The Decibel - Introducing Pitch and Power: How Soccer Shapes Everything

Episode Date: June 14, 2026

Introducing Pitch and Power: How Soccer Shapes Everything, The Globe and Mail’s new soccer podcast for World Cup 2026. Every Thursday, throughout the tournament, host Eoin O’Callaghan will look at eight moments that changed soccer, the moments and stories that extend beyond the field and into politics, culture and the moral climate of their day. In this episode, the focus is on Johan Cruyff, the Dutch master who took the 1974 World Cup by storm with a Total Football movement – but a team’s heartbreak turned genius into myth.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, it's Cheryl. The World Cup is officially here, a record 48 nations all playing in the largest soccer tournament in history. All tournament long, every Thursday, the Globe and Mail will take you behind soccer's biggest stories, beyond the field. Our new podcast, Pitch and Power, how soccer shapes everything, looks at eight moments that change soccer and the world. This isn't just about the game. It's about what the sport means. in politics, culture, and history. Owen O'Callaghan interviews writers, players, and witnesses to the World Cup about the triumph, joy, and sometimes devastation of the beautiful game. This episode kicks off with an orange revolution. It's the story of how a swaggering Dutch team and its failures signaled big shifts to come in the West. Every Thursday, a new episode

of pitch and power is available wherever you listen. to podcasts. Hope you enjoy. Every football conversation I've ever had in the Netherlands eventually will turn back to 74. July the 7th, 1974 in Munich. Jack Taylor looked at his watch. We're off and running for the 1974 World Cup final. Because it completely haunts them. This is David Winner, a sports journalist, an author of Brilliant Orange. the neurotic genius of Dutch football. Their best ever team, the best players, the best way of playing,

they were revolutionary. They were obviously the best in the world, and then they take the lead in the first minute. And then they blow it. And they're still upset about it. In 1974, the soccer revolution was supposed to be televised. Picture a team in bright orange shirts sweeping majestically across the pitch

with the precision of a neurosurgeon and the grace of a Bolshoi ballet dancer. They pass, they swap, they seem to vanish from one spot and appear in another. Defenders become midfielders, midfielders become forwards. The fans lean forward in their seats

and entire stadiums fall quiet, not from defeat, but from astonishment. Nobody had ever seen anything like this. They called it, Total football. Useful ball in! And that's number two from Johan Kroft.

There's a man at the centre of it all. Skinny as a wire. He has high cheekbones and even his hair is angular. When he runs, his necklace stangles and bounces. Even his jewelry seems to make pretty patterns. He's alluring and seductive and impossible to ignore. His name is Johann Krife. He seems to see the game.

five moves ahead, like a chess grandmaster, in short shorts and cleats. At his club FC Barcelona, the Catalan faithful call him El Flaco, the skinny one. But to his countrymen, he's known simply as Christ. Not Christ, but almost. Both are messiahs, both boast legions of devoted disciples, both are J.C. to their friends, and both do their best work on the weekends. Oh, and while Christ merely turned water into wine, Krife turned an entire country from hapless to heroic. The guy who was the linchpin of the whole thing, by far the best player of the era. But this isn't just a story about tactics or a quasi-religious playmaker.

It's about something bigger, a feeling, an attitude, a restless, idealistic energy that shifted from the streets to stadiums. It's about late-night parloric. and tawdry tabloid headlines about a country that rediscovered its identity through its favorite game, and then watched it all fade away. In 1974, the Dutch national team had everything, style, skill, sex appeal. They were free-spirited, an embodiment of the 1960s. With their long hair, love beads, and turn-on, tune-in, drop-out attitude,

they were football hippies. And total football was their radical movement. Effortless, audacious and arrogant until a pesky West German showed up and ruined everything. But over 50 years later, it's the Dutch team that we talk about. Why does their defeat, their failure, still resonate so much? Considering what else was happening in the world in the early 1970s, were a bunch of dreamers, idealists and improvisers

always destined to lose in a cold, ruthless new landscape. This is pitch and power, how soccer shapes everything, a new eight-part series from the Globe and Mail. I'm Owen O'Call-Kal-Anne, and for the last 20 years I've covered soccer as a broadcaster, producer, writer and club executive. Soccer has taken me to some exhilarating places around the globe. and brought me face to face with some of the most fascinating people. But I'm in a dysfunctional relationship.

