't care about anything, or anyone else, he'd sooner see ajax without a board than have Louis van Gaal in an important position at the club. That is what he is like, It's all about him and what he wants.
You see the only thing that cruyff cares about is whether or not you agree with him, and he doesn't care about doing the right thing, or whether his ridiculous narcissistic posturing is good or bad for the club he is helping. Oh and In the two seasons since his revolution, they've been battered by real madrid four times, and conceded 14 goals, but they scored two. Johan has yet to bring out a report suggesting that his system is a failure and that everyone should be fired.
And as for the academy, it's true that the ajax academy has hardly produced any players over the last decade, apart from Christian eriksson, and siem de jong, Ricardo van rhijn, kenneth vermeer, toby aldeirweld, and daley blind in the current first team. so that's basically no-one. well apart from jan vertonghen, urby emmanuelson, vurnon anita, gregory van der Wiel, maarten Steklenberg, thomas vermalen, johnny heitinga, ryan babel, wesley sneijder, tom de mul, hedwiges maduro, all of whom were sold over the last six seasons for a total of €120 million The ajax academy was clearly shit.
And what was cruyff's brilliant plan for the academy? Fire all of the specialist coaches, and appoint a bunch of former players and move away from a focus on tactical organisation and team play, and focus more on individual skills and technique. Basically take a giant flying leap into the 1970's. You can start to see why maybe some people thought they could do with having louis around.
and to be honest I'm not impressed with how many rabbits he killed in the dutch league, or how many teams he ran over in spain. I just highlighted that his dream team really wasn't that dreamy in those big games. I particularly hold losing that cup winners cup final against him. They were so..... disappointingly shit in that game. Perhaps they were super dreamy to a club that was as starved of success as barcelona were, and being the first spanish team to win a european cup in 26 years may have added an extra layer of glitz. but looking back at it now, they weren't perhaps quite as extraordinary as they would have had us believe at the time. Barcelona are capable of producing extraordinary teams from time to time, but perhaps only real madrid are better at blowing their own trumpet.
And yes, Cruyff may have helped to revitalise the ajax academy in the 1980's, but it was the immensely tedious drilling work carried out over several years by van gaal that managed to lift those players to the level where they could dominate europe. Without van Gaal, and without his endless work on defending as a unit, as well as attacking as an interchangable unit, then ajax would have been butchered by milan like the dream team were. it was van gaal who got those players ready for football in the 90s. It is telling that those players were never really able to reach the same levels without van Gaal. I mean they were so well organised that Winston Bogarde looked like an excellent defender in that team.
Now at this point it is worth pointing out that Van Gaal is also a total Headcase (it seems to be a real dutch football thing) who is only really happy when fighting with people, but he's not as charismatic as Cruyff, so he doesn't have an army of true believer followers who are prepared to always take his side, and always believe his side of the story, regardless of how badly he behaves. Therefore he gets fired before he can cause too much damage. It takes skill to get fired by barcelona after winning two titles and coming second in the league in only three seasons, but van Gaal fought with everyone. if you're fighting with the media, with your star players, with your board, then being right a lot of time isn't going to save you. Sooner or later people get sick of him. (he's like a charmless Jose in a lot of respects)
However while he may draw on elements of cruyff's approach, he's very much his own man. It's difficult to think of two more different teams in terms of organization and tactical awareness than barcelona 94 and ajax 95. here was a man who had taken Cruyff's ideas and brought them into the modern age. Of course cruyff hates him. van gaal had raised football to a new level. Guardiola and Rijkaard's cl winning barcelona teams are the closest thing to the systematic brilliance of that 94-95 and 95-96 team. Cruyff may have been a visionary in his day, but he can't accept that football has moved on, and it won't stop him from interfering and meddling in barcelona, and more damagingly at ajax.
The best thing that could happen to Ajax over the next couple of years, would be for Cruyff to leave them alone and stop causing such massive trouble everywhere he goes. and to bring us back to where he started, Barcelona could benefit with having to hear less of his wisdom as well. He's really not very helpful at all.
