The W rld Standard

MARCH MADNESS:
ROAD TO THE
FINAL FOUR

SPORTS
Tuesday, March 29

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FC Barcelona pay tribute to the late great Johan Cruyff who passed away last week. The Dutchman was not only a Barcelona legend but a soccer legend, revolutionizing the beautiful game.

JOHAN CRUYFF 1947 - 2016

Popperfoto

VI Images

Johan Cruyff: The man who revolutionized soccer

John Cruyff in his younger days, representing the Netherlands in international action (left). The Dutchman went on to become manager of FC Barcelona, 10 years after leaving them as a player (right).

Dutch legend and pioneer passed away last week at 68, but will always be remembered fondly
Richard Williams
The Guardian
f a single moment
could be said to have
changed the way a
generation looked at football, it was the turn with
which Johan Cruyff bamboozled the Swedish defender Jan Olsson in the
23rd minute of a group
match during the 1974
World Cup finals.
The crowd at the Westfalenstadion in Dortmund
rubbed their eyes, unable

to believe what they had

seen. But it was true.
The Dutch No14 had
used his right instep to
turn the ball back inside
his standing leg before
spinning through 180 degrees and sprinting away
towards the byline.
He
had
left
the
tight-marking Swedish defender looking like a man
tricked out of a fiver in a
find-the-lady game. When
he did the same thing in
a 2-0 win against England

another planet, football

as reimagined by a master
BARCELONA BEFORE CRUYFF
choreographer assigned to
42 TROPHIES IN 71 YEARS
strip it down, discard the
rusted and outmoded comBARCELONA AFTER CRUYFF
ponents and reconstruct it
42 TROPHIES IN 27 YEARS
in a way that was not just
Grup14.com
more aesthetically pleasing
TOTAL HONORS (AS A PLAYER/MANAGER)
but more lethally and unanswerably efficient. The
result was an approach
14
4
3
10
that seemed to draw not
three years later, there was been waiting for it, and he just on a completely new
still enough surprise in did not want to disappoint set of skills but on a differthe trick to make Wemb- them.
ent mentality, one finally
ley swoon. The crowd had
This was football from set free from the game as it
THE INFLUENCE OF CRUYFF

Russias Svetlana Kuznetsova grabs shock victory

over Serena Williams, progresses in Miami Open
15th seed fought from a set down to claim a huge 6-7 6-1 6-2 win

RT
Svetlana Kuznetsova has
recorded a shock victory
over tennis world number
one Serena Williams at the
Miami Open.
The 15th seed fought

back from a set down to

claim an emphatic 6-7
6-1 6-2 win in the fourth
round of the American
competition on Monday.
The duo could not be
separated in the first set,

with Williams power on

show as a couple of thundering aces allowed the favourite to claim the ascendancy in a tie-break.
Other players have wilted having lost the first set

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had been known in its previous incarnations.

With Johan Cruyff, the
grace of Rudolf Nureyev
came to the football pitch.
Cruyff incarnated the
new way. Lithe, slender
and as swift as the wind,
ferociously competitive,
with the strength in his
thighs and the anticipation
to ride the scything tackles of the time, alert to everything around him and
delving into a bottomless
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Golden State Warriors hope to match single-season

record as they square off with the Washington Wizards

Win tonight could see Stephen Currys side equal the Chicago Bulls record
CBS
Washington is in the
midst of an Eastern Conference chase to get back
to the playoffs for a third
straight season. The only
team Golden State has had

to pursue all season is an

Eastern Conference ghost.
The Warriors can match
their single-season win record and join Chicago as
the only franchise to win at
least 67 games in consecu-

tive seasons Tuesday night

against the Wizards, who
are playing the second of
a five-game West Coast
swing that could effectively send their season to an
early grave.

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