SO how to explain the brilliance, the substance, the significance of Johan Cruyff? How to encapsulate a personality allied to immense talent and lithe physicality who revolutionised a sport? How to explain that one of the greatest players ever to have lived had an enduring, extraordinary impact on how the game is played now?

Cruyff defies simple analysis in the same way he once confounded defences with a slight dip of the shoulder, an exquisite turn and the sort of pace that would have left a hare gasping in his wake. The impossibility of quite summarising his influence on the greatest of games is made acceptable, even understandable, by his wilfully enigmatic personality. As he once told a journalist: “If I wanted you to understand, I would have explained it better.”

Cruyff has to be considered from at least three perspectives, in the manner of viewing the Pyramids or some other wonder of the world. It may be necessary, too, to introduce a historical note, in the manner of a guide to the Great Wall of China. Cruyff took Dutch football from obscurity to worldwide acclaim as the purveyors of Total Football. Yes, Rinus Michels was the genius behind that, yes, Feyenoord won the European Cup before the Ajax side that Cruyff led to three successive triumphs in the competition from 1971-73. But Cruyff was the embodiment of a football movement that confused opponents and enchanted the fan.

As a coach, his contribution to Barcelona may be summarised by the observation that this was a club that did not win its first European Cup until the nineties. Cruyff was central to placing both the Netherlands and Barcelona at the forefront of football not just in their pulsating glory but in the precise manner about how they played the game. Both the Netherlands and Barcelona were poorer pre-Cruyff than they were after his coming.

As a player, he sits languidly at the top table, informing others of his views over an extended dinner. He was technically innovative, having introduced a mesmerising turn to the game, but his significance as a player has more profound truths than a mere trick. I had the privilege of watching him live on several occasions, from the days of his irrefutable majesty in the early 1970s to his appearance at Celtic Park in 1982 as a mature master. In the latter match, at the age of 35, he showed a turn of pace that threatened to induce the groundsman to come on and replace scorched turf. Incidentally, Ally Dick, the Scot who won a European Cup-Winners medal under Cruyff at Ajax in 1987, remembers his manager as being extraordinarily swift in training at 40, brushing off the impediment of having a fag hanging from his hand.

Cruyff, too, held a perpetual mystery as a player. It was impossible to state just what was his position. The Cruyff turn was introduced from a wide left position, a header could be won at the back post, a penalty could be converted with aid of an accomplice, a raking pass could be delivered from deep defence. If Pele and Maradona were incontrovertibly No.10s, then no one had Cruyff’s number. He was a devilish winger, a striker of both simple and intricate goals, a midfielder of poise and purpose. He was not an appendage to a team, a luxury accessory, he was its very soul.

He was, of course surrounded by greats at Ajax and with the Netherlands –Johan Neeskens, Ruud Krol, Wim Suurbier – but his greatness was franked by the drop in performance when he was not available. The Netherlands could and perhaps should have won the World Cup in 1974 with Cruyff but were denied by a classic West German team. Cruyff, sulking back in his homeland, would surely have taken the national side over the line in Argentina in 1978.

His retirement from playing was followed by a second life of achievement and influence. His playing experiences had hardened his beliefs about the game. They were never to soften. He was the true, perfect knight of total football, instructing a younger generation on the principles of fluidity in possession and discipline when searching for the ball. He is the footballing father to such as Xavi, Iniesta, Guardiola in Spain and to such as Louis van Gaal in his pomp at Ajax.

The first perspective as a player renders him as a great, that is a performer who must be included in any world XI of all time. The second view from a coach perspective peers on a tactician who changed the game, making players more malleable in taking up positions and stressing the emphasis of retaining possession but only with a purpose. “Without the ball, you can’t win” was one of his quotes that manages to state the obvious yet retain that sense of Cruyff as a guru.

The third perspective is Cruyff as a personality and he was capable of charm, belligerence, absurdity and shining insight. The Scottish press pack was granted an audience with him before a charity dinner in Glasgow a few years ago and he was generous, forthcoming and entertaining in his comments. He had, however, a propensity for engaging in conflict that seems a mark of the Dutch footballer. Famously, Dutch squads will argue over the merest detail and squabble with team-mates in the manner of play time at the crèche.

In this, Cruyff was the patron saint of the rammy. In the absence of an argument, there is a suspicion that he would have hired an empty room to fall out in. The politics of Ajax and Barcelona are marked, some would say scarred, by his interventions. It is a testimony to his greatness that he remained an influential figure at both clubs far beyond any formal involvement as a player, coach or director.

He was, in essence, a singular being, marked out by talent, imbued with genius and carrying the volatile mix of arrogance and vulnerability that is integral to the personality of so many of greats. He could carry vendettas comfortably, seeming to need them to drive him on as if he had to prove his wonder in particular to his enemies. There is a wonderful story about his alleged animosity towards Dutch team-mate Johnny Rep. It is stated by some that he passed the ball just out of reach of the striker to make him seem ponderous and unfit to grace the orange jersey. It may be untrue but it is credible in that it would tally both with Cruyff’s ability to hold a resentment and to his mischief in making it apparent.

His triumph is that he changed football for the better both on and off the field. He rebelled against the power game that threatened to engulf world football in the wake of the roundheads winning the World Cup in 1966, He was a cavalier, riding to the rescue of a game that could have been dominated by defence, by pragmatism, even by cynicism. He was Johan Cruyff, in every moment of his life. “In a way, I am probably immortal,” he said. One mourns his passing while perversely accepting this statement as a truth.