We should navigate modern football using Cruyff's legacy

Last week, we lost one of the most influential footballers that have ever lived, Johan Cruyff. As another legend and Cruyff's former player at Barcelona, Gary Lineker, said: "Football has lost the man who did more to make the game beautiful than anybody else." Now, thousands of wonderful articles were published this week about this legend's life, written by people who personally knew him, about his achievements both in football and life. Thus, what I intend to do in this one is focus on how Cruyff's legacy can be a guide for us to overcome rapidly increasing alienation of football from its own values, which is evident by empty stadiums, fixing scandals and decrease in talent production around the globe.First of all, there are two main goals of the "Cruyffian" football mentality: Playing beautifully and playing dominantly. The former stems from the basic fact that our ancestors started to play with an object with their feet to have a good time. Then, after centuries, we came to a point where football became a giant industry that now concentrates more on profit rather than making the game enjoyable for both players and observers.

Cruyff's first objection was exactly to this point. In an interview with Donald McRae in The Guardian, he said: "Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. And this is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere. Everyone can play it but those values are being lost. We have to bring them back."

The question that must be asked here is obviously "why has football become so greedy?" Today, it is not enough to just have a field, a ball and some players to play football; you also need lots of sponsors, credits, capital increases and governmental support if you live in an underdeveloped country. Therefore, people in commercial football are always pushed to make decisions that do not align with the core values of this game.Added to that, the new means of production of football brought people who voluntarily involve themselves in corruption and have no emotional connection to football. Hence, people who do the marketing business of commercial football silently became the real patrons of football.

What the Cruyffian approach offers us is the ability to overcome this issue, and it is more about the inside of the game because financial and administrative issues regarding football are deeply related to politics and need to be carved by different methods. However, the paradigm is basically this: If we, people in football who believe in morally good and aesthetically beautiful sport that are ambitious to win implement such strategies on the field, the industry would not find a huge place for corrupt football.

The main reason is that football is actually a simple game. As Cruyff explained: "It's like everything in football and life. You need to look, you need to think, you need to move, you need to find space, you need to help others. It's very simple in the end." Hence, it follows from that everyone who is capable of looking, moving, and helping is sufficient to play football. What makes the difference between winners and losers are simply those who work more on these aspects and those people who do not.

"Neototal" football, which reached its peak thanks to Cruyff, exactly relies on this fundamental truth of football. Every player, regardless of their position, can equally serve an organized structure, and what matters is how a coach creates effective strategies to utilize his players' collective power. Therefore, all this marketing of a superstar's individual talents, millions of dollars-worth of budgets and corrupt administrators lose their playground and leave the field to their true owners. If we follow the flying Dutchman's legacy, it is not just a utopia to fantasize about.