The Spanish Revolution
In a country historically torn by internal struggles and diverse cultures, Spain has managed to find its identity.
The Spanish Revolution
How History Shaped Spanish Style
Busquets, Xabi Alonso, Xavi, Iniesta, David Silva and Fabregas: in 2012, Spain won a European Championship fielding six midfielders—some of whom seemed like clones of one another. Sergi and Xabi were two old-school holding midfielders who, in their respective club teams, occupied exactly the same position and performed similar roles; Xavi was rather similar, mutatis mutandis, to his “twin” Iniesta, who in turn somewhat resembled Fabregas and even David Silva.
How could it be that a team won such an important tournament—completing a treble unlikely ever to be matched—by seemingly sabotaging all our most deep-rooted football convictions?
How did Spain, condemned for decades to play the role of sparring partner with high expectations and loud failures, become the best footballing school in the world—at least if we shine the spotlight on the midfield area and realize, in disbelief, how many playmakers, even unconventional ones, Spanish football has produced?
In Spain, the situation is more complex: its marked and sometimes fiercely rival regionalism has led to locally rooted footballing philosophies.
And so, the Madrid region embraced grandeur, the pursuit of results as the final outcome of individual brilliance, and it built an unrivalled trophy cabinet on these convictions.
In the Basque Country, one can always breathe the Atlantic Ocean air, and the cultural influence of British football has been, if not dominant, certainly significant. The fiery atmosphere in Basque stadiums and the “Homeric” passion that sweeps those people before their heroes evokes more the Ossianic moods of Scotland and England than the vibes of other Spanish stadiums.
The Andalusians’ explosiveness translated into a style of football that celebrates both quality and a rare inclination to go toe-to-toe with the best—like Sevilla does—and in this sense, Madrid’s second team has always seemed a hybrid, yet consistently loyal to the raw, popular spirit of the capital.
And Catalonia? Looking even just at the team of the 1950s, blessed by the delightful genius of Kubala and the tireless runs of the architect Luis Suárez, one can perceive the idiomatic nature of football in Barcelona and its surroundings: a football that turned its aesthetic vocation into a religion, despite lacking at times the necessary ruthlessness or pragmatism. Thus, a beautifully narcissistic attitude has always been part of Catalan football, and the arrival of the Dutch in Barcelona radicalized this attitude—but also reinforced it, turning it into a winning weapon rather than merely an aesthetically pleasing one.
Here’s the crux: after the successful “orange transplant” in Catalonia, Spanish football shifted gears—not only Barcelona. The roots of what we now instantly recognize as “Spanish football” lie in the long love affair between the football of Rinus Michels and Johan Cruijff and that of the Spaniards.
It was a process of mutual hybridization, not just influence—even if the ideological backbone was essentially of Ajax origin.
Barcelona, after the 1988/1989 season, completely changed pace. While this may not be surprising, what is astonishing is how the entire Spanish football system managed to do the same.
A few considerations may help explain this. During the process initiated by Cruijff, the obsessive and relentless pursuit of technical perfection in Barcelona found a perfect match in one of the main traits of Spanish football: its ability to produce quality passers and high-level midfielders.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, Spain has always churned out legions of players capable of ruling the middle of the pitch—from Luisito to Míchel, from Bakero to the wave of excellent players who, for years, made La Liga the promised land for the world’s best playmakers.
This abundance, however, often failed to yield results. It hadn’t yet become a trademark, a signature that flavored the whole Spanish football cake. Each region remained cozy in its own traditions, and internal divisions, the inability to form a cohesive group, and the lack of a shared footballing vision only made things worse.
The summary: many talents, technically superior to nearly all of Europe—if not everyone—but a poor ability to translate that superiority into convincing results.
All this, as we hinted earlier, changed with the arrival of Michels and especially Johan Cruijff—first as a player, then as a pivotal coach who reshaped the genetic code of Spanish football, bringing it closer to what it has now been for over fifteen years.
Cruijff’s great merit was putting individual technique—long abundant in Spain’s central areas—at the service of the collective, of a more complete team idea. Johan had the brilliant insight to identify the strengths of Spanish football and correct its shortcomings, and the effects of his work reached far beyond Catalonia, involving the entire country.
Unfazed by possible contradictions, like all geniuses, Johan never backtracked, not even when he suffered heavy defeats at the hands of teams playing a radically different style of football. He continued a legacy destined to outlast its mentor and founder—a legacy still alive today and one that encompasses all of Spain. Even Madrid, while maintaining a clearly distinct identity from Catalonia, has produced or imported many high-caliber midfielders. Overall, all Spanish youth academies have poured their hearts and souls into perfecting the area where the heart of the game lies—sometimes at the expense of specialization or excellence in other departments.
The results have been visible for some time: Spain created the most successful cycle in football history, based almost entirely on the technical superiority of an unrepeatable midfield. And after a few slower years, without compromising on its non-negotiable principles, Spain managed to launch a new generation of sublimely technical players—almost all capable of playing as or functioning like playmakers.
“Brain first,” said Thierry Henry in an interview some time ago, when asked what set Spanish football apart. “The brain,” said Titì, “comes before anything else.”
His impression is shared by other great players who have faced Spanish football: the attention to talent, individual technique, and intelligence defeated history. Teams composed largely of ordinary athletes—sometimes under 170 centimeters tall—lifted the world, playing football as sophisticated as the Brazilians’.
This is what the renewed identity of Spanish football has long been and continues to be: a kind of bridge between the strengths of South American football—trimmed of what Europeans consider excesses—and channeled through a Dutch-derived structure.
He played with vision, and coached with revolution. From the pitch to the bench, Johan Cruyff didn’t just change the game—he changed how we think about it.
Article written by Francesco
