Cruyff sticks the boot into Dutch ‘anti-football’

The current crop of Dutch footballers may think that it is perfectly aceptable to kick your opponents up in the air for two hours, and then turn on the referee when you lose - but the Dutch master Johan Cruyff does not. And has accused his compatriots of playing 'anti-football' rather than 'Total Football'.

Cruyff has launched a blistering attack on the Dutch team's performance in the World Cup final on Sunday - and his comments will no doubt cause as much hand wringing in his homeland as a third final defeat for the Oranje.

Cruyff is one of the games' greats and was at the heart of the Dutch team that finished second at the 1974 and 1978 tournaments. Those teams pioneered the concept of 'Total Football', a fluid system where players can take up any position on the pitch. But as The First Post reported on Monday, the tactics of the 2010 vintage saw them forfeit the right to be associated with the greats of Cruyff's generation.

And the manner of the Netherlands's performance angered the former Ajax man who said he had hoped his country "would never renounce their style".

But after the game he was forced to admit that "regrettably, sadly, they played very dirty". He elaborated: "So much so that they should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two [such] ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage... Holland chose an ugly path to aim for the title."

Cruyff wasn't finished there. He added: "This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style, yes it served the Dutch to unsettle Spain. If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they ended up losing. They were playing anti-football."

He too joined in the criticism of English ref Howard Webb, but his main gripe was that he should have sent off two Dutch players to stamp out their persistent fouling. ·