Johann Neeskens

[compo 7,028]

Sadly passed away  at 73 now there was a bloke who could play football

[Scott7 5,997]

Almost an old style wing half - Greig, McKay - with an extra touch of skill.

 

Every Cruyff should have a Neeskens.

[Uilleam 5,929]

Johan Neeskens obituary: Dutch midfielder in celebrated ‘Total Football’ team

Neeskens was a key part of the team that narrowly failed to win two World Cups in the 1970s

The Times

Monday October 07 2024, 5.00pm, The Times

 

Neeskens intercepts the ball in the 1978 World Cup final

COLORSPORT/SHUTTERSTOCK/REX

 

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/obituaries/article/johan-neeskens-obituary-dutch-midfielder-in-celebrated-total-football-team-852k5nr68

 

When Johan Cruyff was the best footballer in the world, there was another Dutch Johan whom many in the game valued just as highly. For Ajax, Holland and Barcelona during much of the Seventies, Cruyff was the magician with the snake hips who destroyed opponents with his mesmerising turns and slick finishing. Before the spell was cast, Johan Neeskens would win the ball in dangerous areas and feed the maestro.

Rangy, muscular and instantly recognisable for his enormous sideburns, Neeskens was the quintessential box-to-box midfielder and the pivot of Rinus Michels’ “Total Football” style of play in which players switched positions seamlessly. Key to the system was Neeskens’s ability to press the opposition and win the ball back. “When the opponent had the ball, you try and find their weakest part, put pressure, try to win the ball and then play the ball forward as quickly as possible,” Neeskens recalled.

Described as having the lungs of a horse, Neeskens had in droves what the modern game calls “physicality”. A tireless runner, he would win back possession in transition when opponents were about to launch attacks, and feed the ball into the spaces behind the opposition where Cruyff would be lurking.

 

Neeskens signing autographs at the 1974 World Cup

ALAMY

 

A shy man, Neeskens was known as “the Silent One” on the field because he rarely spoke, instead imparting clear communication with his robust tackles and occasional thuggery to give the likes of Cruyff and Johnny Rep the right to play. Yet Neeskens could play too. Quick and skilful, he stepped easily away from opponents with a change of direction and pace and timed his runs into the penalty box to finish off many moves himself. “He was worth two men in midfield,” his Ajax team-mate Sjaak Swart said.

At the height of Neeskens’s powers during the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, many British managers compared him to Duncan Edwards. The colourful English manager and ITV commentator Malcolm Allison even insisted he would take Neeskens before Cruyff: “Neeskens would be more effective in our football. To be successful in England you must have commitment, application, stamina. Neeskens has all these qualities plus remarkable ball control and vision. He can tackle in his own penalty area one minute and score a decisive goal at the other end the next.”

 

Holland qualified for the World Cup final after beating the defending champions Brazil 2-0 in the second group phase. Neeskens recovered to deliver the coup de grâce after being knocked out in the first half by a vicious elbow off the ball from Marinho Peres.

Five minutes into the second half he brought the ball forward and fed Cruyff, who had peeled off to the right wing. The midfielder continued his run and met Cruyff’s perfect low cross, lifting the ball deftly over the head of Brazil’s advancing goalkeeper. Cruyff added the second goal with a cushioned volley, but there was no doubt whom the Brazilians had been targeting with their cynical fouls. Towards the end of the game, Luís Pereira was sent off for a waist-high challenge that hacked down Neeskens as he broke forward.

 

Neeskens with his wife Marlis in 1985

VI-IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

 

The Dutch were strong favourites to win the final against West Germany in Munich. Two minutes into the game, the hosts had still not touched the ball when Cruyff slalomed past several players and was brought down to win a penalty. Still nursing a bump above his left ear where he had been elbowed days before, Neeskens placed the ball on the spot, having already scored two spot kicks in the tournament.

“That was the first time I was a little bit nervous taking a penalty,” he recalled. “As a coach, I always say to my players, ‘Don’t change your mind.’ But I did it myself on that occasion. I had been all set to hit the ball to the left until the last step, when I decided to go the other way.” He sent the West German goalkeeper, Sepp Maier, the wrong way, to score his fifth goal of the tournament. Yet the cussed West Germans equalised and went on to win the game and the trophy.

Days later, Neeskens married Marlis, who survives him along with their children, Christian, Tamara, Bianca and Armand. He also sealed a lucrative move to Barcelona, inevitably following Cruyff, who had joined them the year before. Fanatical fans of the Catalan club called Neeskens “Johan Segon” (“Johan the Second”).

