One given moment

THE true beauty of the world’s most beautiful game, according to Johan Cruyff, who knew, didn’t lie in tricksy technique. If a man could juggle a ball a thousand times, it proved only that he ought to join the circus. Of course, it was great when Rudolf Nureyev said he should have been a dancer. But he was not just using his long, lean body when he played football. He was mostly using his brain. That brain, as well as his famously agile feet, made him a local hero in Holland and Spain and, by extension, all over football-mad Europe.

His rules of the game were simple. (Geometrical, some said, even mystical.) If he had the ball, the space on the pitch had to be made as large as possible. If he didn’t have it, the space had to become threatening and small. He adjusted his perspective continually with the movement of the ball. At one given moment—neither too early nor too late, en un momento dado, his catchphrase when he shaped Barcelona into the world’s top team—the ball and he would meet. And from this, as often as not, came glory. Toon Hermans, his fellow-countryman, eloquently described his almost spiritual enthronement in Dutch hearts: