It was impossible not to love and admire Johan Neeskens. Yes, he was an Ajax player and as a Feyenoord fan you’re not supposed to adore Ajax players, but Neeskens was Neeskens. And I know for a fact many non-Ajax fans loved to see “Nees” do his thing. He transcended club loyalty.
Feyenoord midfielder Willem van Hanegem played many a game against Neeskens (at Ajax and also when at Barcelona) and the two would have literal fights on the pitch: elbows, studs up, black eyes, bloody noses and at one point a broken jaw. Neeskens did get his revenge, though. When Van Hanegem was hospitalised for tonsils removal, Neeskens had a plan: “I would visit Willem in hospital to apologise, and I would bring him nuts and toffees just to screw with him, as he wasn’t able to swallow those,” Nees would explain. The two became the biggest mates.
Witch arch enemy and arch friend Van Hanegem
Ajax found the young Neeskens, or Johan II as he would become, in the shadow of the other Johan (at Ajax, Oranje and Barca) at Heemstede, a small village to the west of Amsterdam. Arie van Eijden, Ajax player and later board member and director, was leaving Ajax to slowly retire at a lower level. Van Eijden trained with Heemstede and immediately tipped Ajax: there is a 18 year old guy as right back here…. you need to sign him pronto.
He made his debut at 19 and everyone could see what Van Eijden had seen: speed, guts, balls, courage, skills and the iron will to win. Nees was a right back and Heemstede, and he played on that spot in the 1971 European final with Ajax, but Michels quickly turned him into a marauding midfielder.
A young Nees
He looked like an angel, when he was young, but played like a demon. The quintessential box to box midfielder: breaking up the opponents attacks in midfield with a flying block tackle and than racing like a madman into the opponent’s box to score with a diving header (his signature move).
If Total Football can be seen as one part creativity and another part high press, than Johan I was the epitome of creavity, while Johan II was the symbol of the harrassing, the pressing, the tackling.
Oh how Johan Cruyff (and Van Hanegem) loved to play with the youngster behind them, as he played for two players.
The holy trinity
But Nees was more than an enforcer. He could play football alright.
According to the stories of the time, Johan Neeskens wasn’t very educated. Came from a poor background (Arie van Eijden bought him his first boots) and when he first came to Ajax he was a bit out of sorts. Young lad in a big city, amongst the best players of Europe.
He would stay with right winger and Mr Ajax Sjaak Swart on the weekends and was basically adopted as a new family member. They would share typical Dutch meals together ( hutspot, zuurkool) and play board games. The life Neeskens loved and would dramatically miss in his future years.
The shy and soft spoken Neeskens became a monster once on the pitch and he would ease into the role of fan favorite, not just at Ajax, but for the whole nation.
Red and orange looked good on Nees
Imagine a midfield with Wim Jansen ( the Scholes-like tactician), Willem van Hanegem ( the Zidane like playmaker) and Neeskens ( a bit like Roy Keane maybe) and Johan Cruyff in front of them.
He shone so bright at the 1974 World Cup, and he is etched into the Dutch pop culture as a result of his white jersey turning red in the semi finals versus Brazil. His epic battles with the Brazilians can be viewed on youtube and despite the knocks, kicks and blows he was still able to score an amazing goal in that match, offered to him by his “older brother” JC.
Scoring the penalty in the first minute of the 1074 finals
Funny anecdote about Neeskens and penalties. He was a true specialist and he would always pick a corner. But he knew Sepp Maier studied the penalty takers and during the run up for this pen, Neeskens decided to switch corners. Maier went for the right corner, but as Johan decided to go for the other corner, Maier would fail to stop the ball. But…. the ball never made it into the other corner, it went straight to the middle. And ever since, whenever a penalty is taken hard through the middle, commentators will call it “A penalty a la Neeskens” or “a Neeskens penalty” (like the Panenka). But Nees would chuckle and say that this was in fact the only time he ever hit the ball straight through the middle.
Michels went to Barcelona and Johan I and Johan II followed not much later. Neeskens would become hugely popular in the Camp Nou as well and was nicknamed El Toro. Not sure why ;-).
