BLOG

In other words, the best tribute that could be paid to the figure of Johan Cruyff was carried out by that Luis Enrique team that won a double (Cup and League) and managed to win the league competition on the last day as well as in the championships of the years 1992, 1993 and 1994, when the legendary Johan was the coach.

Cruyff changed a way of living and playing sports, and from a loser mood he became a winner, competitor and dominator. From 1991 to 2018, out of 28 league championships, FC Barcelona has added 15, Real Madrid 8, Atlético de Madrid 2, Valencia 2 more and Deportivo de La Coruña 1.

The domain is absolutely overwhelming, and beyond the arithmetic figures, the domain is of the game and the conception of the game. We have gone from seeing the Cruyff team play without defenders with a 3-4-3 system (3 defenders, 4 midfielders and 3 attackers), in which the defenders were Eusebio (a midfielder as a right back), Goiko (a right winger as a left-back), Nadal (an attacking midfielder as a centre-back) and Koeman (a kind of libero but who was really the first midfielder) to an evolved system based on the preventive possession typical of evolved football that can be called football 2.0 (a concept created by Javier Satué and Iván Robles).

Johan Cruyff was a philosopher who created a line of philosophical thought that has subsequently been coaches such as Josep Guardiola, Tito Vilanova, Eusebio Sacristán or Luis Enrique. We can baptize this School as Soccer 2.0 as an evolution of «paleofutbol» (I insist, they are expressions of the authors Satué and Robles).

Javier Satué and Ivan Robles are lawyers, specifically notaries by profession. But, they are two great thinkers who have reflected in a literary work of a technical-scientific nature the analysis of the way Pep Guardiola FC Barcelona plays and its influence on the game developed by the Kingdom of Spain team in the 2008 European Championships and 2012, as well as in the 2010 World Championship that led to 3 consecutive titles for Spanish soccer players who, under the "preventive possession" pattern of play, caused a significant increase in control of the match, based on the conceptual basis that while your team has possession of the ball the rival cannot have it and, therefore, you are defending from the control of the possession of the ball. As in football there is no limitation on possession, unlike basketball where you have a limit of 24 seconds per offensive possession, in football, with good and intelligent players, you can certainly perpetuate offensive possessions.

In any case, there is no doubt that Johan Cruyff was the thinker who initiated the change from «Paleofutbol» to the current moment of «Football 2.0». Rest in Peace in Johan!