Bronze Age - Center Backs
Hulshoff - February 16, 2020. The huge Ajax stopper of the 1970s has joined his former pals Cruyff, Keizer and Muhren in heaven. He was 73 years old.
"The others were listening to pop, like the Beatles. Me, I was listening to hard music!" A liner-shouldered Golgotha, shaggy hair, a thick black filibuster beard, a shark's jawbone, he looked like the fifth Led Zeppelin.
Number 13 on the back to sign your misfortune, jersey out of the shorts, socks down without shin guards, he had created a profile of killer of the great Ajax.
A 21-year-old rock around Barry Hulshoff, the antithesis of the old-fashioned defender who swings in front and breaks behind. He armored his hinge with the addition of the great Yugoslav libero Velibor Vasovic, and it was gone for glory!
Despite a bad physique and a technique far from the aestheticism of his teammates, he nurtured collective thinking within the group: "We were discussing space all the time. All this to organize the space and find solutions. It was like architecture on the ground."
Matthijs de Ligt paid tribute to him on Instagram: “Barry, I am incredibly grateful to have known you. You have always helped me as a mentor, an agent, but above all as a best friend... You are and remain my greatest inspiration. I will miss you! "
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Barry was phenomenal, but Ajax's real success came in the early 1970s, when Hulshof was teamed up in the middle with a brilliant German sweeper (read below)...
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Blankenburg - Bobby Harms, the fitness coach, recalls: "... He asked me how to introduce myself to the other players. I basically said, 'They're all typical Amsterdam morons." And Blankenburg walked into the dressing room and said, "I'm Horst, I'm Fritz, and I've come to play football with you." Just like that. He was accepted straight away."
Horst "made only one mistake" - he was playing at the same time as Franz Beckenbauer.
In 1973, Ajax and Blankenburg were on their way to a third successive European title, and along the way they met Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals. No doubt driven by a desire to show the German people who they were losing in him, Blankenburg played like a man possessed. Ajax steamrollered the Munich side 4-0, goalkeeper Sepp Maier called the game Bayern's worst performance ever, and Blankenburg's performance was so good that those watching the game had no doubt that the best sweeper in that game... was not Beckenbauer.
"Life is like a rollercoaster, I've been at the bottom a lot, but I've always gotten back on my feet. I'm not happy, but I'm content" says Horst Blankenburg.
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Passarella - Great lights and some shadows, a fierce defender and scorer, world champion, and discoverer of young talents. He made a name for himself in Europe as a player, managed the Argentine and Uruguayan national teams, but always returned to his first love - River Plate.
In 1973, as a 20 years old, he traveled to the capital to try his luck, but he returned to his town without having been accepted by any club and thinking of quitting everything, even before he had started... Five years later he lifted the World Cup for Argentina.
"When my son died (Sebastian, 18 years old, who was run over by a three in 1995) I did not take the necessary time to suffer..."
And the biggest change for Passarella is his granddaughter Victoria: "She's the only one who can make me stop watching a game on TV. She tells me Abu and that makes me go round in circles like a sock. I missed my children's childhood but now with Victoria that won't happen to me."
