Forgotten Friday: The Best Teams to Never Win a Championship (1974 Holland)
The winners in life write the history of our times. If you don't bring home the trophy, you are quickly overwritten in the annals of your sport. Forgotten Friday is here to dredge up some memories of teams that deserve to be remembered.
With a homegrown set of talented Total Footballers, the 1974 Dutch Oranje changed how the world viewed football/soccer. Johan Cruyff, the preternaturally talented striker who played for Ajax and Barcelona, unorthodox goalkeeper Jan Jonglboed and coach Rinus Michels helped perfect a type of soccer that had never been seen before.
The Oranje smothered teams with their possession, with opponents often struggling to get the ball out of the final third of the pitch. Cruyff, on the other hand, was merely content with inventing new moves - such as the Cruyff turn.
The Dutch eleven breezed through the first stages at the 1974 World Cup, dispatching Uruguay, Bulgaria and Argentina while drawing with Sweden. Cruyff and company then dominated in East German side in the rain and came away with a 2-0 result.
The semi-finals saw a matchup with powerhouse Brazil. The Oranje powered through the Brazilians' dirty play and booked a spot in the finals with another 2-0 win.
The final against West Germany and their star Franz Beckenbauer started off like a Dutch fairy tale. Holland slotted home a penalty shot for a 1-0 lead before the Germans had even touched the ball. That, however, was the last chapter of the book that favored Cruyff's squad.
Germany stormed back to score two goals before the halftime whistle and the Dutch failed to equalize.
A crushing defeat for the Holland 1974 side in the World Cup, but they are a team that deserves to be remembered for the reverberations their brand of football had on the global scene for years to come. Whenever I think of dominant football, I don't see Englishlions or Brazilian yellow -- I see only Oranje.
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(images via FootballTimes)