David Winner Quotes & Sayings

Johan Cruyff was the first player who understood that he was an artist, and the first who was able and willing to collectivise the art of sports. — David Winner

The defender must first think defensively, but he must also think offensively. For an attacker it is the other way around. Somewhere they meet. — David Winner

God made the world, but the Dutch made Holland. — David Winner

Short, dark, and slight, he looks simultaneously middle-aged and prepubescent, a little worse for wear in any case with his black hair matted like a street cat and his eyes crusted over and bleary. — David Winner

It should have been the epiphany of the sixties. Instead it turned out to be its requiem, — David Winner

I have this instinct for knowing when a defence is going to relax, or when a defender will make a mistake,' he once said. 'Something inside me says, Gerd, go this way; Gerd, go that. I don't know what it is.' A killer who claimed to hear voices. Serial goalscorer. — David Winner

The ultimate space-measurer in Dutch football is of course, Johan Cruyff. He was only seventeen when he first played at Ajax, yet even then he delivered running commentaries on the use of space to the rest of the team, telling them where to run, where not to run. Players did what the tiny, skinny teenager told them to do because he was right. Cruyff didn't talk about abstract space but about specific, detailed spatial relations on the field. Indeed, the most abiding image of him as a player is not of him scoring or running or tackling. It is of Cruyff pointing. 'No, not there, back a little... forward two metres... four metres more to the left.' He seemed like a conductor directing a symphony orchestra. It was as if Cruyff was helping his colleagues to realize an approximate rendering on the field to match the sublime vision in his mind of how the space ought to be ordered. — David Winner