 

Neeskens was 26 when the next World Cup came around in Argentina in 1978 and now Johan Segon could take centre stage, on the pitch at least. Cruyff had retired from international football the previous year, having become unpopular with his team-mates for bossing them around on the field and for giving the impression in some of his media appearances that he thought Holland a one-man team.

 

Neeskens in 1996

ALAMY

 

By contrast Neeskens was popular with his team-mates because of his willingness to quietly work for the team without apparent ego. Once again, he was the fulcrum as Holland reached the final. They lost 3-1 after extra time against the hosts Argentina, sealing the team’s fate as arguably the best in international football never to win a World Cup.

Neeskens remained popular at Barcelona, renowned for his diving headers. He was still in peak physical condition after the 1978 World Cup, but Barcelona decided to sell him after a bizarre incident involving the club’s president, Josep Lluís Núñez. While using a stadium lavatory in Alicante, Núñez discovered to his horror that there was no toilet roll and ordered Neeskens to pass him some under the cubicle door. When Neeskens refused, Núñez put him up for sale.

British clubs, including Arsenal and Nottingham Forest, circled but could not meet his wage demands of £250,000 a year. Instead, Neeskens signed for New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League. His life unravelled in the Big Apple, where he began using cocaine and struggled with alcohol and gambling addictions.

Johannes Jacobus Neeskens was born in 1951 in the town of Heemstede, near Haarlem, in the north of the Netherlands. Football was everything to him from an early age and he was scouted as a child to sign for Racing Club Heemstede in the second tier of Dutch football.

 

Neeskens after the U-21 friendly against Germany in March 2009

FRISO GENTSCH/EPA-EFE/SHUTTERSTOCK/REX

 

He was 18 when he was spotted by Michels, the manager of Ajax, who signed him after losing the 1969 European Cup final against AC Milan 4-1. As he smarted from the defeat, Michels vowed to find players with an “over my dead body” attitude.

In 1970 Neeskens won his first Dutch title, or Eredivisie, and his first cap for Holland against East Germany. Against Panathinaikos of Greece in the European Cup final at Wembley in 1971, the 19-year-old played at right back. His tenacity in winning the ball high up the pitch was vital in Ajax’s 2-0 victory.

The next season Michels decided that Neeskens was better suited to a role in midfield, where his rugged qualities would dovetail with Cruyff’s sublime skill. Neeskens scored ten goals in 28 appearances in 1971-72 as Ajax retained the European Cup. His appearances in the two-legged semi-final against Benfica would go into folklore. In the final two-goal Cruyff took the plaudits against Inter Milan — a game in which Ajax cut the defensive Italians open time and time again in what has been hailed as the greatest exhibition of Total Football. They retained the trophy for the third year in a row against Juventus the next year.

By the 1974 World Cup, Michels — who had taken over as the Holland manager before the tournament — had spent five years perfecting “Total Football” in the innovative 4-3-3 formation. “No outfield player is fixed in a predetermined role; anyone can successively play as an attacker, a midfielder and a defender,” said Neesken describing the system years later. “The only player who must stay in a specified position is the goalkeeper. You attack with the whole team and then you defend with the whole team. The success of this style depends largely on the adaptability of each footballer within the team, the ability to quickly switch positions.”

 

In all, Neeskens won 49 caps for Holland and scored 17 goals, playing his final game in a World Cup qualifier against France in 1981. He recovered from his addictions and carried on playing until his 40th year, ending his playing career in Switzerland in 1991.

 

Thereafter, he was an assistant coach for the Dutch national team between 1995 and 2000. He managed NEC Nijmegen in his homeland with some success before being sacked in 2004 after a poor run of results. Neeskens also had a later spell as assistant manager of Barcelona. In all these roles, players tried to avoid him in five-a-side training games. It was paramount that they did not injure themselves before match day, but Neeskens was unable to repress his competitive instincts and would continue to make the sort of crunching tackles that marked his heyday.

In recent years he travelled the world as part of a Dutch coaching programme to develop the game that he had graced. He remained a mainly modest figure but could not resist once saying, and with some justification, “I didn’t mind being the second greatest player in the world.”

 

Johan Neeskens, footballer, was born on September 15, 1951. He died of undisclosed causes on October 6, 2024, aged 73

 

[Biblio 148]

I was lucky enough to see him play when I was 15. My dad took me and my brother to the UEFA semi-final second leg at Anfield in 1976. There were thousands locked out because Neeskens and Cruff were an incredible draw. Halfway through the second half, there was an announcement over the tannoy asking Mr Gerrard of Halewood to go to the police room after the match. That message was for my dad, who had dropped his credit card and it had been handed in. I was realy excited that Cruff and Neeskens had heard my dad's name read out (I doubt they would have been listening actually) because they were so incredibly famouns back then.