You see, despite my best efforts, I just can't quit this thing. And why? Well, soccer and particularly events like the World Cup, explains everything. How can it not? This sport is the global language. It's the global currency. Let me give you an example.

Here in Toronto, a heavily accented guy came to fix my friend. furnace one day and noticed my framed Croatian Davrushuka jersey in my basement. He turned to me and said, you remember his goal against Denmark in 96. Then this guy explained the political significance of his country, Croatia, succeeding on such a grand stage as the European Championship, newly independent after the end of the war of the previous year, and what that all meant for national identity. So here's what this show is, a time machine. But instead of a DeLorean, it's built out of Adidas boots and reels of broadcast tape. Ahead of and throughout the 26 Men's World Cup,

we're rewinding to eight critical moments in time that bent the arc of soccer and rattled the wider world. Not just tactics and trophies, but politics, culture, and the moral climate of their day. stadiums as stages where nations argued about who they were and yes the Irish guy did just say soccer

this is the global male after all and we have a style guide our guests do get to say football though because this is a safe and tolerant space no judgment across eight episodes we'll speak with pundits, writers, players eyewitnesses and fans

maybe even a movie star if you're well behaved we will linger on the genius the joy the heartache and the fallout and wax poetic on how a well-time pass can mirror society, how a goal can redraw a country's self-portrait, how a miss can mire an entire nation in a depressive state for generations. If you love the game, you'll hear it anew, and if soccer isn't your thing, it doesn't matter, because these are human dramas first, about power and pride, beauty and loss, and the strange, compelling and truly unforgettable

ways this game can change everything. How can World Cup tournaments, explain dictatorships, racism, cinema, music, national trauma, fascism and economics. Stay with us and you'll find out. We'll start episode one in the early 1970s, right after this. To understand why the 1974 Dutch team still matters, we need to start with where the nation's football was coming from. Because for all their myth-making now, the Dutch World Cup resume before 1974 was

basically a blank page. The nation skipped the 1930 World Cup and went out in the first round in 1934 and 1938. Then they disappeared for 36 years. No qualifications, no tournaments, nothing. That drought is about soccer, but it's also about history. The devastation of the Second World War in the Netherlands was followed by the post-war reckoning. tens of thousands who were judged to have aided the Nazis were jailed, politically and socially, the country doubled down on order. The state embraced austerity.

And the soccer in the country reflected that dark mood. With no professional soccer leagues, most Dutch talent left to play in other parts of Europe. But things began shifting in the 1960s. Sex, drugs and anti-authoritarianism found a home. in Amsterdam. The nation's trauma didn't disappear, but the mood changed and the soccer changed with it. Professional leagues, packed stadiums and real money. When I first went to Holland as a 16-year-old in 1973, and I was doing an inter-round trip around Europe with two friends, and we slept in the Vondelbach and, you know, were for three days and nights sort of

temporary hippies, which was very cool at that time. Hippies are less cool now. That's David Winner again, the author of that book about the neurotic genius of Dutch football. We heard him right at the start of the show. And then in later years I went back and I never was able to shake off this feeling that something very magical about the place

and the football and the people and the history, they all sort of flowed together, kind of equally. Football seemed one of the most important things that had ever come out of the Netherlands. At the centre of this shift in both Dutch soccer and culture was AFC Iax. Iax wasn't just a football club in the 1960s, it was the heartbeat of Amsterdam,

and soon they would become the greatest expression of Dutch artistry since a guy named Vincent doodled a vase of flowers, the country's greatest embodiment of freedom in form. The Iax shirts of the early 70s were also very dramatic, different, very beautiful and very stylish, very much their own thing. I'd never seen anybody else playing in colours like that. In the mid-60s, coach Rinas Michels had taken over the Grand Ole Club. His nickname, de General, tells you pretty much everything you need to know about him.

But Mickles' exactitude was not in pursuit of rigidity, but fluidity. The aesthetic of the shirts was one thing, but it was much less important than the aesthetic of the way they played, you know, these swirling patterns. You know, the fullbacks would suddenly be in opposite wings and strange things that you'd never seen at that time. The way they moved, they looked like a different species almost. Iax were dangling precariously on the precipice when Michels arrived on the scene in 1965,

but he radically changed everything. He was a tough educator, known for his grueling training sessions, and, ironically enough, given the legacy of Total Football, which we'll get into later. Michael's was obsessed with winning. Luck was on his side. He was blessed with good players and talent to nurture, and with Iax already carrying a philosophy of exciting attacking soccer,

Mikkels leaned into individual personalities to cultivate a wider strategy. One player, Johann Niskin's, would relentlessly chase an opponent in an effort to win the ballback. In fact, he'd chased them all over the field. It was lucrative and annoying, So Mickles asked his other players to do it too. That was the birth of Total Football. Tactically, there was two basic elements. Well, three.

