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1974 Memories

November 25th, 2008 | By: Jan | 12 Comments »

Nees was always polite when people accidentally bumped into him…

Here we go for 1974 then… I do surrender my age with this one .

But, most of us will remember prolific scoring Johnny Rep, snake-man Rensenbrink, Neeskens and the blood on his shirt against the Butchers from Brazil (sorry Felipe ), the awesome Cruyff goals, the swimming pool incident and the finals against West Germany. We lost. In case you forgot.

But not a lot of people remember the run up to the WC. In fact, Holland shouldn’t have qualified. Belgium was in our qualifications group and they needed a win against Oranje to oust us. And the match ended 0-0. Holland qualified. But…Belgium scored a goal and that goal was disallowed. Although no one knew why. The ref ruled off side, but the replays showed he was wrong… Close call, that one…

JC enjoyed the classical music playing loud in the stadiums…

In the prep for the WC, Frantisec Fardronc (?) was Oranje’s manager with Jan Zwartkruis as his assistant. In those days, Oranje wasn’t the hot. We never achieved anything before 1974 but with Feyenoord and Ajax ruling Europe and the world (Feyenoord won the European Cup and the World Cup in 1970, Ajax repeated that European feat thrice (71, 72, 73) so the players figured we might have a bit of a chance on that WC.

Looking back, the likes of Van Hanegem and Krol admitted never to have thought we would be contenders for the title. The KNVB feared Fardronc wouldn’t able to lead the team to success and they quickly signed Barca coach Rinus Michels as a supervisor (that was the term). He quickly realized Oranje was in trouble defensively. Killers Rinus Israel and Theo “The Tank” Laseroms were both injured, and so was Ajax defender Hulshoff. Michels tried out different things in the warm ups but wasn’t happy with the results.

Note: Israel and Laseroms were credited with the innovative “drifting” of center striker Johan Cruyff. The two Feyenoord defenders were tough as nails and mean as alley cats. Whenever JC played Feyenoord (with Ajax and later Barca) he didn’t have the guts to play upfront and stayed away from the two fearless defenders, leaving space for others (Nees, Rep) to move in to the center striker position. That worked so well, that JC promoted this tactics to standard MO.

In those days, Ajax and Feyenoord ruled Oranje. PSV cracks Jan van Beveren (Holland’s best goalie ever (debatable, I know)) and playmaker Willy van der Kuylen for instance, had trouble getting into the hierarchy at Oranje and pulled out. Feyenoord midfielders Van Hanegem and Jansen – both very smart players – recognized JC’s sublime genius and were happy to play second fiddle to Jopie.

She was there in 1974. And she hasn’t changed a bit… Good girl…

With the PSV contingent out, Michels still had his defensive issues to take care of. After several experiments, apparently Cruyff whispered in Michels’ ear: try Arie Haan as central defender. Haan, a young Ajax midfielder, was a great passer and more importantly, had wonderful lungs. He was teamed up with young and ruthless Feyenoord defender Rijsbergen. Cruyff wasn’t stupid. By attempting to dominate the game, he knew that using Haan as center back would result in an extra midfielder when in possession, allowing Neeskens to make his penetration runs into the box. With Suurbier on the overlap on the right, Rep could afford to leave the right wing to come to the center up front and thus Rep became the goal scorer, with Cruyff in a free role….anywhere on the pitch.

But, the space between defense and the goalie would be huge and any deep ball over our defense would prove to be dangerous. No problems. Michels selected burgeoning FC Amsterdam goalie Jan Jongbloed. Jongbloed was a spectacular goalie with great reflexes but more importantly, Jan was fast and was a good passer. In this way, Michels added an extra sweeper to the team, Jongbloed would rule the space behind Haan.

All this was not so much strategy, it was born out of necessity and by coincidence.

The rest is history. Arie Haan would develop to become The Dutch Player with most Prizes ™ until one Seedorf started to collect cups. Wim Rijsbergen moved from Feyenoord to New York Cosmos where he’d play with Garrincha, Pele and Beckenbauer. Rob Rensenbrink was one of Holland’s first players to football himself to financial independence and John Rep became a rock star. Sort of.

