Bespreekbaarheid
- Apr 24
- 7 min read
Barcelona FC were struggling.
They had won the league only once in a decade and near the end of the 1987-88 season the team were 25 points behind the leaders, languishing in 6th place.
Then there was the Hesperia Mutiny.
As a result of some “creative accountancy” by the management the players had suddenly been saddled with unexpected tax bills.
The players and the coach openly rebelled.
“President Josep Lluis Núñez has deceived us as people and humiliated us as professionals,” the captain Alexanko declared to a room of journalists. “In conclusion, although this request is usually the preserve of the club’s members, the squad suggest the immediate resignation of the president.”
Núñez reacted by dismissing 14 players and the coach.
Elections for the presidency were fast approaching and in desperation Núñez needed to find a popular manager to turn things around.
He turned to a former legendary player of the club Johan Cruyff.
Total Footballer
Cruyff was a street kid from Amsterdam who started his playing career at his local club Ajax.
There he became the central figure in the development of a playing style called ‘total football’, a high-intensity tactical system where the players fluidly switched positions to create opportunities against teams playing in more rigid structures.
Cruyff called it "controlled chaos".
And as the striker and the most talented member of the team he was the lead instigator of this chaos.
With Cruyff controlling the games Ajax started to dominate Dutch football winning the league title in 1966 (just two years after his first game), 67, 68, 70, 72 and 73.
In the 50s and 60s the Dutch league had been a backwater, but all of a sudden with the freedom of total football, Cruyff, Ajax and the Dutch national team started to become a leading force in world football.
Ajax won the European Cup three years in a row at the start of the seventies, the national team reached the final of the 1974 World Cup after lighting up the tournament, and Cruyff won the Ballon d’Or for the best European footballer in 1971, 73 and 74.
In 1973 he transferred to Barcelona for a world record fee.
Barcelona hadn’t won the league in 14 years and they were in 14th place in the league when Cruyff made his debut.
Barcelona won the league that season.
After 8 years of success at Barcelona he played in the USA before finishing his career back in the Netherlands.
At Ajax he won two more league titles.
And when Ajax refused him a contract extension at the grand old age of 36 he moved to their rivals Feyenoord, won a league and cup double and was voted Dutch Footballer of the Year for the fifth time.
Cruyff was gifted and persistent, but what made him the best player in the world at the time was how he thought.
He was constantly seeking strategic opportunities and tactical advantages for himself and his team.
After being complimented by journalists on his pace he said, "What is speed? The sports press often confuses speed with insight. See, if I start running slightly sooner than someone else, I look faster."
He became an incredibly effective player-coach.
During games he’d constantly direct play, pointing and shouting instructions to his teammates while he was dribbling the ball.
It was this mindset that allowed him to quickly transition into a second career as a great football manager, first at Ajax, and then in 1988 on his return to Barcelona.
The Dream Team
Núñez was a pragmatic businessman who liked control, order and profitability.
It was only due to his and Barcelona’s dire circumstances that he was forced to hire someone like Cruyff.
Cruyff was a very different character, fast-speaking, blunt, working class and outspoken - he wanted to win with style and prioritised that above all else.
From the start the two were at odds about how things should be run.
But despite their underlying differences over the next eight years Cruyff led Barcelona to an incredible run of 11 trophies including four consecutive league titles.
He built the “Dream Team” based on the ideas of total football, his new concept tiki-taka (dominating possession through short passes and constant movement) and the idea of building these footballing concepts into the core of the club through their new and soon to be immensely effective youth academy.
But as the core of the Dream Team aged, results faltered.
In 1994 Barcelona reached the European Champions League finals as favourites, but they were overwhelmed by AC Milan.
Dramatic change was needed.
Cruyff was very blunt about the solution: "After we lost 4-0 to Milan in 1994, I told Núñez the team was dead. It needed a total transplant. I gave them a list of names not to be difficult, but because I knew that if we didn't sign at that level, we would become mediocre.”
Cruyff’s recommendations is a ‘Who’s Who’ of 90s icons including Zinedine Zidane, Ryan Giggs, David Ginola, Laurent Blanc and Luis Enrique.
Núñez expected deference to his role as President and was insulted by what he saw as Cruyff’s demands.
He turned down the list saying, “Johan, we cannot sign players like Ryan Giggs or Zinedine Zidane if we don't have the financial liquid assets ready.”