Constant passing in triangles to make surprising angles and players popping up in unexpected places and the pressing. So you compress space or you expand it, depending on whether you don't or do have the ball. In Total Football, your position isn't a job this. description. It's wherever you're needed in the moment. If the right winger pushes on, the right back steps into midfield. If the center back drifts wide, someone slides across to cover. Everyone rotates. Everyone needs to be comfortable on the ball in multiple parts of the pitch. Space

equals freedom and freedom equals choices. Players like Croyfe, Niskeens and Rood Krull, the Corps, who would dazzle at the 1974 World Cup, were full. forged in Mikkel's system at Ajax, but total football went beyond strategy. It was a philosophy. And then there's this harder to define element of elegance and arrogance and fun and incredible technical competence and creativity. It was very, very thrilling, and it was very attacking, and it was about beauty and creativity rather than, you know, remorseless winning.

They weren't, Kripp especially, was just not terribly interested in that. Ah, yes. Johann Kroif. How best to describe him and his role in all of this. By far the best player of the era and quite possibly the greatest European player of all. But more than that, he was seeing the field and seeing the possibilities of manipulating space and using position to change the spatial possibility. in a game in ways that become Barcelona of Tickey Taka, of Pep Guardiola, of Azen Vanga, of Juergen Klopp, of most of the great modern football sides.

Sometimes the Dutch 1974 team is compared to the Beatles, with the Mouthi Kroif as John Lennon. But there's an argument to be made that he was John, Paul and George, with his teammates all battling to be Ringo, Just getting one song on the album was a success for them. After all, Kroif was the gifted captain of the Dutch national team and one of the most endlessly fascinating soccer players and coaches of all time. With a perfect blend of eloquence, intellect and ego, Kroif was the crucial ingredient in a dominant IACS team of the early 1970s that won three successive European Cup titles.

And it has won the European Cup for the third successive time in 1971 against Panathamikov, in 1972 against Inter Milan, and here in Belgrade tonight after a disappointing final, they've beaten another Italian side, Juventus, by one goal to nil. Kroif was a stylish winger. He was entrusted by Mikkels to be an on-field lieutenant and vocal leader, dictating player positions and movements and ensuring everyone was in tune with the side's total football tactics.

But after a while, That became a problem. I mean, even Ringo left the Beatles for a while. When Mekylls was wooed by Barcelona in 1971, Quife stayed at Iyx for two more years, but eventually internal squabbles in the locker room led to his departure, and he followed Mickles to Barcelona in 1973. Krife ran the team for two years, and it went wrong because he was domineering and his teammates resented him and they voted somebody else for the captaincy in 73, and he stomped off to Barcelona.

So with the World Cup on the horizon, things were a little awkward in the Dutch camp. With Mikuls as coach and the bulk of the squad made up of Krofe's former IAC's teammates, it meant like every great band of the era, there was tension simmering at its core. The Dutch had another problem too. By the 1970s, people weren't quite sure about revolutions anymore.

Their idealism seemed at odds with the culture, shift. The mood changed and romanticism was dead. The hysteria of the moon landing was quickly followed by a paranoia of what else was out there. And I'm not just talking about space. It wouldn't be long until beach vacations carried the threat of killer sharks in the water. There was an edginess. A fraught tension. The dream is over, John Lennon sang in December in 1970? Did he have a point? Was it really that bleak? I often say that the study of history makes me feel better about the terribleness of the present. Dr. Brenda Elsie is a professor of history at Hofstra

University in New York. She writes about soccer and how the game explains so much, particularly politics and popular culture. She's also a co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast. Think about early 1970s. You have the oil crisis. You have OPEC, you have this ongoing polarization between the Soviet Union and the United States, Vietnam, civil rights movement. I mean, there's great possibilities, but it must have seemed very bleak. And so 1974 comes at, I think, a very tough time in the historical timeline. Many of the movements that had been so revolutionary just years earlier were now being met. with violent suppression.

