The word TOTAL FOOTBALL is a tactical playing theory where any outfield player adopts the role of any other player within the team in the game of football. It creates a fluid tactical system and a dynamic role where no outfield player has a fixed role or position, except goal keeper. Any player can switch their position of playing as an attacker or forward or midfielder or defender dynamically and their position will be replaced by another member from their team instantly thereby solidifies the team’s organizational structure. It is typically played in a fast-paced fashion and players needs lot of energy, determination, flexibility and adoptability to achieve success as this is a risk-taking approach from normal traditional approach. The success of Total Football philosophy is, however, almost completely dependent on the fluidity and ability of each footballer within the team, as well as their ability to switch positions quickly.
The traditional approach is a formation such as 4-3-3 or 4-2-4 or 5-3-2 and many more where all the 10 players were considered for formation except goalkeeper. Nowadays 4-3-3 is highly adopted by many teams and 4-2-4 is with Brazilian teams where they play more attacking football and 5-3-2 is with teams like Italy where they want to have tight defense.
Total Football was made famous by the Johan Cryuff who has a nick name, Flying Dutchman. During late 1960s and early 1970s, he along with Rinus Michels, the Ajax Amsterdam manager has successfully implemented TOTAL FOOTBALL in Dutch league and went on the win four titles (the Netherlands national league, KNVB Cup, European Cup and Intercontinental Cup) for Ajax during 1972 alone. The team also maintained a perfect home winning record of (46–0–0) for two full seasons (1971–72 and 1972–73), just one defeat in the whole of the 1971–72 season in an away game.
With the same tactical theory, the Netherlands team reached 1974 world cup final before losing out to West Germany, 2-1 in final. The final was held at Olympia Stadium, Munich on 7th July 1974 and Johan Cryuff led Netherlands took the hosts, Franz Beckenbauer led West Germany and within a minute to the start, the flying dutchman entered West Germany penalty before being brought down by their defender and a controversial penalty kick was awarded to Netherlands. Johan Neeskens put Netherlands into lead and Paul Breitner equalized for West Germany at 26th minute through another controversial penalty kick and the winning goal by Gerd Muller at 43rd minute. Overall, the world of football watched two different theories, TOTAL FOOTBALL vs TOTAL DISCIPLINE in the 1974 world cup final, where Kaiser (the King in German language) Franz Beckenbauer emerged triumph, but still the concept of TOTAL FOOTBALL took the world by storm.
Netherlands still continued TOTAL FOOTBALL even after Johan Cryuff retirement at 1977 and went on to reach second consecutive world cup final and this time against host Argentina during 1978 before losing out again and this time to Mario Kempes led Argentina. In early 1980’s, TOTAL FOOTBALL was started declining and teams switched back to traditional approach of formation, but still TOTAL FOOTBALL is synonymous with Flying Dutchman, Late Johan Cryuff.
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