THE FOLLOWING PASSAGE is an extract from The Nearly Men: The Eternal Allure of the Greatest Teams That Failed To Win the World Cup by Aidan Williams.

“Sometimes, even when you don’t lift the trophy, in the end you’re still seen as a winner. Wherever I go in the world, people always want to talk about our team in those days. I think we earned more praise and respect during the tournament than most world champions before or since. I’m proud of that.”

Johan Cruyff

The Netherlands teams of the 1970s lifted a nation from World Cup obscurity into the realms of football mythology. Such was the revolutionary approach and manner of the Dutch that they captivated the world, set on a path to a destiny that would remain agonisingly beyond reach. The anguish of unrewarded beauty in 1974 was followed by the ill fortune of the width of a post in 1978. Two World Cups, two finals, two defeats, but two very different places in football history.

The flamboyant Dutch team of 1974 in particular evoke emotions akin to appreciating fine art, grabbing the hearts of so many who saw them play or have studied them since. It was a team that causes us to rethink our default perceptions of what the game is all about, what the purpose of football and the World Cup is. Is it simply a means to identify and crown a winner, all others falling by the wayside as all eyes become fixed on the victors? Or is it an entertainment, a way of delighting and inspiring, in which ultimate victory is not the be-all and end-all? Is art, beauty and a lasting memory just as important, or perhaps more important, than victory? Can success be measured in terms of legacy rather than victory?

When Johan Cruyff claimed that perhaps the Netherlands of 1974, a team of footballing rock stars that encapsulated a counterculture, were the real winners because they were remembered more than the victors, it wasn’t the outlandish claim of someone struggling to accept that his crowning glory had been lost. It was a genuine sentiment, expressed to offer an alternative view. Naturally, it’s a thought which occupies many of the views in this book, but when it comes to the Dutch team of 1974, it is perhaps truer than with any other.

This was a team which not only provided a revolutionary approach to the game, but also provided so many images and moments that are seared into the mind, played out in a style – of football, of attitude, of appearance – which spoke to and resonated with so many people.

‘Dutch football culture is steeped in this mythology of Johan Cruyff and the 1970s,’ Dutch football journalist Elko Born explained to me. ‘From a very young age you’re told these stories. Everywhere, the 1970s are always mentioned. There’s this feeling deep down inside, even if I didn’t see it myself, that this is the origin story, the most important thing that ever happened and something you can never surpass. It’s just the founding mythology of everything.’

It went beyond the aesthetic beauty of the way they played the game into the realms of symbolising a cultural movement. This was a team that represented a nation and its people in more than name, colour and flag. It represented a way of being and a way of thinking: a gang of football rebels bringing a nonconformist approach to the world’s game.

They were representative of their time, fitting the changing world of the late 1960s and early 1970s, depicting a footballing cool, leaving the more straitlaced era of their forebears behind. It was the fulfilment of years of development in thought and deed.

Is it any wonder they are so fondly remembered, more heralded than the ultimate winners – what was actually a very influential, successful and, in their own way, a relatively fluid West Germany team?

For all the impact that Dutch football would have on the world in the 1970s, it’s easy to forget that before 1974 the Netherlands had barely registered in the international arena at all.

There had been fleeting appearances at the 1934 and 1938 World Cups, both of which were over almost as soon as they had begun. Olympic participation was mostly restricted to the early pioneering days, while the first few European Championship tournaments had also passed by without the Dutch troubling the latter stages.

Now this spectacular new generation were forging their own path in a football world that was unprepared for the impact they would have.

In club competition, Feyenoord were the first to make a mark on the European stage, reaching the semi-final of the European Cup in 1963, and it was they who became the first Dutch team to lift the trophy after winning in 1970 against Panathinaikos. Ajax then took up the mantle, winning the next three European Cups and raising the bar to extraordinary heights, their groundbreaking brand of football proving as effective as it was intoxicating.

Rinus Michels took over as coach of Ajax in 1965 with the club in the midst of a relegation battle. He steered Ajax to safety before leading them to the title the next year. Indeed, they would win four championships in six seasons under Michels. But beyond the trophies, it was the Ajax approach which was impressing in such exhilarating style.

Rinus Michels (file pic). Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

On some fortuitous occasions, paths converge in the perfect place at the perfect time, and the young Cruyff was the on-field personification of the freedom Michels was poised to unleash. Cruyff was a free spirit of extraordinary talent, with a sophisticated and groundbreaking tactical understanding. He was a footballing rebel, but also a romantic and idealist. Perhaps the most influential idealist the game has ever seen.