He spent 6 seasons at Barca, winning one title and one European Cup ( the Cupwinners Cup) before signing for star studded New York Cosmos where he’s stay for 5 seasons. There he became the team of peers like Franz Beckenbauer, Pele, Francisco Marinho and compatriate Wim Rijsbergen.
Arsenal was keen to sign the midfielder too, but didn’t want to offer more than a 3 year deal. Cosmos offered a 5 year deal and a nice sponsoring package, as the US was the marketing wonderland of football at the time.
Tackling hard for the New York Cosmos
Sadly, Neeskens lost his way in New York (or did he find it). The high life of the jet set was a bit too much for El Toro, who got hooked on cocaine, alcohol and gambling.
Despite being shy and introverted, Neeskens didn’t suffer fools gladly and would have strong clashes with his coaches. Weisweiller was the Cosmos coach and after yet another clash, the German task master penalised El Torro and told him to come to the Cosmos stadium at 6 am in the morning to run circles around the Cosmos stadium. These types of insults contributed to Neeksens’ depressions and fall into addiction.
He was close to becoming a total wash up and when the Dutch football elite heard about his issues, a rescue mission was started by Dutch National Team manager Kees Rijvers, who’d fly to New York to check in Nees. Rijvers told him the national team needed him, as we were desperately trying to qualify for major tournaments again, but were lacking in midfield class players. Rijvers took Neeskens home and installed him at his family home where Neeskens became a member of the family and worked tirelessly to quit the addictions and become fit again. He would indeed make the key match for Oranje, against Belgium. Oranje played in De Kuip and won 3-0. I was there and saw Neeskens almost score from a sensational volley. The Belgium players had respect for Neeskens and allowed him to shine. But it was to no avail as Oranje did lose the key game away versus France, due to a Platini free kick and an on-pitch confrontation between Ruud Krol and Hans van Breukelen.
Working on his come back with legendary coach Kees Rijvers
Nees would play 7 games for FC Groningen before returning to the US to play indoor football. His private life brought him to Switzerland where he lived and played at lower levels until he really quit and went into coaching.
He was relatively successful with FC Zug, the team from his home town in Der Schweiz before Hiddink lured him to the KNVB to become assistant coach with the Dutch NT. After that stint, he became the head coach at NEC Nijmegen, where he would finish the highest in the league for the ambitious club (5th) and reach European football. After NEC he would assist Hiddink with the Australian national team. When Hiddink resigned, the Australian federation wanted Nees to take the head coach role, but the former Ajax midfielder preferred the assistant role and would go to support Frank Rijkaard at Barcelona, replacing Henk ten Cate.
Enjoying life in Barcelona again
Neeskens will go down in history as one of the best Dutch players of all time. Greats like Cruyff, Swart and Van Hanegem would laude him as one of the best allround players of all time and all the lads who had him as a coach praised his down to Earth, warm and simple but effective coaching.
The best compliment a player can get, however, is when parents name their kid after famous players. Yohan Cabaye was named after Cruyff, of course. There are numerous Jari’s in Holland and there are definitely a lot of Zinedines, Zico’s, Diegos and Marcos out there. Not sure which Johan’s will be named after the Nees, but it’s definitely so that Neeskens Kebano (Al-Jazira) from Congo was named after one of Holland’s most loyal and impressive football sons.
Neeskens Kebano at Fulham
Here he is in full flight. Enjoy.
Lineup, per VI:
Verbruggen; Van de Ven, Van Dyke, De Vrij, Dumfries; Q. Timber, Gravenberch, Reijnders; Gakpo, Zirkzee, Simons.
Zirkzee playing like Manchester United… 75th minute and still no changes in the team..
Wow, looks like the oranges are happy with a 1-1 result. Against Germany we will suffer a lot, no strikers that can finish, not even a simple header (Brobbey).
I, too, was surprised that they made no changes until the 75th minute, too.
Germany didn’t look great against Bosnia either. With so many games, there are bound to be bad, uninspired performances if the same guys are playing game after game. Both teams were likely looking forward to Monday. I imagine the NT will be better in Munich.
