Stillness and Speed: My Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

opposition stays
organised and nothing happens. The one-man advantage
is
Ajax football.’
    Highlights of some of the games Ajax played at that time are on YouTube: treat yourself by looking them up. To say that Cruyff got his team playing 4-3-3 would be to miss the point. What counted
was not the formation but the state of mind. His daring young side pressed, passed and moved in beguiling patterns high up the field. Rijkaard, Ronald Koeman, Van’t Schip and Van Basten were
imperious. Silky veteran Arnold Muhren, lured from Manchester United, rarely misplaced a pass, and goalkeeper Stanley Menzo played so far from his line he sometimes seemed to be an auxiliary
midfielder. In Cruyff’s first season, Ajax scored 120 goals, Van Basten getting 37 of them in just 26 games. The team had off days as well, of course, but when they were good they were
spectacular. A couple of years earlier Van Basten had led an 8-2 demolition of Feyenoord. Now rugby-esque scorelines – 9-0, 8-1, 6-0 – became routine against lesser teams. After his
first season, when technical midfielders Koeman and Gerald Vanenburg followed the money to PSV, Cruyff counter-intuitively replaced them with two gnarly defenders, Danny Blind and Jan Wouters.
Having revamped the Ajax Youth system, he also promoted youngsters like Aron Winter and the Witschge brothers, Robbie and Richard. The team, thus stabilised, played even better than before.
    This was the Ajax into which Dennis, still at school, would now be thrown. He describes himself as ‘pleasantly nervous’, as his parents drive him to the stadium in their little
Datsun Cherry for his first game against Roda. Dennis’s mum tells the security guy that the kid in the back seat will play in the first team. The security guy has never heard of him and only
lets him through after a conversation on his walkie-talkie. Inside, Dennis is soothed by the calm of the players’ lounge where Frank Rijkaard welcomes him and cracks some jokes. Dennis just
watches and takes it all in. Then Cruyff arrives. ‘He’s a pretty small guy but his presence was enormous,’ Dennis remembers. ‘You felt a personality enter the room. He
didn’t speak to me. That came later. Everyone wished me a good time, including “Auntie Sien” the bar lady.’ Soon the game is about to start and Dennis takes his place beside
Cruyff in the dugout. ‘Nice to see you here,’ says the great man. ‘Take a good look around, taste the atmosphere, enjoy it.’
    ‘There you are, in the stadium, sitting next to Cruyff. But I wasn’t scared, not at all. The only one thing I wanted was to get on the pitch. I was sure Cruyff wouldn’t have
brought me out there for nothing. I thought, “After half-time he’s going to bring me on.”’ In the 66th minute, he does. Dennis, aged 17 years and seven months (the same age
as Cruyff on his debut 22 years earlier), trots on wearing number 16 and takes his place on the right-wing. ‘I wasn’t a bundle of nerves. I was just excited.’ There are just
11,000 people in the stadium: barely half full. His parents, having bought their own rather expensive tickets, are sitting in the Reynolds Stand, on Dennis’s side of the pitch. Marcel,
nervously standing near the F-Side, tells one of the regulars: ‘I think that’s my little brother warming up right now.’ Dennis remembers every detail. ‘I went onto the pitch
and I loved it: the grass, the atmosphere in the ground, being able to join such a great squad, the encouragement from the other players, especially Rijkaard. And I had Wouters behind me, which was
reassuring. Right away I saw I was faster than my opponent, so I thought: “OK, I have options here: my advantage is speed and I’m going to use it.” I really wasn’t thinking:
“Oh my God, I’m playing for Ajax!” I just felt good, totally natural.’ Ajax won 2-0. Afterwards, in the dressing room, Rijkaard came over and asked Dennis how old he was.
‘Seventeen? Then