Last weekend, 75,673 fans packed Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was opening day for MLS team LAFC, and they were there to see Lionel Messi — arguably still the world’s greatest soccer player — who plays for Inter Miami.
In 4 months, the World Cup comes to North America. Someone — probably not Messi, now 38 years old — will be hailed as the best soccer player on the planet.
In 1979, Johan Cruyff was the world’s greatest player. His Netherlands team had finished second (to West Germany and Argentina) at the 2 previous World Cups. He had signed a few months earlier with the North American Soccer League’s Los Angeles Aztecs.
And one September Sunday that year, Cruyff came to Greens Farms Academy.
(Photo courtesy of Mike Carey)
It was not a random event. Jan Brouwer — a noted Dutch coach — had been brought to the US by Bart van den Brink and a group of Dutch ex-pats, to spread the gospel of “Total Soccer” (the small nation’s whirling style of play) to our shores.
Van den Brink lived in Westport. He rented a house here for Brouwer.
Greens Farms Academy was filled for that day of exhibition games and clinics. Soccer fans came from across the tri-state region to see Cruyff.
I was just starting my coaching career, and doing some writing for the Total Soccer group, about their work.
After the GFA event I was invited back to van den Brink’s house, less than a mile away off Greens Farms Road.
Johan Cruyff
They arranged an American-style picnic for Cruyff. I spent a couple of hours with him and other Dutch stars for the New York Cosmos.
It was a fun afternoon, for a 20-something soccer coach and fan. He talked easily and openly about his life, his sport, his country and mine.
It was also amazing to watch Cruyff chain-smoke cigarettes. He lit the next one from the one he was still smoking.
And he did it the entire time, until dusk fell and he left.
Johan Cruyff — the world’s greatest soccer player, and the star of a now-forgotten day in Westport soccer history — died in 2016. He was 68.
The cause was lung cancer.
EXTRA TIME: Cruyff was not the only superstar to visit Greens Farms Academy for a soccer event.
The Cosmos — owned by Warner Communications, whose #2 executive, Jay Emmett, lived on nearby Prospect Road — came one spring day, for an exhibition match against the University of Connecticut.
Giorgio Chinaglia — the Cosmos’ mercurial striker — played the entire game wearing sweatpants.
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