He was a product of his time and place, and the Netherlands in the 1960s was a rapidly changing place. While the world was changing in terms of counterculture and free-thinking, the hippie movement burgeoning in America caused ripples in Europe too. It was in the Netherlands, and Amsterdam in particular, that this culture thrived: a place where free-thinking was encouraged, where freedom of expression and acceptance of new ideas was not only tolerated but normalised, inspired and validated by events such as John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 bed-in at the Amsterdam Hilton.

It was also a country permanently at odds with, and creatively adapting to, its environment. In a country susceptible to flooding and lacking space, the Dutch have become well versed in adapting and making the most of the space they do have, or devising creative ways to generate new space. David Winner talks on this theme in his seminal book on Dutch football, Brilliant Orange, giving a compelling explanation of why it was in the Netherlands that the ultimate footballing adaption to, and use of, space developed.

The roots of the Dutch Total Football can be traced back through the influence of the early pioneering British coaches who ventured into Europe, and also the central European style of Hungary in the 1950s. But it was the Ajax that Michels set on their path to glory, and later the Dutch national team, who would not only push the boundaries of this style further but would come to define it.

Having given Cruyff the freedom to roam to wherever he felt he could do the most damage, Michels extended this to the rest of the team. When any player moved out of position the gap left was filled by a teammate, establishing a high degree of fluidity as the players were freed from the restraints of convention.

Anyone could be an attacker or a defender as players across the pitch pressured opponents in numbers when without the ball and sought space where they pleased when with the ball.

Such fluidity was carved into a coherent strategy by Michels and Cruyff, the on-field manager. Ajax became a complex machine of perpetual movement, requiring a high degree of football intelligence and versatility; an approach which created the finest generation of revolutionary footballers propelling first club, and then nation, to extraordinary heights.

A core of what would be the Dutch national team of the 1970s were schooled in this way, from Arie Haan, Ruud Krol, Wim Suurbier, Barry Hulshoff and Sjaak Swart through to Johnny Rep and Johan Neeskens.

Totaalvoetbal, Total Football, as it was dubbed, was not simply a tactical approach, however, but also a state of mind. All players are involved in the movement no matter how far they are from the ball, interchanging effortlessly, gliding seamlessly from one position to another, confusing opponents and stretching the pitch to its fullest extent.

‘People talk of Total Football as if it is a system, something to replace 4-2-4 or 4-3-3,’ Haan explained to The Observer in 1974. ‘It is not a system. As it is at any moment, so you play. Not one or two players make a situation, but five or six. The best is that with every situation all 11 players are involved, but this is difficult. In many teams maybe only two or three play, and the rest are looking. In the Holland team, when you are 60 metres from the ball, you are playing.’

The need to constantly create space was central to the approach, requiring continual vigilance and concentration.

‘We discussed it the whole time,’ said the Ajax defender Hulshoff. ‘Cruyff always talked about where to run and where to stand, and when not to move.’

It was an incessantly proactive approach, intensely pressuring the opposition to win the ball back quickly and capitalise on a floundering foe. It stood in stark contrast to the defensive catenaccio style, or the overly physical approach so prevalent in the 1960s, providing such a refreshing, invigorating view of how beautiful and dynamic football could be. The shackles of conformity were cast away, the free-thinking counterculture embraced, with Cruyff, the personification of freedom, style and idealism, its focal point.

It took Ajax to three European Cups in a row from 1971 to 1973, with Michels transposing the approach to Barcelona when he moved on following the first of those triumphs, only for his successor, the Romanian Ștefan Kovács, to push Total Football even further.

When Cruyff also joined Barcelona at the start of the 1973/74 season, the great era of Ajax was at the beginning of the end. But for the national team, the combination of the players schooled in the Ajax way, plus those from Feyenoord and the rising force of PSV Eindhoven, would ultimately create footballing majesty. The path to their peak would be far from smooth, however. In fact, had one offside decision in the final qualifying match in November 1973 been called correctly, this story simply wouldn’t have been written, as the great Dutch team would have failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.

The Dutch were under the management of the Czech coach František Fadrhonc, who had spent two decades coaching in the Eredivisie before becoming the national team manager in 1970. Paired with neighbours Belgium, as well as the weaker teams of Norway and Iceland, the Dutch had fought their way through to a position where a draw in the final qualifier with Belgium would see them through.

Cracks had begun to show in the penultimate match in Oslo, however. Taking place in September 1973, it came a matter of weeks after Cruyff had left Ajax, citing eroded trust, having been voted out of the club captaincy by his teammates. Against this backdrop, he had barely reached Barcelona before he was meeting up with many of the same players in the national team colours.

