Masterminds and Methods - Total Football

 Football has always been a game full of innovations. But no innovation in football is more widely known than total football. The style of play which has inspired many managers such as Johan Cruyff and Louis Van Gaal was one of the first major changes that occurred in football after the Second World War. The style which we often always relate to Cruyff is much more than just his genius. From an Englishman coming to Amsterdam and getting impressed to Rinus Michels revolutionizing football it was a collection of ideas which had an impact not only on football but the social changes and morale on the country of Netherlands in the 60's.

Dutch Roots and A Rebellious Brit

The Hungarian team in the 1950's was one of the best the world had seen but what Ajax did in the 1960's was add a logical step which made the team many times better. Pressing. By the time Michels became the manager of Ajax, the shortage of war years were over and sports science had advanced sufficiently that players could run for 90 minutes on the pitch. This gave rise to the first revolution in football.

Amsterdam is widely known today for its liberal spirit and vibrant energy—but much of this modern reputation can be traced back to Total Football. Sports have the power to shape the cultural and social identity of a place or community. Amsterdam post the war stood still. In the 1955 novel "The Fall" , Albert Camus famously wrote," For centuries, pipe smokers have been watching the same rain falling on the same canal." about Amsterdam. Dutch football was similarly stagnant.

Victor Buckingham - The Rebellious English.

The style of the Anglophile clubs was still backward and the national team was a joke. While the W-M had become the norm in Europe, the Dutch were still using 2-3-5, the formation the British subcontinent used in the 1920's. Surprisingly you could say that the founding fathers of Dutch Football were two Englishmen. Jack Reynolds and Vic Buckingham. Jack Reynolds was the manager who influenced Rinus Michels and laid the foundations at Ajax. He was the one who came up with the quote "Attack is the best form of defence" in 1945 and that was certainly true of his Ajax teams.

Vic Buckingham arrived at Ajax in 1959. Contrary of the British, Buckingham was against long ball football. His own beliefs gelled with Ajax. He believed Dutch football was superior to British football and possession football was the way to go. He was a devotee of the W-M but played a much more fluid style. His Ajax team which won the 1960 Dutch league averaged 3.2 goals a game. Unfortunately he left Ajax after two seasons to return to England and his second spell in 1964 was hugely unsuccessful and he was sacked. He was replaced by Rinus Michels and Ajax's golden era started.

Rinus Michels - The Father of Total Football

Rinus Michels as a player was easy-going and a practical joker. As a manager he was completely different. He became a fantastic disciplined trainer. "Even with the assistant coaches he was like an animal trainer." his assistant coach Bobby Haarms said. His immediate task at Ajax was to avoid relegation as Buckingham was sacked when Ajax were in the relegation zone. Michels kept them up that season and won the league in the next.

He radically altered the training, prioritising ball work to produce technical proficiency. He abandoned the W-M and start using the 4-2-4 made popular by Brazil in the 1958 world cup. The first signs of Ajax becoming a superpower in football came in 1966 when Bill Shankly's Liverpool were humiliated 5-1 in Amsterdam. But after their defeat against Dukla Prague, Michels showed how ruthless he could be and reconstructed the entire defence.

He completely transformed the team winning the league four times between 1966 and 1970 and reaching the European Cup final in 1969. Michels always adapted to the trends that came up. After Happel's Feyenoord drew against Ajax on a budget much smaller than Ajax, he went into greater detail and made what was known as Total Football.

Ajax's 4-2-4 became a 4-3-3 with Vasovic pushing up from defence to make a 3-4-3, which left two markers to deal with the opposing centre forwards and a spare man which later became the Libero. Michels was the architect of the aggressive way of defending. But what was revolutionary was the changing of positions longitudinally instead of laterally. Michels was the father of Total Football. He took his ideas to Barcelona and inspired many more managers but Ajax peaked after he left under Stefan Kovacs. Some people still say than Johan Cruyff had much more influence on the team than Kovacs back then and that remains debatable but Cruyff was always the type of character who influenced people.

Michel's Vision of Total Football

 As Amsterdam went was going through radical changes and became the capital of youth rebellion, the people looked to the club as a means of giving out a message. It was no coincidence that riots, and rebellion came up when Ajax was at the face of radical changes happening in football. Both the club and the people gave out the same message, Structures and traditions were not to be accepted but to be challenged. This all gave birth to the genius of Johan Cruyff and Total football that we know about today.

Total Football was never just a tactical shift—it was a revolution that transcended the pitch. It reflected a cultural awakening in Amsterdam and across the Netherlands, where football became a canvas for freedom, fluidity, and fearless expression. The legacy of people and rebels  like Rinus Michels, Vic Buckingham, and Jack Reynolds, combined with the charisma and genius of Johan Cruyff, reshaped how the world saw the game. It showed that football could be beautiful, bold, and intelligent—all at once. Total Football didn’t just change the way teams played; it changed how entire societies thought about movement, structure, and innovation. Its echoes still shape modern football.

By Parth Gokhale