THE odd thing about Johan Cruyff is that, in many ways, it makes sense to talk about two different incarnations, separating the footballer from what came after. It’s the same guy, of course. Same personality, same insouciance, same unbounded genius, same floppy-haired self- assurance. Yet the reactions were different and the impact manifested itself in different ways.

Cruyff, who passed away on Thursday, was probably the greatest footballer Europe has produced. Franz Beckenbauer was a defender and, rightly or wrongly, being a creator is thought of more highly than being a guy whose priority is stopping others from creating. Marco van Basten and George Best were struck down early. As for Cristiano Ronaldo, let’s have this conversation once the book has closed on his career.

That alone secures his place alongside the usual suspects on the highest rung of football’s pantheon. By the time he hit his prime, circa 1971, he wasn’t just better than his contemporaries, including a by-then 35-year-old Pele, he was different to anyone who had come before.

Boyish and cocksure, bandy-legged and brazen, Cruyff looked as if he played the game at a different speed, as if he controlled time and space through some Jedi mind trick.

Those who don’t believe in the supernatural ascribe his impact on the pitch to three things. One was that Cruyff was a freakish athlete, blessed with quickness, agility, balance and stamina. He likely could have been a ballet dancer, if not for the fact that you can’t see him following choreographed routines. The change of direction, his trademark stop-start, the knack for twisting his body to reach elusive balls... those are things you are born with.

Another was his mind. Some things he saw before others. Others he saw at the same time as everyone else, but simply reacted quicker. And other things still, he saw that nobody else did. Like the chess grandmaster who is several moves ahead, when you have a gift for knowing who is going to be where and where the ball will be, the game gets a whole lot easier.

The final factor was that he came of age just as Rinus Michels, his coach at Ajax, was perfecting what would become known as Total Football. Perhaps no brand of football was as emulated (often unsuccessfully) or as admired. Michels himself would say he believed in his concepts and would have persevered with them even without Cruyff. But, with Cruyff, they gained an acceptance which otherwise might not have been so forthcoming. After all, it’s a lot easier to sell a winning idea. Cruyff within Michels’ system was the classic virtuous circle, each making the other stronger.

The end result was the career we are all familiar with. Numbers alone don’t do it justice, but, here goes: 10 league titles, seven domestic cups, three European Cups and a World Cup final that Holland had basically won but eventually threw away (not that it seemed to matter much to Cruyff: he would later say the feats of his Clockwork Orange side would far outlive the German World Cup winners and he may well be right).

He was named European Footballer of the Year on three occasions; the one time he missed out, all he did was lead Ajax to the European Treble.

All of the above is before you get to his post-playing achievements. He only coached for 10-and-a-half seasons, but in that time he won 14 trophies, including six league titles, a European Cup and two Cup- Winners’ Cups. But the influence extends well beyond that.

If the last 50 years have, by most accounts, seen three major tactical leaps – Michels’ Total Football, Arrigo Sacchi’s Milan and its zonal intermittent pressing, and Pep Guardiola’s tiki-taka and high line – then Cruyff was the leading man of the first, the inspiration for the second and the enabler of the third.

Sacchi has always credited Dutch football and, in particular, Cruyff (both as a player and as a coach) as the foundation of his philosophy. Guardiola has said that had Cruyff not taken over as Barcelona boss in 1988, he would never have made it as a top-flight footballer. And, of course, he would never have assembled his all-conquering Barca side and implemented his devastating short-passing game. And Cruyff’s impact of course extends to all of Spanish football; the recent World Cup and European Championships owe so much to the Dutchman who saw football as an attacking, pro-active, possession and pressing-based endeavour.

He had his faults, of course. He was argumentative, sometimes petulant and infuriatingly stubborn. He had the self-assuredness of those who don’t see shades of grey and the sense of entitlement that comes from knowing you aren’t just different, but better, too. His outspokenness made many uncomfortable and it’s perhaps not a coincidence that his arch-nemesis in Dutch football was one Louis van Gaal, who had the unenviable task of following in his managerial footsteps at Ajax and at the Camp Nou.

And yet, his genius meant much could be forgiven.

“He had the charisma and arrogance of the leading man, the artist,” said Argentine striker Jorge Valdano, a frequent adversary in La Liga. “As a rival, he could be maddening. As a fellow pro and as a football lover, you could only stand and applaud him. You knew you were in the presence of genius and greatness. He did things that made you fall in love with the game. And you had to respect that.”

THE latest manifestation of big club greed makes you wonder about the sanity of some people. Last week, reports surfaced regarding a proposal for a Champions League reboot. Instead of the current format, someone – most likely the usual suspects at the European Clubs Association – is floating the idea of having a two-legged preliminary round to whittle clubs down from 32 to 16 and then two groups of eight, with teams playing each other home and away. The two group winners would then face off in the final.

The argument is that we would get more TV-friendly marquee games and fewer Malmo v Shakhtar or Gent v Wolfsburg-type encounters. Of course, the big problem – other than more games to an already congested schedule – is that you would have an absurd number of dead rubbers.

Gent v Wolfsburg may not be TV gold, but at least it featured two teams trying to win. Expect Uefa to reject this out of hand. And rightly so.