Football is now all about money. There are problems with the

In the wise and mournful words of Johan Cruyff, one of football’s greatest visionaries, we hear both a lament and a lesson: “Football is now all about money. There are problems with the values within the game. This is sad because football is the most beautiful game. We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere.” This is not merely a complaint about the modern sport — it is a cry from the soul of a man who saw football as art, as poetry in motion, as a language that could unite the world. To him, football was not a business but a mirror of humanity, a sacred dance of creativity and freedom. Yet he watched, with the sorrow of an elder watching his people forget their songs, as the game he loved began to lose its spirit to greed and vanity.

The origin of this quote lies in Cruyff’s reflections on the changing nature of professional football. Having grown up in the narrow streets of Amsterdam, where the game was played barefoot and for love alone, Cruyff came to symbolize the purity of football — a game of imagination, community, and joy. As a player for Ajax and Barcelona, he became the embodiment of “Total Football,” a style that emphasized intelligence, fluidity, and grace over brute force or commercial spectacle. But in his later years, he saw how the rise of money — the vast machinery of sponsorships, agents, and global corporations — was eroding the values that once gave the sport its soul. Football, once a unifying joy, had become a marketplace. The art had become industry.

In the spirit of the ancients, one might say that Cruyff’s lament echoes the warnings of Plato, who spoke of the corruption of noble pursuits when greed replaces virtue. The philosopher feared that when the love of gold eclipses the love of goodness, all arts — including the art of governance, the art of music, or, in this case, the art of sport — lose their meaning. What Cruyff mourned was not only the loss of purity in football, but the loss of innocence in humanity itself. For when a simple game — a thing that needs only a ball and open space — becomes consumed by wealth and ego, we forget what made it beautiful in the first place: its simplicity, its accessibility, its power to make children laugh and strangers embrace.

Consider the story of the 1950 World Cup Final, played between Brazil and Uruguay. In the vast Maracanã Stadium, nearly two hundred thousand spectators gathered to watch. Many of the players on both sides were men who had once played barefoot in dusty fields. There were no multimillion-dollar contracts, no celebrity endorsements — only the raw, trembling hope of nations. When Uruguay, against all odds, triumphed, their captain Obdulio Varela comforted the weeping Brazilian players, telling them, “Do not cry. You gave all you had. This is football.” In that moment, there was no wealth, no politics — only the shared humanity that the game awakens. That is the spirit Cruyff speaks of — the spirit that lives not in stadiums of steel and light, but in hearts.

When Cruyff says, “We can play it in the street. We can play it everywhere,” he reminds us of football’s sacred universality. It belongs not to the powerful, but to the people. It was born in alleys, in sandlots, in villages and city squares. Children have played it with bare feet, with rolled-up rags for a ball, under the sun and the rain. That simplicity is the game’s true magic — it teaches creativity, teamwork, and joy without requiring anything but imagination. But when money and machinery dominate, that magic fades. The streets, once filled with laughter and play, are replaced by screens and contracts. The child who might have become an artist of the ball becomes a spectator instead.

Yet even in his lament, Cruyff’s words carry hope. For he did not speak to condemn, but to awaken — to remind future generations that the game still belongs to them. Money may control leagues, but not playgrounds. Corporations may own clubs, but they cannot own the spirit that lives wherever a ball rolls across earth. His life itself was a testament to this truth: from a humble neighborhood boy, he rose to become one of the greatest minds in the history of football — not through wealth, but through vision, intelligence, and love. His legacy urges us to protect what is pure, to honor simplicity over spectacle, and to play — in every sense of the word — for the joy of the game, not for its reward.

The lesson of this quote, then, reaches far beyond the world of football. It is a reflection on all human endeavors. Whatever you do — whether you build, teach, write, or lead — remember why you began. Do not let ambition consume the beauty of creation. Wealth and power may expand your reach, but they cannot enrich your soul. Seek the spirit of play in your work. Keep alive the innocence that first drew you to your passion. For when the world forgets its joy in pursuit of profit, it loses not only its game, but its humanity.

So let these words of Johan Cruyff be remembered as both elegy and call to arms: to play again in the open air, to reclaim what is simple and real, to cherish the beauty that lives in the act itself. Whether on the field or in life, guard your love from corruption. Play not for applause, but for connection. For the truest victories are not measured in money or trophies — they are found in the laughter that echoes through the streets, in the unity of strangers brought together by a shared dream, and in the enduring beauty of something pure and human that no amount of gold can ever buy.