a gloriously complete footballer who possessed the three qualities Dutch defenders would come to be renowned for – intelligence, speed and ball-playing ability. He read the game beautifully, swept up behind his fellow defenders and knocked long, diagonal balls to the wingers, sometimes doing all three in the same move. He was the only defender aside from the legendary Bobby Moore and Franz Beckenbauer to be voted into the top three of the Ballon d’Or in the 1970s, such was his impact on club and country, and he also provided the most concise summary of the Dutch approach to defending. ‘We looked to keep our opponent on the halfway line,’ he said. ‘Our standpoint was that we were not protecting our own goal – we were attacking the halfway line.’
Krol played left-back during Holland’s run to the 1974 World Cup Final, and his three defensive colleagues were also particularly attack-minded. Right-back Wim Suurbier, also of Ajax, was renowned more for his speed and stamina than his defensive ability, and constantly charged up the wing. In the middle, Holland converted Feyenoord’s Wim Rijsbergen from a right-back into a centre-back, and most significantly redeployed Ajax’s Arie Haan, a reliable midfielder, as the side’s fourth defender, although he had never previously played in defence. It’s also telling that the only two significant foreigners who turned out for Ajax during this period, Yugoslavian Velibor Vasović and German Horst Blankenburg, both played the physical, old-school hardman role, because Ajax simply didn’t produce that kind of defender themselves. ‘The foreign players brought something different,’ Cruyff acknowledged of the 1970s Ajax side. That kind of statement in England or Italy would be about foreigners bringing flair, but in the Netherlands it was about foreigners bringing fight.
By the time Cruyff’s and Van Gaal’s sides were dominating Europe in the 1990s, both were determined to promote the concept of the ball-playing defender, helped by the back-pass reform. Cruyff continued to talk about the importance of attacking the halfway line rather than defending the goal even after his retirement, complaining about ‘defenders running back towards their own goal when they lose the ball, rather than moving forward to put pressure on the players in possession’. His Barcelona side, more than any other team of the 1990s, attempted to play in the opposition half.
Such was the emphasis on ball-playing defenders, Van Gaal referred to them using a word previously reserved for attacking midfielders. ‘In modern soccer the players in the middle of the back four – the numbers 3 and 4 – have really become the playmakers,’ he said. ‘That’s why Danny Blind and Frank Rijkaard were so important to Ajax. The number 10 certainly can’t be called a playmaker because the space in which he operates is too restricted … today’s playmakers are to be found in the centre of the back four. This means, of course, you can no longer deploy the old-fashioned, solid type of player in these positions. You have to use technically and tactically gifted players like Blind and Rijkaard.’ Blind, Ajax’s captain, had played alongside Van Gaal for seven years at Sparta Rotterdam and was a calm, technically gifted footballer. But his defensive partner Rijkaard was the real star, hailed by Cruyff in his autobiography as ‘one of the best all-round footballers I’ve ever seen – he could defend with the best of them, he organised the midfield and he still had scoring potential. All of that in one person, who also had the right mentality and a good set of brains.’
Rijkaard was a curious, reserved figure constantly suffering some form of identity crisis. He was considered a thug by many for his quite literal 1990 World Cup spat with Rudi Völler, but was actually among the most amiable footballers around. He appeared a natural leader, but when Ajax manager Cruyff wanted him to become more involved in off-field duties, Rijkaard stormed out and refused to play under him again. He became a celebrity by virtue of his footballing ability, yet he found fame suffocating. He later became a successful coach, winning the Champions League with Barcelona in 2006, but walked away from management at 50, saying, ‘I don’t see myself as an authentic coach. I’ve done something for about 16 years which isn’t a match for me.’ But, most crucially in this context, Rijkaard was an outstanding defender who didn’t just want to defend.