To me, I always think, can we, like, focus a little bit on the ferocity of the forces behind attacking a peace movement, a civil rights movement? They're the forces of global capital. And the most powerful armies in the world, the 20th century, is the most death-ridden century in human history. It is not pretty. And so I think to a certain extent, it's not a lot of. that those movements failed. They were murdered.

Meanwhile, 1960s counterculture hippie and feminist styles and symbols were being blunted and repackaged by capitalism as cultural accessories. Hippieism had been kind of incorporated into a consumer culture. The teeth had been kind of taken out of it. Like if the idea is don't go to stores and buy into this consumer culture, but then very elitist brands sell you the same fashion, well, here you go. It just, it gets recoded as a not revolutionary movement. And I think that's true of soccer too. And it had been sort of like eaten by this consumer culture and like giving back and sold to people at the new price. So maybe there's a good reason why in 1974, the world seemed so

enamored of Krife and the total football movement of the Dutch team. Maybe it was a reminder of the better times when everything didn't feel as heavy, because nothing seemed to work anymore. And in some cases, the 60s seemed like a facade. Yesterday's philosophers and psychologists were today's traitors, turncoats, and even worse. In a scene described by one investigator as reminiscent of a weird religious right, five persons, including actress Sharon Tate, were found dead at the home of Miss Tate and her husband, screen director Roman Pollyanski. And there's the Manson murders and they're all these sort of goofy hippies who turn into mass murderers.

Just a few months later at a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway in California, the drug adult crowd are witnesses to a murder. We're splitting, you know, if those cats can't, if you're splitting, man, if those cats don't stop beating everybody up inside.

Hell's angels put in charge of stewarding insanely and somebody gets stabbed to death within a few yards of the stage, and that's a catastrophe. And in London, you have the breakup of the Beatles. And those three things that all happen within about a year, that sort of seems to sum up the end of the 60s, and suddenly it turns the spirit of idealism and all that of Woodstock has curdled into something dark.

And then, dancing out of the darkness comes Croif, and his cohorts, natural, authentic, unapologetically themselves, and in 1974, that's a statement in itself. I think that 74 Dutch World Cup team, it's the last expression, or in football, it's certainly the best expression, but it's an expression of the spirit of the 60s, you know, the cultural revolution, you know, hippiedom and freedom and freedom of expression and all that. The Dutch, those idealistic football hippies, were heading to their first world. World Cup in 36 years and the months that followed would redefine both soccer and the nation. That's coming up after the break. Johann Kreif's favourite film was The Godfather.

It's an interesting choice, though maybe he could relate to the dysfunctional family and how it mirrored a soccer team. Various personalities all grappling for attention, power and success. And perhaps he saw some of himself in Michael Corleone, the flawed, tragic. heroic hero, intelligent, strategic, and who plows his own path to greatness. At the end of the film, Michael has aspirations of something else, something greater, a utopia of his creation. The Greeks had two meanings for utopia. Utopos, the good place, and utopos, the place they cannot be.

And just like Michael Corleone, Croyfe and his teammates longed for a land they'd never reach. though they got very close and along the way they cast a spell on the world they began the 1974 World Cup with a 2-0 win over Uruguay they toyed with the South Americans leaving their opponents dazed and drunk

with disbelief they staggered and stumbled before the full-time whistle eventually put them out of their misery who were a good team they were the South American champions and you just can see if you watch the tape back they are bewildered by what's going going on. They've never seen anything like it because there has never been anything quite like it.

The Dutch even made scoreless draws entertaining. A nil-nil with Sweden was coloured in and forever assigned a place in soccer folklore because of Kroif and an iconic and inspired display of impudence. The legendary Kroyfe turn. Oh, a beautiful jammie from Kroif. In a decent attacking position on the left wing, but with the Swedish defender Jan Olsen marking him extremely tightly, Kroif shields the ball with his right foot and turns towards his own goal. And then just as he moves to kick, he slides the ball behind himself with his right foot. With Olsen having already committed to the challenge,

Kroif race is clear. To further intensify the embarrassment, a dizzy Olson even slips on the turf as he trails behind, desperately looking on in bemusement. Nobody bats an eyelid at a modern soccer player doing the Croif turn today. It's become part of the language of soccer, but at the time, it was another one of Kroif's revolutions. It's football jazz. They're improvising all the time. Instead of sound, it's movement.

