World football mourns death of Dutch master Cruyff

AMSTERDAM: Johan Cruyff, one of football's greatest players and most influential and visionary coaches, died aged 68 on Thursday after a five-month battle with lung cancer.

The death of the Dutchman, whose creative genius on the pitch and inventive brilliance as a coach changed the modern game, prompted an outpouring of tributes to a figure hailed as doing more than anyone to "to make the beautiful game beautiful".

In his heyday in the early 1970s, Cruyff, slender, quick-witted and outrageously gifted, helped a generation of football fans across the world see the game in a different light.

Unquestionably the best player in the world in that period, he was voted three times winner of the prestigious Ballon d'Or so that he is now often mentioned alongside the pair widely considered the finest to have played the game, Pele and Diego Maradona.

Brazilian Pele said on Thursday: "Johan Cruyff was a great player and coach. He leaves a very important legacy for our family of football. We have lost a great man."

Maradona said: "We will never forget you, mate" while another Argentine Lionel Messi, the world's best current player, added: "Another legend has left us today."

Cruyff, who had announced last October that he was suffering from lung cancer, had said only last month that he was "2-0 up in the first half" of his battle against the disease.

Poignantly, that turned out to be one of the last public statements made by the sage whose observations on the modern game were eagerly courted in global football, with his weekly column for De Telegraaf newspaper a must-read until the end.

Cruyff died surrounded by his friends and family at his home in Barcelona, according to his official website.

The news prompted eulogies from his home country with Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, saying: "The whole world knew him and, through him, the world knew the Netherlands."

The Netherlands' international against France on Friday in Amsterdam will be halted for a minute-long silence after 14 minutes in tribute to Cruyff, who wore the number 14 in his playing days.

In his adopted home of Barcelona, though, the loss was just as keenly felt with Cruyff having become an iconic figure in the Catalan city, where their current world-beating team, featuring Messi, still bears the hallmarks of his attacking invention.

As Pep Guardiola, one of his successful and influential successors as Barcelona coach, said: "He painted the chapel and Barcelona coaches since have merely restored or improved it."