Marinus Jacobus Hendricus "Rinus" Michels (; 9 February 1928 – 3 March 2005) was a Dutch football player and coach. He played his entire career for Ajax, which he later managed, and played for and later managed the Netherlands national team for four spells. Throughout his career, he played as a forward. He is regarded as one of the greatest managers of all time.

Michels became most notable for his coaching achievements; he won the European Cup with Ajax and the Spanish league with Barcelona, and had four tenures as coach of the Netherlands national team, who he led to the final of the 1974 FIFA World Cup and to win UEFA Euro 1988. He was named Coach of the Century by FIFA in 1999,

Playing career

Early life

Michels was born in Amsterdam and grew up at the Olympiaweg, a street near the Olympic Stadium. He celebrated his ninth birthday on 9 February 1937, when he received a pair of football boots and an Ajax jersey. Moments later, he was playing with his father at a small field near their home. Via Joop Köhler, a friend of the family who was commissioner at Ajax, Michels was introduced to the club and became a junior member in 1940.

He went on to become a regular for the club, and between 1946 and 1958, he appeared in 264 league matches for Ajax, in which he scored 122 goals. He also lost all of his remaining matches as an Oranje player, 4–1 to Finland, 4–0 to Belgium, 6–1 to Sweden and 3–1 to Switzerland. Wil Michels died on 2 November 2003 shortly after suffering a stroke. Michels himself died on 3 March 2005 at a hospital in Aalst, Belgium, after a heart surgery in the hospital of Gareth, Spain (his second since 1986). When Michels himself later became manager of Ajax in 1965, he further developed this style around the team's main forward Johan Cruyff. Although Cruyff was seemingly fielded as centre forward, Michels encouraged Cruyff to roam freely around the pitch, using his technical ability, creativity, and intelligence to exploit the weaknesses in the opposition and create space and chances in addition to scoring goals. Cruyff's teammates also supported him by playing him in a similar manner, regularly switching positions to ensure that the tactical roles in the team were consistently filled. This role has retroactively been compared to the "false 9" position in contemporary football. Michels's favoured formation was the 4–3–3.

The major component of total football was the use of space, and the need to consistently create it. Former Ajax defender Barry Hulshoff described it as "[the thing] we discussed the whole time. Cruyff always talked about where to run and where to stand, and when not to move". He further elaborated that position switching was only made possible due to apt spatial awareness. He also described Total Football being proactive, as well as highlighting the use of pressing, which would be used to win back the ball or put the opposition under considerable pressure. Another aspect of the system was the use of the offside trap.

The rise of Total Football and its attacking qualities were also linked with the demise of the more defensive–minded Catenaccio, a system reliant heavily on man-marking and counter–attacking, which was promoted most prominently by Italian sides Internazionale and Milan during the 1960s under Helenio Herrera and Nereo Rocco respectively. Unlike previous systems, in Total Football, no out–field player was fixed in their nominal role, which exposed weaknesses in the catenaccio tactical system; any player could assume the role of a forward, midfielder, or defender, at any given time depending on the circumstances. Due to players often switching positions with one another, man-marking strategies, such as catenaccio, were no longer effective at coping with this highly fluid tactical system. Despite previously losing out 4–1 to Milan in the 1969 European Cup Final, who were managed by Rocco, a manager known for his defensive catenaccio strategy, in 1971, Michels's Ajax won the European Cup Final, defeating Panathinaikos 2–0, using Total Football. The following year, Michels's successor at Ajax, Ștefan Kovács, continued to use Michels's Total Football philosophy, and defeated Inter 2–0 in the European Cup final; Dutch newspapers subsequently announced the "destruction of Catenaccio" at the hands of Total Football. The following year, Ajax defeated Cesare Maldini's Milan 6–0 in the second leg of the European Super Cup, in a match in which the defensive catenaccio system employed by Milan was unable to stop Ajax, which saw the Dutch side win the title 6–1 on aggregate; this was the worst defeat for an Italian team in an UEFA competition final.

Total football also had some weaknesses, however, which were notably exploited in the final of the 1974 FIFA World Cup by West Germany. Michels and Cruyff saw their ability to introduce playmaking stifled in the second half of the match by the effective marking of Berti Vogts. This allowed Franz Beckenbauer, Uli Hoeneß, and Wolfgang Overath to gain a stronghold in midfield, thus, enabling West Germany to win 2–1. Moreover, as man-marking alone was insufficient to cope with the fluidity of total football, Italian coaches consequently began to create a new tactical system that mixed man-marking with zonal defence in order to counter this strategy, which came to be known as zona mista ("mixed zone," in Italian), or gioco all'italiana ("gameplay in the Italian manner," in Italian), in Italian football, as it mixed elements of Italian catenaccio (man-marking) with elements of total football (zonal marking), with Giovanni Trapattoni as one its main and most successful proponents from the 1970s onward. This has often been misquoted as "Football is war." Michels felt the quote was taken out of context as he did not intend to equate war with football. Michels was named coach of the century by FIFA in 1999.

  • Netherlands Football League Championship/Eredivisie: 1946–47, 1956–57

Manager

thumb|Michels with [[Beatrix of the Netherlands|Queen Beatrix and the Dutch team after winning Euro '88.]]

Ajax

  • FIFA Coach of the Century: 1999
  • Dutch Manager of the Century: 1999
  • UEFA Lifetime Award: 2002
  • Best Manager in 50 years of professional football in the Netherlands: 2004

Orders

  • Invested as a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau: 1974
  • Elevated as an Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau: 1988
  • Named Knight of the KNVB: 2002

References

  • Sven Goran Erikson's tribute to Rinus Michels (3 March 2005)
  • The Times ranking of the 50 greatest post-war coaches
  • France Football ranking of the 50 greatest coaches in football history