And the runs they're making, and the little flicked passes they're making. It's not just third man running. It's fourth, fifth, sixth man running. Phenomenal. And it's an ensemble piece. ominously for the rest, the Dutch began to find their groove. To continue David's jazz band analogy, Arihan and Root Kroll were the rhythm section,

setting the tempo at the back. On midfield guitars, Vim Van Hennickham and Johanneskins bolstered the sound, adding layers of creativity. Outwide, Johnny Rep and Robbie Rensenbrink provided keys, additional percussion and backing vocals, and on lead guitar and lead vox. Croyfe, the heart and statured, soul of the group owned the spotlight. In a monsoon in the German city of Gelsenkirchen, he scored two superb goals in a 4-0 drilling of Argentina, which had followed a 4-1 win over Bulgaria.

The Dutch then pushed past East Germany before a crucial clash with Brazil, which was effectively a semi-final given a slightly different format. It was a violent game, where Brazil, the doyons of the beautiful game, the originators of Jogo Bonito and reigning World Cup champions, suddenly took on a new role, pantomime villain. The objective was clear, intimidate the Dutch to disrupt their flow. It wasn't all one-way traffic, the Dutch more than played their part in a cynical battle that was inevitably scoreless at half-time, but they also delivered two moments of divine beauty in the second half. The first, a goal for Nisken's, as he expertly swept Kroif's

cross to the far corner. And then after a swift raid on the left side, Kroif acrobatically leapt towards the near post and volleyed home Renton Brink's expert delivery. Brazil's heel turn was complete when Lucas Pereira was sent off a few minutes from the end after an X-rated assault on Niskins and he furiously taunted the Dutch fans as he stormed towards the dressing room. As rancor, ridicule and recrimination followed Brazil's exit, the Dutch were the toast of the tournament. With a place in the World Cup final confirmed, they were at the edge of greatness, the good place. But while everything on the field looked stylish and confident, off the field, things were different, relaxed. For a team on the cusp of World Cup glory, it was way too

relaxed. And just before the final, a tabloid story broke in the German press. It was too good to be true. It was too good to be true. The headline, tawdry, vulgar and perfect. Kreif, sect, necte mitschon on thine coolest bad. Bad enough in German, it sounded even more salacious in English. Kroif, champagne, naked girls and a cool bath. It turns out that free love had a price. Partying with groupies, the Dutch side were fully embracing the hidden. rock and roll life. But there was one small problem, the wives and girlfriends back home.

Legend has it that Danny Krife, the wife of Johann, or heard reports of it, I was terribly, terribly upset, and Johann then spends most of the night before the game, before the final, sort of trying to calm her down and reassure her and so on, not even able to speak from his hotel room but in a little sort of phone booth in the lobby of the team hotel at Hiltrup.

The Dutch opponents in the final were the hosts, West Germany, a team that boasted a supremely talented, experienced core of Franz Beckenbauer, Gerard Muller and goalkeeper Sepp Meyer. The Germans were, on paper, the antithesis of what the Dutch team represented. Tough, tactically disciplined, grinding out results when elegance failed. The focus on the grind made some sense. Culturally, this was the same year as Craftwerk's Autobahn album, with the electronic music pioneers musing on the theme of endurance

and celebrating the simple pleasure of long, arduous motorway journeys. If the national team had embraced invention and personality in 1972, they rebranded significantly two years later. This was the soccer equivalent of German efficiency. a style that would continue for the next three decades, anchored usually by that most annoying of characteristics. Success. What would the World Cup in those decades have been like without the Germans?

Every story needs a good antagonist, and they were brilliant. Yeah, you need a really dirty team. A dirty, ugly, unlovable team. You need them that wins all the time. You know, if you don't have that, what is there? The 1974 World Cup final is pure, unadulterated cinema. And it begins with the teams walking to the pitch at Munich's Olympia Stadium. The Germans, perfectly playing the role of the villain,

stride past the camera with their navy blue tracksuit tops clashing with their black shorts. It's a jarring aesthetic detail. Aside from Paul Brightner's Afro, there's little different. difference to many of the players, same haircut, same look, military precision. Walking alongside them are the fluorescent shirts of the Dutch players who don't even bother with jackets. Their jerseys are proudly untucked, adorned by the brightest orange Adidas sweaters you've ever seen, the matching track pants makes the look pop even more. The Dutch kick off and meticulously keep possession, count the passes. Fifteen.

in total as Kroif drops way, way back to the halfway line and takes control of the ball. Kroif looks up and sees the German defender Bertie Vokes eyeing him. He immediately knows what's happening. Votes von Brushcheamunchen Gladbach has one objective for this game. To stalk Kroif wherever he goes on the field, to not give him an inch to work with. Kroif likes the challenge and starts to speed up. With the ball on his right foot, he teases Vokts and the defender nibbles a little bit. Kroif staggers, switches the ball to his left and bursts again.