Clockwork Orange was born. JC would grow into the Best Player Ever (most Brazilians or Argentinians don’t think so, by the way) and Rinus Michels felt it necessary to call his pupil Cruyff an amateur coach and psychopath in later days. But that’s another story…

Tags: Cruyff, Group C, Haan, Holland, Jansen, Michels, Oranje, Rep, Van Hanegem, WC1974

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Comments

By finnster01 | November 25th, 2008 at 8:16 am

Jan, you are on a roll!! The last articles have been absolutely superb. What a great couple of reads. Beautiful and very insightful comments as well (as always). I like the Oranje Angel angle as well

Now, 1974 is very special to me for many reasons. It was the first WC finals with Oranje I fully remember, although Jan is right, I don’t remember too much of the qualification as I lived in Norway and cable TV wasn’t invented yet (or at least we had never heard of it).

First of all, it was the first WC after my big brother’s ex-wife had broken up dating Neeskens. So as a kid, I watched every game in front of our TV wearing a very oversized signed authentic Ajax no 7 shirt that once belonged to the legend. I was so proud (and pissed off that she had married my brother…). It was pure ecstacy.

Now beyond the personal memories, it was (and still is) in my opinion the best WC ever staged. It was an absolute stormer of a tournament with an endless list of all-time-greats putting on a show. I was so angry at Brazil (yes, I guess it actually is possible to get angry at Brazil, although it has never happened since and that is some 34 years ago). The way they kicked Nees to bits who stood up to them as the enforcer and paid the price. But more than anything, what stands out to me, was the final.

It is the best WC final ever to have been played (or certainly that I have watched with my own eyes), and I can’t think of what it would take to beat it. The teams, West Germany and Oranje, were unquestionably the two best teams of the tournament and the world. The starting lineups were a fairytale: Neeskens, Cruyff, Krol, Haan, Rep,Jansen etc. and the Germans: Sepp Maier, Gerd Muller, Beckenbauer, Breitner, Vogts, Hoeness, Bonhof, Grabowski, Overath etc. I cant remember such an all star group play in a final ever. Stuff that dreams are made of.

And then the game…Cruyff darting in, running away from Vogts and Hoeness with a desperate challenge inside the box, and after just acouple of mins at Olympic stadium in Munich (Bayern Munich was the current European Cup champions and had 6 or 7 starters in the german team), my hero Neeskens steps up and slots home the penalty. I ran around the living room like a little mad man, yelling and screaming.

Then it all started to fall apart. Oranje started to take the foot off the pedal, some dodgy free kicks (certainly questionable, but also careless play from Oranje). And there it was, after one of those freekicks, Holzenbein getting fouled by Jansen. At the time, I was convinced he (Holzenbein) dived. Since then I have seen it over and over again (have the DVD’s) and I am honestly not so sure anymore. Jansen didn’t catch the ball for sure, but he hit him in the ankle. Holzenbein went down like he had been shot in the heart from very close range with a magnum. He also had a reputation for being the Divaldo of his time. In retrospect, as much as I hate to admit it, I think it actually was a foul inside the penalty area, which by definition as we all know is a penalty. Breitner scored easy enough on Joengblod.

And then it went downhill. I always had a bad feel about the game after that. Sepp Maier decided to play the best match of his wonderful career that day, and to me that is the main reason Oranje eventually lost the game, on Gerd Muller’s goal (that Joengbloed should have saved, he didn’t even try). That, and Oranje becoming a tad too conservative when they did not have a team that could even spell conservative was a huge mistake.

Anyway, the best game I have ever watched.

By Andrew | November 25th, 2008 at 10:33 am

Jan, Superb.

Posted from United States

By goose | November 25th, 2008 at 10:59 am

Hulde Jan ; very good read again

Posted from Netherlands

By Jason | November 25th, 2008 at 11:09 am

Jan, Nice inclusion of the oranje boobs,…. angel

Posted from Canada

By Jan | November 25th, 2008 at 3:01 pm

Haha

Finn, Holzenbein admitted recently that it was a dive…

By goose | November 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

cant believe how bad Arse is playing … vPersie is useless … time for Wenger to go

Posted from Netherlands

By goose | November 25th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

hahahaha and within seconds Bentner scores!! haha .. ill keep my mouth shut

Posted from Netherlands

By Carlos | November 25th, 2008 at 6:15 pm

Goose there is a saying…”Better to keep your mouth shut and let people think you are a fool then to open it and remove all doubt” Cute huh ? Use it next time you are out with your blonde girlfriend

Yeah I watched the Arsenal game pretty pathetic van Persie and he admitted it too. Well Drenthe played quite OK for Real from the start. I still think he should relax a little on the ball, seems to want to go at 300kmh from the moment he has the ball.

Posted from Singapore

By Carlos | November 25th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

Oh Finn & Jan re Holzenbein – Jack Taylor the English referee was interviewed a while ago on the ‘74 final and the 2 penalties he gave and said JC one was 100% a penalty however he was not sure about the Holzenbein one and after seeing the replay said he was probably wrong.

Posted from Singapore

By Jan | November 25th, 2008 at 6:37 pm

Right…

As for Robin… I didn’t think he played that bad. He was constantly alert. Constantly looking for space but the build up was so slow. They should play more direct than you can break a team like Kiev down. Robin’s free kicks were good (Sylvestre?????) so were his corners. He had to good runs along the box, putting the ball in low. Bendtner was too late with one and the other one was blocked into a corner kick.

Then he “felt” where a cross by Vega (?) would land and he tee-ed up for a shot, blocked by the goalie (by his chest?). I didn’t think Robin played poor at all!! I felt Ednilson and some others (Gallas ) played poor.

By Felipe | November 25th, 2008 at 7:16 pm

OK, Jan, I forgive you for saying our team from 1974 was a bunch of butchers…

Ah, 1974… the team. The master on the bench called Marinus Hendricus Jacobus Michels. All the magicians on field (not surprisingly, many of them followed the coaching career – Haan, Krol, De Kromme, Rijsbergen, Neeskens). And, of course, THE MAN among the men. JC. I do believe that, just as Brazil will spend the eternity trying to return to the pattern we reached in 1970, Oranje teams will try to reach the momentum which was reached at ‘74 forever. I don’t know if it’s possible.

The truth is that no one here even imagined how Holland was good. People here like to mock on Mario Zagallo – our coach then – because it was said he had considered Oranje as a team which “passed the ball too much”, without decision. It was also said that he, by hearing about Cruyff, said “Cruyff? WTF is this guy? I know Crush, the cold drink”. And it is said he had made a good joke: “We will make a delicious juice from this Oranje”.

All BS. I repeat: we knew Oranje was doing good at West Germany, but we thought we could deal easily with it. But we just knew that Rinus’ team was not only being good but making history when we were facing them. And, in the 1st half, we played good and could even have scored (Jairzinho and Paulo Cesar almost did it). But time passed, the anger came, and the rest all of you know. Neeskens and Cruyff scored, we lost our nerves, Luis Pereira was fairly sent off (horrible tackle!), Marinho made Nees unconscious for a while with his elbow…

We fairly lost. Our team was not good. There was a lot of dressing-room arguments between the roster (after the 3rd place definition – we lost to Poland -, Leao, our goalie, punched Marinho in the face because of the gap the latter let to Lato run and score), the team was playing too much defensively, and our best player then, Ademir da Guia, played just 45 minutes on that WC!!! Against Poland, when we had no more chances!!! And let’s not forget that many Brazilian stars from ‘70 had already retired internationally (Pele, Tostao, Gerson).

Two funny stories I heard from ‘74 Oranje: Gerrie Mühren was also intended to figure among the 22 men, but his son was sick and he decided to spend his summer at home, taking care of him. Even the family told Gerrie “oh, man, you can go, we take care of the child”, but he refused to let.

And Jongbloed even brought his fisherman’s kit to Germany, thinking clearly he wouldn’t play a minute! He’s not even on ‘74 sticker album (Dutch goalies there are Schrijvers and Heinz Stuy)! But Van Beveren clashed with JC and Michels thought Jongbloed “libero-goalkeeper” style suited more to the team, so…

And the hotel affair with the girls before the Final, huh?

By Jan | November 25th, 2008 at 11:59 pm

How’ bout that one yeah… That made JC not go to the WC1978… Next time: WC1978

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