This was nothing new for Dutch defenders, of course, but Rijkaard’s case was particularly extreme. He emerged from Ajax’s academy and became an outstanding, forward-thinking defender, partnering Ronald Koeman at Euro 88 and finishing third in that year’s Ballon d’Or voting. While Dutchmen were accustomed to Rijkaard’s attacking quality, other managers appeared surprised. ‘This is the best central defender I’ve seen in the last few years,’ raved Argentina manager Carlos Bilardo. ‘He wins everything in the air, he marks perfectly, reads the game well, has a great long pass and a great shot. He is the perfect defender, born for today’s game.’ Ireland boss Jack Charlton repeated the praise. ‘He can do everything! In England he would be worth gold. We hardly have any like him, a player who can defend and attack brilliantly.’
Rijkaard moved to AC Milan in 1988, and because Arrigo Sacchi had created the most formidable defensive quartet of that era – Mauro Tassotti, Franco Baresi, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini – Rijkaard was deployed in midfield alongside another future Champions League-winning manager, Carlo Ancelotti. This came to be Rijkaard’s established position; he won the 1989 European Cup from midfield and was again voted third in the Ballon d’Or, and then helped Milan retain the European Cup by scoring the only goal in the final, breaking forward from midfield, receiving a through-ball from Marco van Basten and finishing coolly. Rijkaard was now a box-to-box midfielder. But for Holland he was fielded as a central defender at the 1990 World Cup, with the midfield based around the underperforming Ruud Gullit, his Milan teammate and childhood friend. Being deployed at centre-back frustrated Rijkaard and contributed to his decision to quit the national side. He wanted to be the playmaker, not a man-marker, and only returned to international duty when promised a midfield role.
Upon his return to Ajax in 1993, Rijkaard was less mobile, more mature and happier playing defensively – so the position Van Gaal had earmarked for him was perfect. In Ajax’s 3–4–3, he played as the number 4, essentially anchoring the midfield ahead of captain Blind but dropping back to become a defender when necessary. But crucially, for a player who always wanted to be a playmaker, that’s precisely what Van Gaal demanded from him, and although asked to track opposition forwards, Rijkaard was also free to join the attack.
Rijkaard played a crucial role in Ajax’s 1995 European Cup Final win against Milan with his assist for Patrick Kluivert, but arguably more significant was the fact that he had taken control in the Ajax dressing room at half-time, laying into Clarence Seedorf and rallying his teammates, a moment Van Gaal would repeatedly cite as an example of a teammate stepping up and assuming responsibility. Rijkaard retired from football immediately after the triumphant final – which meant that his first departure from Ajax, in 1987, came after his manager Cruyff complained about his lack of leadership skills, and his second departure, in 1995, came after his manager Van Gaal was delighted with them.
Alongside Blind and Rijkaard was Frank de Boer, capable of playing left-back or left-sided centre-back, and therefore ideal for the flexible nature of Ajax’s defence. He was a wonderful distributor, particularly when spraying long, diagonal passes to a centre-forward who had drifted into the opposite channel. The classic example was the most famous Dutch pass of the 1990s, the pinpoint 60-yard diagonal to Dennis Bergkamp in the dying seconds of the 1998 World Cup quarter-final against Argentina. It was a good ball, made into a great one by Bergkamp’s extraordinary feat of bringing the ball down, beating Roberto Ayala and lifting the ball into the net with three quick touches. But Bergkamp’s favourite goal owed everything to his existing relationship with De Boer, as he explained when outlining how he received the pass. ‘You’ve had the eye contact … Frank knows exactly what he’s going to do. There’s contact, you’re watching him. He’s looking at you, you know his body language: he’s going to give the ball.’
Bergkamp knew, because De Boer had played that pass to him so often at club level, the best instance coming on Valentine’s Day 1993 at PSV. De Boer moved forward on the left of the Ajax defence and thumped a perfect curling ball into the right-hand channel for Bergkamp, who responded with a typical three-card trick: controlling the ball with his right thigh, then knocking the ball past the defender with
