John "Jack" Reynolds started his career as a player for teams such as Sheffield Wednesday, Grimsby Town and Watford. After his playing career he decided to go into management and moved to Belgium to manage St.Gallen after 2 years their he became coach of the German National team but due to the war he had to leave and he moved to Amsterdam and managed Ajax. This is where his sucess occured. Ajax before he came thier had previously never won anything, they didn't have any leaders in the club, they had nothing. Jack invented a new style of football which adapted into the "Total Football" system and he also started the Ajax youth system which is one of the best in world today. So with these immediate changes it is not a suprise that in 1917 2 years after he had taken charge Ajax won their first trophy then managed to win the league title the following year, and ended up managing to win 8 league titles under Jack Reynolds in a 27 year reign.
One of the players Jack managed was Rinus Michell who went on to manage the team after Jack left, he maintained Ajax's style of football and they continued to play the"Total Football" system which was also adapted by the Netherland National team who managed to get to the final of the World Cup but unfortunately lost 2-1 to West Germany. One of the biggest successes of this style of football was Johan Cruyff who is considered one of the best players of all time. After his playing career Cruyff went on to manage FC Barcelona and adapted the "Total Football" into a new style with the same fundamentals as total football just with slight differences, this style is called "Tiki-Taka" and is used by FC Barcelona and Spain who are argubaly the 2 most succesful teams in football today.
So without Jack Reynolds moving to Ajax all of this wouldn't be possibly and maybe FC Barcelona and Spain would of never been as sucessful as they have been. But what do you think do you agree with me that without Jack Reynolds football wouldn't of been the same? or do you think someone else would of adapted the beautiful game the way he did?
Thanks for reading,
No comments:
Post a Comment