The General is dead

Rinus Michels, the Dutch coach who invented the concept of 8216;8216;total football8217;8217; and was named Coach of the Century by FIFA...

Rinus Michels, the Dutch coach who invented the concept of 8216;8216;total football8217;8217; and was named Coach of the Century by FIFA in 1999, died on Thursday, the Dutch soccer association KNVB said. He was 77.

Nicknamed 8216;The General8217;, Michels famously compared football to war and was renowned for his no-nonsense coaching style during a career at clubs including Ajax Amsterdam, Barcelona, FC Cologne and Bayer Leverkusen.

8216;8216;He was one of the best coaches we had in history8217;8217;, KNVB spokesman Frank Huizinga said.

Michels coached the Dutch national side to the 1974 World Cup final and to victory in the 1988 European Championship. He played 269 matches as a centre forward for Ajax in the 1940s and 1950s and won five caps for the Netherlands. He scored 121 goals in all.

He started coaching Ajax in 1965 and by 1971 they were European champions for the first time, beating Panathinaikos of Greece in the final at Wembley.

At the heart of that side was Johann Cruyff, and after Michels left for Barcelona later in 1971 he returned to Amsterdam to sign the great forward for the Catalan club.

In 1974 Michels led the Netherlands to the World Cup final, where they lost 2-1 to hosts West Germany in Munich.

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After further stints at Ajax and Barcelona, where he won theSpanish League championship in 1974, he moved to the Los Angeles Aztecs from 1978-1980 then onto Cologne from 1980-1983, before finishing his club coaching career with Bayer Leverkusen in Germany in 1989.

The year before the Dutch had won the 1988 European title by beating the Soviet Union in the final.

Michels will be best remembered as the architect of 8216;Total Football8217; 8212; in which every outfield player felt comfortable playing anywhere on the pitch.

He lived for soccer and even at an advanced age still went to matches, basking in the spontaneous applause from a Dutch public that remained loyal to its hero. Reuters

TOTALLY AWESOME

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The greatest team to never win the World Cup: That8217;s the Dutch side of 1974, which lost 2-1 in the final to West Germany. It was a team packed with stars 8212; Neeskens, Rensenbrink, Rep 8212; but the greatest of all was Johan Cruyff. The Dutch dazzled because they played everywhere, making them impossible to mark. And because they were supremely talented.

They stormed their way to the final, and began that match in similar style. Holland scored the first goal before a single German player had touched the ball: the Dutch players passed the ball among them and eventually won a penalty which Neeskens converted. But the free-flowing game was stifled by the efficiency and strength of Vogts and beckenbauer.

Fourteen years later another Dutch team dazzled with its talent. Led by Gullit, and also starring Rijkaard and van Basten, Holland finally won a major trophy, the European Nations Cup, in 1988. Once again, Michels was pulling the strings.