The 5 greatest Barcelona players of all time

2. Johan Cruyff

Having already been alluded to in this article, Johan Cruyff needs absolutely no introduction. If he hadn’t arrived in Catalonia in the 1970s and taken to the club and region as well as he did, the club would simply not be in the place it is today.

Everyone knows the story about him pioneering total football in Barcelona, alongside Dutch coach Renus Michels, but his importance to the Catalan people in general runs much deeper than that. He became the face of the region while General Franco made life as tough as he could during his dictatorship.

On the pitch, Cruyff was the best player in the world at that time and inspired Barcelona to domestic success. Not only was he vital to the club on and off the pitch, his ideals have been copied by others the world over, arguably making him the most important man in the history of soccer.

The former Ajax man took Barcelona to his heart as much as his hometown club, in Amsterdam, before he died in March from cancer. He would go on to manage both clubs, proving he could create a team in his image from the sidelines by winning the Blaugrana’s first European Cup in 1992.

Cruyff had an aura about him as a player, and spoke about the game with such intelligence after his retirement. He was responsible for everything great about FC Barcelona, so it was always going to take a lot to topple him as the greatest.