This time he finds an inch. Vokes is beaten and Kroif is now at the edge of the penalty area. He keeps going and is brought down by a clumsy, anxiety-induced challenge from Uli Onus. As Beckenbauer remonstrates with the referee Jack Taylor, where Johann Niskins already has the ball tucked under his arm ready for the spot kick. A penalty expert, he'd netted two of them in the earlier win over Bulgaria. This time, it's a little different. He mishits the ball and sends it right down the middle of the goal instead of in the corner.

When he makes contact chalk from the penalty spot explodes into the air, like a magician's puff of smoke. Johann Niskins! And we have the most dramatic start. in the history of World Cup finals. The ball hits the net, the Dutch are up, and the hosts haven't even touched the ball yet. Were the Dutch nervous?

Were they distracted? Yes, they were ahead. But something seemed different. They didn't take the Germans terribly seriously. They thought that Brazil, the reigning champions, from a different culture, they'd looked up to them enormously when Pelle was playing, and they'd seen, you know, Rivolino and Chazino,

and they'd beat them quite comfortably in the end in the semi-final. Phenomenal, brutal game. So they thought, well, at that point, they kind of relaxed a little bit, not completely, but a bit and a bit too much. The Dutch don't capitalize

on their early lead. They don't push hard and turn the screw on a shell-shocked German side. Instead, they seem passive, like they're going through the motions, confident they can just conjure something special whenever they need it.

And then, after 25 minutes, the Dutch grander. Bernd Holzenbine the freedom of Munich and the German winger is allowed the time and space ironically enough to dribble completely unopposed to the Dutch box a desperate Viniansom sticks out of leg Brightner the man with the afro

steps up and makes no mistake 1-1 the tide is turning they get sloppy they get overconfident and sloppiness and overconfidence becomes a sort of Dutch trait. The Dutch land very little for the rest of the first half. The punches are meek and lack precision, and before half-time, they're outdone by a knockout blow.

Total football had always been about movement, an improvisation and pattern, and it's Germany who provide a perfect example of it just before the break. From deep in midfield, Reiner Bonhoff makes a superb run into the right channel and takes possession of the ball in a dangerous area. He easily evades one Dutch challenge before sending in a low cross.

Gerd Muller swivels and clinically finishes. And makes history! 2-1 to West Germany at halftime. In the second half, the football hippies start to panic. And their sense of paranoia begins. They attack in waves, but it's chaotic and ugly and far removed from the flowing, beautiful, stylish art they had previously created. After a while, they're unrecognisable.

They thump aimless crosses high into the penalty area. They take shots from 25 yards. It's more about scuffed finishes and a lack of composure than anything else. Crife is anonymous. Vogue's delivering an expert man-marking job. After that, Votes shackles him rather effectively, and he doesn't have a good game. and Holland Blues.

The whistle blows. Germany are champions. And total football is dead. And so discipline, yeah, that is part of the story. They don't prepare as professionally and as ruthlessly as they could have done. But was a Dutch defeat always destined to happen?

This was a group of players out of sync with the ruthlessness of what was happening around them. Crive was a fan of the Godfather. But by the 1974 sequel, Michael Corleone, who had once been a moralistic, virtuous man and grappled with the weight of becoming something that betrayed his values,

had no issue with ordering the murder of his own brother. By the mid-70s, it seemed everything had a price. In the tense, edgy thriller, the conversation, also by Godfather, direct, Francis Ford Coppola, Gene Hackman's character, Harry Cole, works in surveillance. Our hero spies on people for a living.

In Chinatown, Jack Nicholson's Jake Gittes ultimately realizes, thanks to John Houston's menacing and delicious villain Noah Cross, that sometimes you're just going to lose. There's a great, great line with the John Houston character, the monster in the film.

