By David Gold
June 7 – Johan Cruyff has been elected to the Ajax Board of directors as the club hope to rediscover the glory days of the 1970s.
Cruyff is joined on the board by former Ajax legend Edgar Davids, Paul Römer, Marjan Olfers and Steven ten Have, who is expected to become the chairman.
The election was triggered when the previous Board resigned in protest at Cruyff’s attempts to restructure the club.
The former Barcelona coach had wanted to strengthen manager Frank de Boer’s role at the club and make greater use of former players such as Dennis Bergkamp, now the club’s youth team coach.
Cruyff, who has been asked by FIFA President Sepp Blatter to serve on a “Council of Wisdom” to clean up the governing body of world football, is largely credited with the transformation of Spanish giants FC Barcelona.
It was under the former winger and his legendary “dream team” that they won their first European Cup in 1992, and Cruyff implemented a football philosophy based on passing and movement used by the highly successful Ajax side that the Dutch legend played in during the 1970s, and which dominated European football at the time.
The policy has helped produce some of the world’s best players, including Xavi, Andrés Iniesta and Lionel Messi.
The Dutch club hope Cruyff’s return in his new capacity can restore those glory days, when they won three European Cups in a row.
Last season, Ajax won the Dutch league in dramatic fashion last month, in doing so lifting their 30th league title.
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