It’s probably fair to say that no style of football has had as much influence on the
modern game as Total Football. The style is most
associated with the Ajax and Dutch national teams
of the 1970s, and in fact got its name from the 1974 Netherlands World Cup side.
But it had its antecedents in the Austrian national side of Matthias Sindelar in the
1930s and Puskas and co.’s Hungarians in the 1950s,
and the lineage of Ajax’s way originated with two
English coaches, Jack Reynolds , who managed the club in three spells between 1915 and
1947, and Vic Buckingham, who managed them twice between 1959 and 1965.
Then came the pairing who really created the style, Rinus Michels , who had played under
Reynolds and replaced Buckingham in the dugout, and Johan Cryuf , perhaps the most
significant figure in European football ever – it was then continued by Stefan Kovacs,
under whom Ajax became the greatest club side in
the world for a time. Total Football has perhaps two key concepts:
the utilisation of space, and the fluidity of
positions. Both were aided by Michaels’s fanatical work rate and discipline, with fitness
a significant focus alongside skill work with
the ball. Space is key – make the pitch big when
you are attacking and small when you are defending. In order to make this work, Ajax also pressed.
At times, they pressed almost manically – there was less an emphasis on pressing into
passing lanes than an efort, often led by the
wonderfully tenacious Johan Neeskens, to swamp the opposition player in possession. In
order to facilitate this, Ajax also played a very high defensive line, compressing space yet further.
The formation most associated with Total Football is the 4-3-3, becoming a 3-4-3 as the
libero steps up into midfield, a feature that persisted in Dutch football with players like
Barry Hulshof , Horst Blankenburg and Danny Blind
, and started largely at Ajax by the Serbian Velibor Vasovic . This allowed the defence
to begin attacking moves, but also ensured that
there were spare markers for the opposition centre-forwards and that Ajax could match
a four-man midfield.
As Jonathan Wilson notes, while other sides had engaged in horizontal positional switches,
such as wingers dropping inside, or mild vertical ones, like Nandor Hidegkuti dropping of
from the number 9 position and swapping with an attacking midfielder, Ajax and the Dutch
national side were the first to engage in wholesale positional switches up and down
each flank. In this way, the 4-3-3 or 3-4-3 saw
players on either flank push up and drop of, fluidly
interchanging to create baffling attacking patterns.
The team’s spine in the most successful period of the early 1970s was Blankenburg,
Neeskens, and Cryuf, with Heinz Stuy in goal. The wide players, Wim Suurbier, Arie Haan
who later became an accomplished sweeper,
and Johnny Rep on the right, and Ruud Krol, Gerrie Muhren, and Piet Keizer on the left,
all swapped with each other knowing that this spine would hold and cover, but Cruyf also
dropped of and moved wide at will. Pressing meant that, as long as players were
pushed up and everyone could defend as well as attack, the fluidity of the team did not
compromise its defensive shape. Of course, the
attacking system could be negated, as Berti Vogts and West Germany showed in 1974, by
aggressive man-marking and flooding the midfield, but when Ajax were on song, it was nigh-
on impossible to stop them. The influences of Total Football show up in
the coaching of Marcelo Bielsa and, via Michaels and Cruyf’s spells at Barcelona, in the
positional play of Pep Guardiola . Guardiola’s positional play, which relies on vertical
overloads, is only possible if players can change
positions. And both Bielsa and Guardiola encourage their
teams to control space, interchange, press, and have encouraged players to play in roles
they’re not used to, where their skills as
midfielders allow them to be attack-minded defenders, for example. The legacy of Total
Football is not just in the beauty of Ajax and the Netherlands in the 1970s – it lives
on in some of the best football of today.