At the beginning of the 80s, when the Cruyff family returned to the Netherlands, after the North American tour, they also spent the summers in El Montanyà (Osona). It was then that Jordi and I became very good friends. We would be around 10 years old and we would spend the day up and down, always with the ball at our feet. And that Danny made the whole family follow a strict Dutch schedule: they never got up later than eight in the morning and always had dinner at seven thirty in the evening, with the sun still shining brightly above... I take advantage who is still around Barcelona, before he leaves, only God knows where, to remember his father.
I understand that, being his son, it's difficult, but what is the first memory you have of Johan Cruyff?
What a question, motherfucker. Luckily I ordered a soft drink...!
And and and!
Look, I don't know why, and without going into anything specific, the first thing that comes to mind are images in which we are together... I'm not watching him play a game, but rather a rather familiar scene... He is, well I don't know, teaching me some movement, on the grass...
Not enough attention is drawn to the fact that you were born by caesarean section, prematurely, so that your father could play the famous 0-5 classic at the Bernabéu the following week, obeying the instructions of Rinus Michels...
…and from Barcelona! I always make a little joke: I'm going to denounce Barça because they took me out of my mother's belly early, and they did it for a football game! Of course, Rinus I can't anymore. I have to denounce Barça!
And and and!
I shouldn't say it, because it invalidated the complaint, but in the end it was worth it, because of what the game meant. Not only because of the result, but also because of the blow on the table. "We can win wherever we want!" Spectacular. And Rinus Michels, that is not said, also chose the date of my birth carefully: February 9 was his own birthday... Imagine: Double denunciation!
Nine months after that match, many Catalans were born...
It caused joy, yes, and as a result of this there is also the anecdote of my name, Johan Jordi. I still don't know if my father gave it to me out of rebellion or because he liked it... Since it was a Dutch document, with a foreign name, they couldn't do anything here (on his return from Holland, Johan Cruyff ran into resistance from the Spanish civil registry to register Jordi, as a given name, in Catalan). I think my father wanted Johan and my mother… Thank God!
Sure, what a burden to call you like your father...
Johan is a name from another generation. In the Netherlands there are not so many anymore, but with Jordi the rebel element came out… Even his signing for Barça has this element. In a vote, the Ajax players had taken away his captaincy, the board wanted to sell him to Madrid and he refused: "Where I go, I decide."
And why do you think he chooses Barça? With his sign he could have gone to any other big club...
Yes, but a rebel always looks for different, special places... He didn't make predictable decisions. If at the cinema there was a line of one hundred people to see a movie and next to it another line of five, instead of choosing the line of one hundred, which is normal, it would choose the line of five... I don't know how his brain worked, but he always went against it. …
I imagine that at first you must have thought that this was normal, until you realized that the peculiar one was your father... Because there is also his unwavering optimism...
Amazing. The truth is that it takes a long time to realize according to what things. My father had a capacity… I remember games in which he scored, a three nil against and the press hit him on all sides and then you would hear him come into the house. He closed the door and it was over, the stress of soccer was left out. I never saw him nervous. And see that football is pure and hard nerves. It is a quality that I have not seen in anyone else... I myself am incapable, when I lose I become unbearable. I need 24 hours to reset the system. I never saw him badly. Never. Not even when he lost the final in Athens. He came home like nothing happened, like he was someone else. It seemed amazing to me.
And where do you think this quality came from?
Personality, ability to overcome... We must also take into account that he lost his father when he was very young (at 12 years old), that his mother (after having to transfer the vegetable store from which they lived) cleaned the changing rooms, that For a son who plays there it can be complicated... Yes, self-improvement... My father, my sisters and I, forced us to study like animals. Sorry if I jump from one topic to another. If he got bad grades, he would directly remove me from football for two weeks... And I would do all the tricks: "I can't go to school, dad, my tummy hurts...". "Well, don't worry", he let me go, "you don't go to training in the afternoon either...". In two minutes he was already changed and in the car…
And and and!
Have I ever told him: how do you put so much pressure on us, if you didn't finish school? Sure, you're young and you ask stupid questions… Being a dribbler, I think he always kept in mind that if you got kicked and sprained your ankle, your career was over… Doctors these days didn't exist. Then it was “goodbye very good”. And he would have been screwed without football... He and his family. He was always clear: “I have been lucky in life. But this luck is not for everyone. You have to have a plan B.” His values were very much anchored in his own experience. You noticed it in the way we were educated. When one day at the age of 16 I asked him for an extra, to play table football or eat something after school, he would tell me “yes, yes, but first you have to wash the car”. He didn't just give you anything. You had to earn it. And then there is, above all, treating the people who need it the most extra well. This was very characteristic of his way of being. If for some reason he had to visit the Queen of Holland, he would spend fifteen minutes with her and then half an hour with the cleaner... he always associated himself with difficulty and rebelled against the authorities.
You should remember practically nothing about your father's time as a Barça player...
The oldest I remember of him as a player, and a little bit, is already in the United States. But what I keep in my memory best is when he debuted again with Ajax (December 1981), many people criticized him. But in that game he scored a great goal, the bastard, a great goal... And the people, suddenly, "Oysters, neither old nor milk!". And also later, when he leaves. I was a youth player at Ajax and he goes to Feyenoord… (to Ajax's great enemy)
Yes, in his last season as a player, 83-84...
