It was with a fit of pique, revenge in mind and a double-winning flourish that Johan Cruyff brought the curtain down upon his remarkable playing career. He also crossed one football’s greatest divides to do it. Cruyff was 36 in the summer of 1983 and in his second spell at Ajax, having just helped the club clinch the domestic league and cup double. The achievement was rewarded with the news from the club that he was to be cast aside. A new contract was not to be offered to the man who had given so much power, status and prestige to the club, not to mention a sparkling array of trophies. With a point to prove and anger levels high, Cruyff opted for the previously unthinkable. He signed for Ajax’s increasingly bitter rivals, Feyenoord, a club that had laboured for much of the previous decade since winning the league and Uefa Cup in 1974. The Rotterdam giants, the first club from the Netherlands to win both the European Cup and the World Club Championship, had only managed to add one KNVB Cup success since the league and European double glory almost a decade earlier.
