Johan Cruyff is to return to Amsterdam after 20 years to become the new technical director of Ajax in the wake of the Dutch club’s board announcing that it would resign at the end of the season. As a player and as the embodiment of total football, Cruyff transformed Ajax’s fortunes in the Sixties and Seventies and the Dutchman was the star of the show when the Amsterdam side won the European Cup in 1971, 1972 and 1973.

Schoolboys growing up in the Seventies were mesmerised by his astounding goals, his phenomenal dribbling and “the Cruyff turn”, but since resigning as the coach of Barcelona in 1996, he has preferred to stay on the side-lines, writing about Ajax’s slow decline in a column for De Telegraaf, the Dutch newspaper.

Cruyff has had a lot to write about. Ajax are a shadow of the side who became one of the most stylish and effective teams that the world has seen. The Dutch club used to be the best side in the world, now they are not even the best team in the Nether-lands. The four-times European champions have not won the Dutch league title since 2004 and last lifted the European Cup in 1995. This season, Ajax, who trail PSV Eindhoven by nine points at the top of the Ere-divisie, crashed out of the Champions League in the qualifying round to Slavia Prague and were knocked out of the Uefa Cup by Dynamo Zagreb.

“Nobody has ever – and I mean ever – said, ‘You fix it,’ ” Cruyff said on Monday. “They don’t dare ask. Because if I have to do it, I will fix it, but I’ll do it in a way many people won’t like. That’s why they keep me at arm’s length.” The decision to turn to Cruyff was taken after the publication of an internal review into the running of the club criticised directors and recommended drastic action. After a crisis meeting on Tuesday evening, the board, including John Jaakke, the chairman, agreed to step down in May and will be followed out of the door at the Amsterdam ArenA by Adrie Koster, who became the temporary head coach after Henk ten Cate left to join Chel-sea last October. Koster is likely to be replaced by Marco van Basten, who has announced that he will quit his job as the coach of Holland after the European Championship finals in Austria and Switzerland this summer.

Times have been so tough at Ajax that last summer the club signed Albert Luque and Dennis Rommedahl, two of the most ineffective wingers to have played in the Premier League. It is all a far cry from the glory days when Cruyff was staking his claim to be the best player in the world. David Miller, the former Chief Sports Writer of The Times, called the mercurial forward “Pythagoras in boots”. Players as talented as Cruyff – Pelé, Diego Maradona and George Best – rarely become great managers, but the Dutchman followed up winning two trophies as a Barcelona player by guiding the Catalan club to their first European Cup triumph, in 1992.

Cruyff still lives in Barcelona, although he returned to Amsterdam to manage Ajax from 1986 to 1988 without much success. Not that it dented his popularity at a club where he lifted 19 trophies and in a country where he has been voted the sixth-greatest Dutchman. In 1999, he was also voted European Player of the Century by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics, and only Pelé stopped him claiming the world title in the same poll.

As a player, Cruyff chose to sign for Barcelona in 1973 instead of Real Madrid because he did not want to play for a club associated with General Franco. In 1978, he took another stand by refusing to play for Holland in the World Cup finals while Argentina was governed by a military junta. Recently, he has concentrated on running the Johan Cruyff Welfare Foundation, a charity that cares for children with physical handicaps and learning difficulties.

They don’t make them like they used to.

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