The soap opera that changed the history of FC Barcelona

Half a century ago the history of FC Barcelona is about to begin Change On Monday, August 13, 1973, the Barça club and Ajax reached a agreement for the transfer of Johan Cruyff for one million dollars, 60 million pesetas in exchange. The edition of Mundo Deportivo on Wednesday the 15th (there were no Tuesday sports newspapers at that time) offered all the details of the negotiations, which closed on cover the toast between Rinus Michels, Johan Cruyff, Armand Carabén, manager of Barça, and Cor Coster, father-in-law and representative of Cruyff. Another photo on the same cover showed Carabén and Jaap van Pragg, president of Ajax, shaking hands.

He looks like he’s wearing something after the long soap opera of Barça signing the best player in the world, a soap opera that is now fifty years old. But it’s not like that. The Dutch Federation (KNVB) place all obstacles that he could, using the hidden ‘hand’ of Jaap van Praag, president of Ajax, who killed the operation from behind as much as he could despite the seemingly sincere handshake. First they refused the transferThen they said that he would only be sent in December and finally they started to process it, but Johan did not make his debut as a Barça player until October 28, against Granada.

THE CRUYFF-BARÇA IN LOVE

The story of love between Cruyff and Barça It started thanks to Vic Buckingham, the discoverer of Johan, who made his Ajax debut in 1964. The Englishman is coach of Barça between December 1969 and June 1971 and during that time he recommended the signing of Cruyff, but Spanish football refused to accept foreigners. Johan and his wife visited Barcelona at the time and the young Dutchman posed for a photographic report dressed as a blaugrana in 1970.

The borders of Spanish football opened in 1973, when Cruyff’s Ajax He was at the peak of his mastery of European football, and the old life project at Barcelona was launched for Cruyff. The Dutch club, as punishment, came to an agreement with Real Madrid to move to his ‘crack’, which is annoying, and in what way, a footballer who is very prone to rebellion.

Meanwhile, the bank of Barcelona, I followed the same path than Ajax in those years. Buckingham was replaced at Ajax by Rinus Michels. And, when the English coach decided to leave the Barcelona bench by own decision at the end of the 70-71 seasonBecause of a back pain, Agustí Montal and Armand Carabén, married to Marjorie van de Meer, a Dutchman, signed the same coach who replaced Buckingham at Ajax: Michels.

The Dutch coach just won Ajax’s first of three consecutive European Cups. When he accepted Barcelona’s offer, he did the same thing his predecessor did: recommend the signing of Cruyff, who saw how his two reference coaches, Buckingham and Michels, went to Barcelona. His desire to dress with the blaugrana is getting stronger.

Cruyff’s interest soon spread to the media. From the end of June 1973, at the end of a period in which Ajax re-established its dominance in Europe, Cruyff, who was on vacation in the Portuguese Algarve, began to pull his strings to push Ajax to accept a transfer . The Dutch club and Barça played from there an intense game of chess.

THE AJAX-BARÇA CHESS GAME

Johan rowed a lot. He made it clear that he was disgusted because of Ajax’s attempt to transfer him to Madrid and even threatened to hang up his boots if he didn’t sign for Barça or even play in the 1974 World Cup in Germany if the Dutch Federation (with Van Praag behind him) pulled out on the move.

Barça signed Sotil and loaned ‘Milonguita’ Heredia to Porto as he fell short of his native status. It was an alternative to Cruyff, but it did not hurt the negotiations. Yes, ‘Torpedo’ Muller did, which Barça did come to have a word. Ajax, seeing that Cruyff declared himself in absentia if he did not go to Barça and he could be left without a transfer (they asked for 2 million dollars, as they informed Barça in A Coruña, where the dutch team played Teresa Herrera), had to ‘unroof’ before Cruyff’s position of strength.

THE HAPPY ENDING

The cards are face up, and a week later Cruyff called Carabén to Palafrugell on August 9 to travel to Amsterdam. Van Praag made it difficult from minute zero and asked for 112 million pesetas, but on the 13th the ‘decisive summit’ was set, which concluded the total agreement between Barcelona and the player on the one hand and the club and Ajax on the on the other hand. Two negotiations took place parallel on separate floors of the same hotel. There was an agreement, but the federation OK was missing to grant the transfer. Van Praag restrains as far behind the deal as possible, but on August 18 the KNVB gave the go-ahead, despite administrative reluctance that was actually fueled by Ajax’s frustration.

the KNVB first specified that he could only play from December 1, when the new transfer window opened, because in the Netherlands the term expired on July 30 and the next one did not open until December 1. The Dutch federative position, as well as Ajax, This is a source of controversy in the Netherlands.a very sensitive country regarding individual freedoms, and the situation of Cruyff, a ‘prisoner’ in Amsterdam, was debated on a political level.

Van Praag signed the transfer on August 19 and Cruyff arrived in Barcelona on the 23rd with his husband, Danny Coster, two days after Sotil’s Gamper, but due to federative constraints he did not make his debut until October, against Granada, which was when the KNVB gave his arm to twist and sent the transfer.

After a year, the tug of war was repeated with Johan Neeskens and Japp van Praag’s son, Michael, repeated the strategy in 1998, twenty-five years later, with the signature of De Boer. Other soap operas are roughly modeled on Cruyff with similar results. Caste comes to the greyhound.

The Cruyff player phase not so bright what he dreamed of in the first year, but as a coach, he changed the club from top to bottom. Josep Lluís Núñez signed him in 1988, kept him in place despite a turbulent start and remained on the bench until 1996.