SPAOTP's Virtual Museum of World Football #2

Johan Cruyff's Modified Netherlands Shirt (as worn during the 1974 World Cup)

It's a story that's often been told, but we'll tell it again for the purpose of admitting another object into our Virtual Museum of World Football.

In 1974, the tenth FIFA World Cup Finals were held in West Germany. Football was exploding into the worldwide phenomenon we know today thanks to the exploits of those skilful Brazilians four years earlier, and the hunger to find new footballing heroes was unquenchable.

Luckily, the Dutch were sending their best ever team of players to the World Cup and one man amongst them had the necessary skills to demand everyone's attention - Johan Cruyff.

By 1974, Cruyff had become one of the big names in world football. With Ajax, the club he joined as a 10-year-old, he'd achieved almost everything it was possible to achieve. He'd won the Dutch League, the Dutch Cup, the Dutch Footballer of the Year title, the European Footballer of the Year title, the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup.

It was hardly suprising, then, that such an amazing talent was attracting the attentions of some of the world's bigger clubs. In 1973, Barcelona offered Ajax around $2 million - an incredible fee at the time - and it proved too big to turn down. Cruyff joined the Catalans and promptly continued scoring goals the way he'd always done for Ajax and his country.

Cruyff was now the subject of numerous sponsorship deals and big-money advertising contracts, one of which would go on to pose a dilemma for the Dutchman. Sportswear company Puma had paid Cruyff a lot of money so that he'd promote their football boots and other equipment, and it was his intention to repay their generosity by remaining loyal to their brand.

Unfortunately for him and Puma, the Dutch football team had reached the 1974 World Cup and had their own agreement to wear Adidas apparel. Cruyff knew that he couldn't be seen to honour his contract with Puma by wearing another manufacturer's kit, so he used a little ingenuity to get around the problem.

Adidas had made a set of orange shirts for the Dutch team that featured the company's trademark three stripes in black running down the sleeves, but Cruyff had realised that it was actually possible to unpick them from the shirt. He therefore removed one black stripe from each sleeve, and in so doing rendered Adidas' most recognisable device depleted.

It was enough to allow Cruyff to take to the field with a clear conscience and Puma to rest easy in the knowledge that their star man wasn't showing misplaced allegiances.

As such a well-known example of football ephemera, it's only right that Cruyff's customised Netherlands shirt should take its place in our Virtual Museum, so let's put it in a glass case alongside Bob Stokoe's red tracksuit bottoms and admire the true genius of a real Dutch master. Johan, we salute you.

SPAOTP's Virtual Museum of World Football #1

With all the money sloshing around in the world game these days, it seems odd that no-one has seen fit to build a museum that wallows in all that's good in the sport. Oh sure, there's a National Football Museum up in Preston, but for those of us not living anywhere near Lancashire (or too lazy to go there, more like), there has to be another way.

Fear not, old friend. Some People Are On The Pitch is here to save the day, for it is our intention to create an online virtual museum of world football containing all the things that really matter to you, me and every other football fan around the globe.

And today we start by putting our first item on show in a virtual glass case, and it's

Bob Stokoe's red tracksuit bottoms (as worn during the 1973 FA Cup Final)
There are many things that stick in the mind from Sunderland's surprising win over Leeds United in the 1973 Cup Final. Ian Porterfield's goal, Jim Montgomery's amazing double save from Trevor Cherry and Peter Lorimer, but for us the key moment was when the final whistle blew.

Leeds United, one of the biggest clubs in Europe at the time, had been beaten by a club that were 250-1 outsiders when the Third Round started and no-one gave them a snowball in hell's chance of winning the Final. But Sunderland did win, and nobody was more pleased and excited than their manager, Bob Stokoe.

When the referee put the whistle to his lips, Stokoe ran onto the Wembley turf like the David Pleat of his day (only rather less embarassing). Dressed in smart hat and cream-coloured coat, he looked the image of professionalism and decency - from the waist up. In a fashion statement that would send Trinny and Susannah into convulsions, his lower half was dressed in an ill-matching pair of red tracksuit bottoms.

Put bluntly, they looked ridiculous. Stokoe was found in a strange No Man's Land between training ground coach and boardroom big shot. His outfit was neither one thing or the other, but did he care? Did anyone care? Not at all. This was the biggest day of his managerial career (if not his life) and nothing could have been further from his mind.

To have created such an enduring image because of an innocent but monumentally bad wardrobe malfunction deserves recognition, we feel, so Bob Stokoe's red tracksuit pants become the first exhibit to go into our Virtual Museum of World Football.



If you have a suggestion for an additional artifact to go into our museum, do let us know. Send us an email to info [at] spaotp [dot] com with a short explanation of why (if necessary) and we'll put it alongside the most famous pair of tracksuit bottoms in football history.