Top two teams will qualify, so no reason not to rotate players as much as possible in these games. Its win/win. Maatsen, Frimpong, Kluivert, Hato, Malen, Wieffer, who don’t usually start would have provided more energy out there today, Koeman could have seen them all on the field, and the other guys would have been rested for Monday.
OT. Johan, When I come on to the site, I can’t see if there are any comments unless I log in. Previously, you could see the comments just by coming on to the site, no need to log in.
Hi Andrew, ok I saw the problem as well that you need to be logged-in, i made a change in the settings of the blog, please confirm that its ok now at your side please….
Hi Johan. Problem fixed. All good.
Halo there folks. I don’t think koeman is the right man to lead the team to World Cup. My take from the game. Won’t go on the players but koeman is not the man to lead this team to the WC.
I will start with both coaches and I have said this several times when koeman meets up with a good coach who can counter his tatical game, he always finds himself gasping for air. Marco Rossi is not a household name coach but he has really made a name for himself being the coach of hungry team since 2018. When the game started it looked like it was going to be another of those one way traffic game where the NT look in control and with poessesion . But they got pegged when hungry scored on the side playing defensively and that was tatic that hungry deployed. I think their GK deserves a laud of applauses for his performances.
I still don’t understand why koeman is persistent with this tatic of centering things around dumfries. The same old,one flanks is offensive and the other defensively and which only shines vs average teams. Yes he came up with the goal and was probably the man of the match but these are the typical games where you expect him to give those type of performance especially when hungry defended throughout the game and until the red card. My point here is this. First of all koeman tatic of having him play high and LB Ake/ Van der ven dropping to back three will crumble if dumfries is not avaliable or gets injured and then the back up players Frimpong and make shift likes of Geertruida which is often the case are neither on the same page or have the same grip in the team given minutes played and are often one step down. This is the very reason why every time there is injuries, the team is in a disorientation state. The balance offsets. I mean you look at Frimpong situation, if dumfries gets injured, what do you expect him to do. Then koeman comes up with pussy excuses depicting injuries to hide his blemishes.
I mean if you think about it and did watch the games, the Hungarian were vulnerable on ariel balls but they played to koeman tatical back and lateral passing game and which they defensively and compactly closed of well. When gakpo took over the set piece duties then it came to light what was the best way to counter the Hungarian defensive tatic and again koeman came out second best in the tatical battle of the coaches.
Secondly I think it’s well proven in games when dumfries is stuck at the back defending and especially when the poessession is not in their favour, that’s when you see him shouting and yelling because this is when that tatic of his simply crumbles. Then he resorts to the bench but only to complicate things more and if not hope for weghorst to pull something out of the hat . unfortunately he left him out this time.
Koeman used the same tatic at euros. One flank offensive and the other defensive and it again flourished with average teams and dragged vs big opponents and he still is continuing trying to prove what? Why not look for RW. Kluivert and Lang are both technical enough to play on the right and this is one area he shud be build on but he he still focused and persistent with that one flank offensive and one flank defensive tatic. How he subbed on til is beyond my humanly imagination.
I was reading an article on how the Dutch critics were against these nation leagues games citing it as useless and burden on players. To think about it the FIFA has regulated the 5 Subs rule so why not take advantage of this but the problem is koeman just sticks to the same recipe and same line up.
Imagine if this game would have been in a tournament. It’s gonna happen again and again. His tatic is becoming obvious building around dumfries. Once vs teams dumfries gets defensively occupied more, this tatic of his will crumble down like house of cards. Like Spain vs cucurella and Williams, Italy, Dimarco.
The other thing to note is how other teams are rotating their players and building good depth. I was watching Spain and portgual. Injuries aside they are using extensive squad with rotation. Especially with the top players they have all around. If you compare this to NT and koeman , look at Frimpong and Maatsen situation and how dumfries role dictates the tatic and lineup. Once again the day dumfries gets injured or with teams gets pegged at back. It’s gonna be the same old story.
Let’s see how the team copes with Van dinks absence ence and let’s see what will koeman excuses after the game.