And he said to him, you think you know what's going on, but let me assure you, you don't. And it's John Houston delivering it, so it's better. There is a sense of the Dutch suddenly, you know, blithely going along thinking, we're the best, we're great, and then they get hit by this thing that's a bit outside their comprehension, namely you lose because the other team are just simply more focused on winning. And maybe this was all a necessary social change. Maybe we're just being too.

harsh on the 1970s. Here's Brenda Elsie, Professor of History at Hofster University in New York. I mean, the funny thing is the 1970s are a great decade for women. 1972, which is Title IX, you know, an amendment in the United States that is not only about sports, you have equal opportunity commission, you have the credit laws that allow women to take out mortgages and credit cards, you have birth control available globally for the first time so that women have choices over their jobs and their lives and their maternity. And I think that felt like a zero-sum game for a lot of those cultural producers in the 1970s. Because think about what happens later is like the 1980s and Diehard and then you get this like rebuilt.

It's fitting that Brenda mentions Diehardt. Hans Gruber, an all-time villain from Germany, which brings us neatly back to the 1974 World Cup decider, and perhaps the biggest legacy of that game. Who really won? Kroif, the great soccer philosopher, always argued that the trophy was ultimately meaningless. After all, who even remembers the German team and their wider impact on the game? The sort of big debate that never goes away, is it more important, ultimately? to play beautifully or to win.

And Krife's answer was pretty emphatic beauty. The value of being creative and fulfilling yourself and self-expression and all this, fulfilling your potential, this is actually more important than winning. His vision was beyond football. And I think that's part of what makes him endlessly fascinating. Is that just a neat soundbite, though?

Does it simply fit the Kroiff narrative of Yoda like guru. I mean, I've never heard anyone get lyrical about the pains and sheer frustrations of winning. Usually, it's the other guy who paints an alternate version of events, the version that makes them feel better about their limitations.

I also think it's who's writing the stories about these guys sometimes, and like, don't get me wrong, like, I love the Dutch and I love Kroif. It's like, never has a team been so unsuccessful with so many words written about them. I'm like, there are tombs.

on the Orange Revolution, that I'm still kind of like, okay, guys. I get it, but it's still tough to ignore the cult of the Dutch. We're drawn to things that transcend, and this team did that. For instance, take a moment.

It's the 70s. You're a wide-eyed, soccer-obsessed kid, and race into the back garden with your ball. Are you pretending to be Croif, or Gertmuller. And why is the answer always Croif? Well, because he's not just a footballer. He's the past, the future and the present.

He's an original. An authenticity, especially right now, has never been more compelling. Maybe we are drawn to this Dutch team and what it stood for because it doesn't exist anymore. Maybe the hopeless romantics are always drawn to the hopeless hippies.

And maybe we need to be kinder to the notion that an entire movement failed us. The Dutch lose again in the 78 World Cup final without Croyth, who doesn't go to Argentina. He retires instead and then realizes he's lost all of his money after going into business with a conman who persuaded him to invest in pig farms. True story. Later, his coaching career brings him full circle,

success firstly at Iax, and then four successive league titles with Barcelona and the 1992 European Cup. His teams always adopted the total football model that ultimately led to the ticotaka of his former player, Pep Guardiola's unstoppable side, culminating in Spain's World Cup triumph in 2010, where they beat the Dutch.

In that encounter, the Netherlands believed that only an aggressive, violent approach could beat the Spanish, and it very nearly worked. They were four minutes from a penalty shootout when Andres Iniesta scored the extra time winner. But there was public outcry from the Dutch nation. How could there have been such a mortifying abandonment of the principles of 1974? Failure or not, it remains the ultimate reference point. For Manny, it's still so hard to let go.

it's amazing how how it persists I mean nobody now 52 years on talks about the West Germany team that team has vanished from the world's collective memory the entire Dutch nation

and the whole of Dutch football history and the whole of world football history everybody in the world wanted Holland to win was about well very upset that they didn't win but cry for didn't feel that.

And it's like, actually, I'm the best player in the world and I'm the most important person in world football in the last 50 years, possibly ever. But football isn't that important to me. That's extraordinary. And he seems to be an absolutely genuine about it. On the next episode of Pitchin Power, as Canada prepares to co-host the 2026 edition of the World Cup,

what kind of relationship does the country have with the game 40 years on from their debut appearance. And how does that explain the Canadian psyche and opinion of itself? Thanks for listening to Pitchin Power how soccer shapes everything. This show is produced by Jay Coburn and me, Owen O'Callaghan.

Our senior producer is Kyle Fulton. If you like this episode, please follow us and share it with a soccer fan in your life.