On This Day – 9th February
Former Dutch national team coach Rinus Michels was born on this day in 1928. He will forever be known for inventing the ‘Total Football’ concept, a system whereby each outfield player can play in any other position on the pitch.
Despite being known for his coaching, but he also had a decent playing career, scoring 112 goals for Ajax between 1946 and 1958. Five of those goals were scored on his first-team debut!
He rejoined Ajax as a coach in 1965 and quickly established the club as the biggest team in Holland. They won four out of five Eredivisie titles between 1966 and 1970, with Feyenoord taking the title in 1968/69.
In the 1968/69 season, Michels’ Ajax side reached their first European Cup Final, but they lost 4-1 to AC Milan. Two years later they would reach the Final yet again, but this time they would win the trophy, beating Panathinaikos at Wembley.
Barcelona came calling and Michels joined the Catalan side later on in 1971. Two years after moving to the Camp Nou, Michels secured the signing of Johan Cruyff from his former club Ajax. In Cruyff’s first season, the club won their first Primera Division title in fourteen years.
Michels left Barca to take over as the Dutch national team manager for the 1974 World Cup in West Germany. His Dutch side impressed as they reached the Final, losing 2-1 to the hosts after going a goal ahead in the first couple of minutes.
In the coming years, Michels returned to Ajax and Barcelona for short spells before spending time coaching in the States and in Germany. He then returned as Head coach of the Dutch national side and won the 1988 European Championships, where the tournament was played in West Germany, the very same place his Dutch side lost the World Cup fourteen years previously.
After winning the European Championships, Michels spent a season at German side Bayer Leverkusen before spending two years in charge of the Dutch national side for the third and final time.
Michels died on 3rd March 2005 at the age of 77.
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