Name: Johan Cruyff
58 years
Three times European Footballer of the year (1971, 1973, 1974)
Cruyff was born on April 25, 1947 in Betondorp, Holland. Jis career started with one of the most famous dutch teams, Ajax. Shortly after his 10th birthday, he was selected from over 200 kids to join the Ajax youth team.
That team would make part of his history, as Johan played (at the main team) for Ajax during 9 seasons. He led that team to 3 three consecutive Uefa Champions League titles (it had other name back then, don't recall it). During the time he was there, he also won 5 dutch leagues with this team.
He moved to Barcelona at the year of 1973, scoring 2 goals at his first appearence. Cruyff played 5 seasons for Barça and is considered as a legend, and maybe their best player of all time. Who would disagree? The man got himself 2 consecutive Golden Balls while playing for Barça, and gave them their 1st Spanish title after 14 years of absence.
There is something missing. His national team AMAZING performance at the 70's. They were considered the best team of that decade, but unfortunately failed twice at World Cup finals, 1974 and 1978. Johan Cruyff only played the 1974 one, he did not want to play the 1978 in Argentina, for reasons that I couldn't find (ok I didn't look for it). They also got a 3rd place at the Eurocup of 1976.
In my opinion, Cruyff can easily be considered a player as good as Maradona, but people won't consider him as good because he couldn't win any World Cup. That's very important for any player. I'm sure if he could win the 1974, maybe the biggest injustice of all the World Cups, people would put him in a higher place than they put him now.
I'm telling you. I was very impressed with those 2 videos I'm putting here down, I wish I could see more of him, but it was really hard to find anything else than that. I'm also linking some Spanish video about him, called "En dado momento", I'm still downloading this video, so I don't even know what is it about hehe, I hope there are goals .
Anyway, VIDEOS:
Video 1 (30mb)
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=3SD1CL1LJ8EH032AG9DWUOF8CW
Pay attention to the last goal, what a wonderful goal wtf.
Video 2 (19mb)
http://s52.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=1RGEONPH858AH2XHGHMY92DX10
Those are his highlights at 1974. I was really amazed with him. Messi's style reminds me him a lot.
Torrent to "En dado momento" (movie 700mb +-)
http://s37.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=2NZ4KG1FROEA720OBGME5U6N6I
[edit]its shorter than others, but thats cause i'm shitting my pants, actually I just wanted to go to wikipedia and copy paste lol
"Italians can not beat us, but we can certainly lose against them" - Johan Cruyff