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When Total football became a total borefest

In a short series to reflect the cricket and footballing summer, volunteer Peter Bloor looks back to his own sporting memories in his latest features for our website.

For his first piece in this short series, Peter casts his mind back to 1974, when he visited the Victoria Ground to watch Stoke City take on the might of Dutch giants Ajax in the UEFA Cup. 

“Stoke City could not have asked for more attractive opponents…”

Just over 10 weeks after the orange swirl of Holland’s total football had been halted in the 1974 World Cup Final by West Germany I saw Ajax play at Stoke City in the UEFA Cup. The two Johans, Cruyff and Neeskens, had left, but Ruud Krol, Arie Haan and Johnny Rep, all of whom had played in that final, and Piet Keizer from the Dutch squad were still coming so this was bound to be memorable – wasn’t it?

“Clinical Ajax annoy Stoke crowd”

No, it wasn’t – and one of the reasons was that that Ajax were just too good. They did not make mistakes or give the ball away, and so were perfectly capable of turning in the classic 1970s European away leg performance by initially playing for a draw and then, with the bonus of an away goal, shutting the game down with time-wasting, niggling or blatant fouls and an offside trap that hemmed Stoke in around the halfway line. Nor were they any better in possession, playing endless passes amongst themselves in defence before a final one back to the ‘keeper at the first distant sight of a Stoke player.

“I can see why Ajax’s ground holds only 29,500 people”

There was one flashback to the World Cup when Ruud Krol scored with a 20, perhaps 25-yard shot as he done against Argentina in Holland’s first Group match, but where was the football that had given us the Cruyff Turn against Sweden – and against Uruguay the match in which he had also brought the ball down from head height to score a goal that was disallowed for dangerous play? Where was the drive of Neeskens, constantly pushing his side forward instead of all this messing around in defence before going nowhere but backwards?

It - and they – were of course in Barcelona with the originator of total football at Ajax and its authoritarian overseer as Dutch national coach Rinus Michels. Admittedly solely on the evidence of that one night in Stoke something had gone with them - perhaps the desire, or perhaps the ability to play total football, perhaps even the philosophy itself - but whatever it was had left behind the stultifying spectacle of a quartet of the 1974 World Cup’s total footballers - representing the very club at which the philosophy had been nurtured - playing the joyless football of cynics and pragmatists.

“Only Keizer lived up to their reputation”

I have only a memory of Krol’s shot and goal but reportedly it came from a pass by Piet Keizer following a one-two with Johnny Rep. That was a close as we came to the World Cup, and my strongest memories of our evening with the Total Footballers of 1974 are of mist (actually tobacco smoke of course) in the floodlights, fidgeting about through boredom and of driving past the end of the road where my grandmother lived without stopping, as we usually did. This being a European night it was also a school night, which shows what a big deal this all was – until that is Total Football totally flopped.