Hi Juan,

>Obviously, you haven't seen or read a lot of Maradona or Pele. For instance, you don't know what 'the hand of god' means.

I'm too young to know much about pelé (I'm 34), I've seen maradonna, and as a dutchman I've seen a lot of cruyff as both a player and coach (he was a very succesfull coach too).

>At certain point, it is a matter of taste. Compare them is fruitless, they played in different times, with different teammates and against different opponents.

Sure, but if you want to elect someone as the player of the century, you'll have to... There is no doubt that they all were great players. I've heard many people say that pelé was at least as good as cruiff but again, you're right it is difficult to compare.

>Johan Cruyff was one of the greatest soccer players I’ve ever seen, but is also true he was always surrounded by other great players, the same applies to Pele. Many people can name at least 4 players who played in the same National Teams, because they were also sacred monsters like both of them. Now, go get people that can name 4 players, off the top of their heads, who played along with Maradona and were considered stars.

You got me.... I don't know. But maradonna was a very different kind of player. He was the one who could win the game one absolute marvelous rush, but beeing entirely invisible during the rest of the game, ego centric and less in service of the team. Certain, brazilian players have had the same attitude.

>Unfortunately Cruyff only participated in one World Cup (the most important event in soccer), where great players arise leading their teams to victory and are remembered for world wide. That’s something that he couldn't finally get, despite the fabulous Dutch National team of 1974 in Germany, unlike Maradona or Pele.

In many occasions, the best team does not win. In both 1974 and 1978 the dutch team was of higher quality than the opononents (Germany and Argentina) but for some reason could not win the phychological battle. Even if you look recently on the EK (European championship) greece won (a soccer-dwarf). While in the pre-WK encounters with holland they lost with 5.0 or so. It has to do with having the right team spirit, beeing in condition, rather than individual quality. If the right team spirit is there, you have a winner. Our neighbours (Germany), have produced less real start players, but they won the European and world championship several times.

>Anyway, can you explain how can a country so small in territory as Holland, was able to ‘produce’ so many wonderful players over the last 30+ years? I could explain why Brazil or Argentina could.

Well, holland might be small, but you're talking about 16 million people + x million from suriname (A former dutch colony: Quite a few good players came from there). Physically the dutch people are the tallest people in the world (avg above 1.85 m for males), so arguable also the strongest. Soccer is really a sport no1 up here where many young children are playing soccer in competition or on the streets. American sports like American Football, Basketball or baseball, ice hockey are sports you can barely find in Holland (Thought the baseball team is very good, and does really well at the world championship right now). Further I guess we long tradition of soccer. Ajax? and Feyenoord were born out of ordinary working class people, having a play of soccer on a friday afternoon. They got barely payed in first instance, merely some money for equipment and not having to work as many hours as others. And many great players eventually become trainers like Johan Cruiff, Rinus Michels, Frank Rijkaard, Ronald Koeman, Marco van basten, Ruud gullit etc.

Walter,