Another rebellion! And (when they face Ajax) they lose 8-2. I was at the Ajax Olympic Stadium. They played Van Basten and all that group… My father loses 8-2. Although I played for Ajax, I was in favor of my father, of course, above all else. All my teammates wanted Ajax to win and they didn't give me a bad face. But of course, you feel humiliated. It's your father... Poor uncle... I had a bad time. 8 to 2 is not a normal result. But then he ended the season by winning the double with Feyenoord…
Incredible. Later, when he returns to Ajax as a coach, you are still in the lower categories of Ajax. Did you play in a similar way to how Johan would later make Barça play?
I don't remember. But everyone has their vision of what Johan Cruyff means to them. For the youngest he is a character from the video game. For older people he is an almost political symbol. And for others, as a coach, well, he was crazy until he became a genius. Because at first they treated him as crazy and then as a genius. People have a very selective memory of things. They use Cruyffism...
For what suits them... How do you remember your return to Barcelona?
I had an aggravating factor. In the last year at Ajax I had been playing well. The day my father suddenly quarreled with the Ajax board and left, I was at the training camp. When I found out what happened,... It was hard for me. When I was twelve or thirteen... Your father... I remember I cried...
Clear!
We left the premises together. And I remember that when we were going to the car, walking through the parking lot, my father said to me “smile”. And I "dad, why am I going to smile, if I'm super sad." “Smile”, he told me. "Never show sadness to people who want to see sadness. You smile". Host. And there's a picture...
Yes, I remember her...
…in which we are walking side by side and we are laughing: total Hollywood…
And and and!
When he told me to come to Barça, of course, I didn't want to. It seemed that things were starting to go well for me at Ajax. But what are you going to do, you're thirteen years old, get in the car and go to Barcelona. It was very difficult for me, because here the boys of fourteen or fifteen are already mini men. In Holland, at that age, we are still children. There are photos of the time where everyone takes me a span. But then at the age of seventeen I took a span of them...
And on a tactical level?
Of course, you saw the differences... Especially in the midfield, also with the issue of wingers. But the key was in the midfield, which was not symmetrical...
You say it because of the rhombus, right?
Yes, many times, when Koeman or Xavi have played with a 3-4-3, there have been people who have told them "No, Barça is 4-3-3". Is not true. My father played 3-4-3. When the rival team played with two forwards, my father put up three defenders. And if they played with three, he put four, and if they played with one, he put two. He adapted to some characteristics of his rival, but not to defend himself, but to attack...
The commitment is to attack...
Clear! It's funny to me, because in recent years they often tell me what my father's DNA is... Let's see, gentlemen, the one who spent my life provoking, arguing, debating with Mr. Cruyff was me... Because my father I provoked him, many times, talking in the kitchen. Now I can say it: his weakness was Sergio Busquets!
He loved it…
Yes. I was in love, because Busquets is a master of angles... He's terrific with his foot. But there are many people with good foot. What he has, thanks to his mastery of angles, is that in two touches he can do what the rest need to do in three. He loved that aspect, which is what Pep also had… Players with mastery of angles are players with a sixth sense. Another level… And I, of course, told him: “Incredible! Another time Busi has played and Yayá Touré hasn't played…!”. And I did...
To bite him…
Because I knew that in a minute I would get into a fight and I would have to run out of the kitchen... He still had very strong points of view, and when you wanted to touch his morale a bit, you knew where to go... I love Busi. But she used it to make his blood boil. And it was always itchy!
How did your parents remember your previous time at Barça, as a happy episode in the professional life of an athlete?
No, it was something else... Sometimes it happens to me, when I come across an older person and you see that they recognize you: people still get emotional. Do you know what this produces in a child? When someone older gets emotional telling me what the figure of my father has meant in his personal life... Holy shit, it's... It's not that "what a good footballer your father was" anymore. It's on a human level...
Your father not only made Barça a bigger club...
Yes, winner, optimist. Try to be the protagonist. I am going to play, let them adapt, I dominate. It is what he tried to contribute, because it was his character...
It not only got us used to winning, but as Pep told me the other day, to beauty...
To how you have to win... My father was like that... I remember him one day playing in the garden, with my son, his grandson, making four touches. I let him win, I don't know, five zero... And halfway through he pushed him aside and began to explain how he had to do it: "when you shoot, you have to put your arm like this, and then you have to...". And my son, who was still very young, told him "but what do you tell me, if I'm winning five zero!"
And and and!
Ha ha! And my father looks at me, we laugh, and of course, in the second part he gave her ten and then explained how he had to do it.
Ha ha ha! Educate more losing than winning...
The face he made, when my son said that to him, was terrific. He was a great grandfather. A horny, he liked to laugh and get stung. I still had energy for everything, work, controversies, because at Barça you always have people for and against, and that eats up your energy, but my father would come home and disconnect... And I thank him, because he never brought us stress home, neither to my sisters nor to me...
At home maybe not, but you suffered the pressure of being the son of Johan Cruyff...
Yes, because people in Spain like to compare, morbid... Let's not be bastards. My father was an immortal. I am like 99.9% of the players, mortal: we come, we play, we leave and the next one happens. My father was from the remaining 0.1%, with whom you cannot compare. Not me and almost no one. It was difficult. When you did something well they exaggerated it, which is not convenient either, and then when you did it wrong, I don't even tell you. Always in the extremes. But hey, then you open your way in life and you get over it. Sometimes I also wonder why I have gone to work in all these strange places? (Apart from Spain and England, Jordi has worked in Ukraine, Israel, Malta, Ecuador, China...)
Are you tempted to return to training in Spain?
Don't know. Before returning to Barça, I had been abroad for many years, living far away, without seeing my children… In China I had the best contract of my life, really. But when Barça calls you two years ago, well, you come… But for other reasons. It's something emotional. They had been calling for years, also with the old board. But because of timing it was not the moment. In the end, destiny is who decides the path of your life.
