"That's Logical..."

“That's Logical.....”

On the face of it the amount of media coverage that one person dying from lung cancer has recently received is out of all proportion. Especially at a time when hundreds of innocent people are being killed by terrorists activities and state sanctioned air raids or are drowning while attempting to escape oppression and violence. However, this particular Dutch former chain-smoker, it must be said, was genuinely a legend in his own lifetime. In the furthest corners of the earth, even in places where they think Copenhagen is the capital of The Netherlands, just about anywhere, in fact, where a ball has ever been kicked people will know who Johan Cruyff is.

If by chance you haven't heard of him and you've managed to miss all the newspaper, radio and television coverage this last week there in plenty of information for you online. Take a look and you will discover his enormous contribution to football as player, manager, commentator and critic. You will discover that he is right at the top of the 'greatest Dutch person ever' list, along with Erasmus, Anne Frank, Rembrandt, and van Gogh and you will learn why he is considered a half-god in Catalonia! 

Along with lengthy accounts of his achievements, and conflicts, as footballer and trainer, there will also be a list of quotations. During his playing and management career and, even more so later, as a TV football analyst, he became increasingly famous, or notorious, for his unorthodox statements and unique use of language. His comments hovering somewhere between 'brilliant insight' and 'blatantly obvious' were formulated using a curious mixture of Amsterdam dialect, incorrect grammar, muddled syntax and an advanced vocabulary. The public reacted to his statements with a mixture of amusement and wonder while even his friends and colleagues at times found them incomprehensible. Nonetheless he would frequently finish his statements and seal his arguments with his trademark phrase “That's logical” !

The funny thing is that I had little trouble understanding most of his grammar, his pronouncements or the thoughts behind them. Which, I fear, may well say a lot about my own use of Dutch and the way I think.

His most famous quote: “Every disadvantage has its advantage”, often misquoted as “Every advantage has its disadvantage”, is basically Newton's third law of physics i.e. 'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction' a law that, as far as I am concerned, can be applied to all interactions including human ones. Personally I rather like his “If you're not in the right place at the right moment you are either too late or too early” simply because it manages to be meaningful and totally unnecessary at the same time! 
However my favourite may not be a Cruyff original at all but I heard him say it several times: “Don't look at the result, look at the causes”. For example, in football terms, if the last defender misses his tackle allowing an opponent to score a goal, don't blame the missed tackle, consider why the defender was put in the position of having to make the tackle. The real mistake was probably made several moves earlier. Or, here's another example for those of you who get bored with talk about football and footballers: most people who wake up with a sore head and a sick stomach after a night partying will say “I should never have had that last drink”. The truth is, it wasn't that last drink that did the damage, it was all the drinks you had before it that caused your hangover!