Perhaps it is little surprise, then, that the Dutch produced their most awkward performance of the qualifiers, only rescuing a victory over a Norway side they had beaten 9-0 10 months earlier in the final few minutes. When Hulshoff latched on to Cruyff’s delightful back-heeled pass and rolled the ball home to grab a 2-1 win, it marked a fortunate escape in a game in which the Dutch had been more niggly than fluent, more argumentative than attractive. They had escaped, though, setting up that final decisive showdown against Belgium in November 1973.

Belgium were yet to concede in the group, including a goalless draw against the Dutch in Antwerp a year before in which they had come the width of a post away from winning. They would come oh-so close in the return match too.

With only moments remaining, and the match still goalless, Belgium earned a free kick on the left for a final, desperate push for the goal they needed. As the free kick came in, the Dutch defence mistimed their attempted offside trap, while the cross evaded a flapping Piet Schrijvers in goal. The ball reached Jan Verheyen who volleyed home, only for it to be ruled out for offside.

While the angles available on YouTube are not quite up to the levels of the fine lines of a modern VAR decision, it seems abundantly clear that neither Verheyen nor any of his team-mates were offside. With that incorrect decision, Belgium, having not conceded in the whole campaign, were out. The Netherlands could celebrate a first World Cup appearance in 36 years, but only just.

But while the team that qualified was replete with all the familiar talents, they weren’t yet adept in the carousel style of Total Football. As they entered World Cup year, the Dutch federation opted to replace Fadrhonc for the tournament with the man who had built the great Ajax side.

Michels, still Barcelona coach, would combine that role with the Dutch position to lead his country into the World Cup; the ideal man to get the best from this phenomenal generation. In the short space of time he had prior to the World Cup, he moulded the national team in the image of Ajax, developing the style of play over a series of mainly underwhelming friendlies, save for a statement 4-1 win over Argentina.

Michels faced various issues in creating his vision, however. He needed to find a way to include the talented left-winger Rob Rensenbrink, who had not been schooled in the ways of Total Football. And in defence, his plans were hampered by the absence of the Ajax great Hulshoff, struck down by a serious knee injury. Rather than replace him with another specialist centre-back, however, Michels opted instead to deploy the Ajax midfielder Arie Haan alongside the Feyenoord full-back Wim Rijsbergen in the centre of defence.

The thinking is clear: seek to develop the ball from the back with the more sophisticated ball-playing and more intense pressing skills of a midfielder who was adept at playing multiple positions anyway.

The counterargument was that Hulshoff’s absence would mean less protection for a vulnerable defence should it be put under sustained pressure. The intention, though, was to proactively press sufficiently that the defence shouldn’t come under such pressure, with all cogs in the wheel primed to play their part in the perpetual forward momentum of the team.

This thinking extended to the goalkeeper too. Jan van Beveren, the PSV goalkeeper, was the finest Dutch stopper at the time but injury had seen him lose his place during the qualifiers. He was fit again by the World Cup, but when Michels had wanted him to prove his fitness in a friendly, Van Beveren only countenanced playing one half to avoid hampering his recovery.

Michels took umbrage, citing a lack of character. As a result, the best Dutch goalkeeper of his generation was sent from the squad, his chance of a World Cup place gone. Schrijvers would go as an understudy, but Michels, with no little influence from Cruyff, entrusted the main goalkeeping duties to an untested 33-year-old from FC Amsterdam.

Jan Jongbloed had first played for the national team back in 1962 as a fresh-faced 21-year-old, with a brief, disappointing substitute appearance in a 4-1 defeat. His next cap came 12 years later in the 4-1 win over Argentina just weeks ahead of the 1974 World Cup. Jongbloed wasn’t overly renowned for the traditional goalkeeping attributes of shot-stopping and commanding his back line. What he brought instead was his ball-playing skills and ability to keep the ball in motion, linking with those in front of him.

Michels and Cruyff were clear, and again clearly ahead of their time when you consider the role of the goalkeeper in modern football, that these skills outweighed any deficiencies in Jongbloed’s game: that his overall contribution to the fluency of the team was more valuable. This unlikely, and unexpected, member of the glorious Dutch would go on to play in two World Cup finals.

Some of the tactical tweaks may have been forced on the Dutch, but they served to push the team further into Total Football. The injury to Hulshoff and the issues with Van Beveren led to these sophisticated, futuristic adaptations. Ball-playing defenders and sweeper-keepers are regular sights nowadays but are no modern innovation: crafted by the Dutch in 1974.

Would they have been so fluid had some of these changes not been forced? It’s tempting to consider how things may have turned out had either Hulshoff or Van Beveren played in the World Cup, but equally, perhaps their presence would have taken something of the fluidity away: the forced changes pushing the totality of Total Football further as to be truly groundbreaking.

The Nearly Men: The Eternal Allure of the Greatest Teams That Failed To Win the World Cup by Aidan Williams is published by Pitch Publishing. More info here.

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