(It was a lie - just a few months after this incident Núñez set a world record transfer fee for Ronaldo Nazário, a player he wanted that wasn't on Cruyff’s list.)
Cruyff saw the President as just a person who needed to hear the blunt truth of the situation, regardless of the consequences.
He believed that the direction for the club had to be addressed to save its future, and if that required a shouting match then that was the moral thing to do.
And suddenly years of underlying mistrust burst into open conflict.
It pushed Núñez over the edge: "When a coach tells the president of the club that he is 'a liar' and 'a traitor,' the professional relationship is effectively over. I have tolerated a lot over these eight years because I wanted what was best for Barça. I put the sporting success ahead of my own pride. But we reached a point where the lack of respect toward the board of directors was constant. You cannot manage a club where the employees do not respect the hierarchy."
Núñez fired the club’s most successful coach.
Cruyff would never manage again.
Bespreekbaarheid
My father-in-law is also a street kid from Amsterdam and an extremely frank man.
And after spending time in the Netherlands I realised that it’s not just a character quirk of these two, being blunt is a Dutch cultural standard.
It’s called bespreekbaarheid.
Bespreekbaarheid is the belief that everything can and should be discussed openly and that you should always say what you mean.
In the UK, if we say “I’ll try to come to the party” what we actually mean is “I’ve no intention whatsoever of attending."
We’re trying to be polite and not hurt feelings, but it's a source of miscommunication and mistakes.
In the same situation a Dutch person will say “No, that’s not something I’d like to do.”
Their directness is a form of honesty rather than rudeness.
No time is wasted and everyone leaves the conversation fully aware of the plan.
In bespreekbaarheid:
no topic is too uncomfortable to be put on the table,
the truth is more important than anyone's temporary comfort,
hierarchies should not prevent hard truths from being spoken,
and in this culture of candor there’s no massaging of tough feedback - there are no shit sandwiches, you just get straight to the shit.
Bespreekbaarheid is a major factor in what made Cruyff great.
He made everything discussable, turning the game into a set of logical principles that could be debated, refined, and mastered.
It allowed him to personally transform the way he and those around him played the game.
And it allowed him to be a brilliant coach and mentor.
As a player and as a manager he [Cruyff] won a lot of titles, but that's not his legacy. The titles only help. Johan has changed two clubs. Not only did he change Ajax, but also Barcelona - and then the Dutch and Spanish national teams, too. I would not have been capable of doing what he did at Barcelona. He changed everything. He did it all. What Cruyff's done for football cannot be compared. The statue thing is superficial. He has made us love this sport so openly that there's no way we can forget him. - Pep Guardiola
Núñismo vs. Cruyffismo
If you need to drive change and innovation bespreekbaarheid is essential.
A focus on hierarchy, order and politeness will only result in a continuation of the status quo.
And that's what happened after Cruyff left Barcelona.
The club was left in the stifling control of a series of pragmatist administrators who followed the approach of Núñez - called the Núñismo.
But there was also a group of people that strongly believed in Cruyff’s football-first first approach - the Cruyffismo - who eventually managed to wrestle control of the club.
You can see the effects of this struggle in the results of the club.
Cruyffismo just works far better.
In the long-term the Cruyffismo movement spread across football.
Right now all the teams winning the biggest leagues in Europe are led by coaches heavily influenced by Cruyff:
Pep Guardiola who played in Cruyff’s Dream Team is battling it out for the English league title against Mikel Arteta, a man he mentored,
Vincent Kompany, who was Guardiola’s captain at Man City has just won the German league,
Luis Enrique, the last player Cruyff signed at Barcelona is leading the French league,
Cristian Chivu who learned his trade as an Ajax player is leading the Italian league,
and Barcelona are leading the Spanish league,
We should all be more bespreekbaarheid.
“The Dutch love their country and are proud of the legacy left by Erasmus, Grotius, Spinoza, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Cornelis Lely and Johan Cruyff.” - King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands
Murray, A., “How Johan Cruyff reinvented modern football at Barcelona”, FourFourTwo (March 2020)
Guardiola, P., “Cruyff's legacy is infinite, we will never forget him” SPORT.es (2016)
King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands, Speech by His Majesty the King on the occasion of his visit to the European Parliament, Brussels. Royal House of the Netherlands (2016)
