A good read about Michels' life from Ajax-USA:
"Rest in peace, General" - Rinus Michels dies at 77
03 March: The Ajax family suffered a major loss today. Rinus Michels, arguably the most prominent ambassador of Dutch football after Johan Cruyff, passed away at a hospital in the Belgian town of Aalst this morning, at age 77. Michels was a headstrong striker for Ajax and Oranje in the 1950s, but became a football legend as the architect of the 'Golden Ajax' of the early 1970s, the inventor of Holland's 'total football' of 1974 and the only coach to have won a major trophy with the Dutch national team (Euro 88).
Having had a number of heart-attacks in recent years, Mr Michels was hospitalized to undergo a heart valve operation on 18 February. The surgery was succesful according to the doctors, but Michels remained in hospital for intensive care. According to KNVB president Henk Kesler there were "accute complications" during the night. Rinus Michels died this morning at approximately 5:00 AM CET.
Rinus Michels was not only a legendary football manager, but also an unforgettable character, dearly loved and deeply respected by the Dutch, who knew him as The General (because of his grim logic and the almost military discipline he imposed on 'his' Ajax in the late 1960s) or as The Sphinx, because of his seemingly unmoved appearance at the sideline. No Dutch football fan will ever forget his creaking, high-pitched voice, his razorsharp Amsterdam accent, his dry sense of humour, and the way he dished up grumpy, but unforgettably ironic one-liners -- always with a deadpan expression.
Michels was born in Amsterdam-South on 09 February 1928, almost next door to the newly built Olympic Stadium. The entire neighbourhood supported Blauw Wit ('Blue White'), but Rinus' father Piet Michels was an avid supporter of Ajax, the red and white club from Amsterdam-East. Young Rinus watched his first Ajax home game at age five. In 1940, at the beginning of the German occupation of The Netherlands, he joined the club as a 'playing member', determined to become as good as his hero, legendary Ajax striker Piet van Reenen.
Michels made his first team début in the league game at ADO in The Hague on 09 June 1946, which Ajax won by the spectacular score of 3-8, thanks to an amazing number of five goals by the physically strong, fearless 18 year-old battering ram. It was the start of a long career in Ajax-1. Michels played 171 matches (94 goals) as an amateur (until 1954) and another 89 (27 goals) as a professional until his last appearance, at home against NOAD on 16 March 1958. He was only 30 years old when he called it quits. A string of bad and very painful back injuries forced him to quit, having won the over-all Dutch championship with Ajax in 1947 and 1958. Between June 1950 and May 1954 he also played five games for Oranje.
It was no surprise that Michels became a coach. He was a leader as a player and developed into a coach thinking along the lines of Ajax's legendary English coach Jack Reynolds, who introduced the tactical formation we still know as the 'Ajax system' today and started a process of professionalization, with a very strict training regime for the players. Michels' coaching career started at JOS in Amsterdam-East and continued at AFC in Amsterdam-South in 1964-1965, but he did not need any time to think when Ajax contacted him. He started as head-coach at De Meer on 22 January 1965, one day after Vic Buckingham's resignation due to the team's miserably poor results. Ajax did not get relegated from the Eredivisie that season, but that was about it: the 13th slot, one above the 'relegation line', of 1964-1965 still stands as Ajax's worst season since the advent of professional football in Holland.
Michels lifts the European Champions Cup at Wembley in 1971. [Photo: Ajax.nl]
The rest, as they say, is history. Michels won the Dutch championship with Ajax in his first full season (1966), made an impression in the European Champions Cup for the first time the season thereafter (1966-1967), made it to the final in 1969 (AC Milan proved too strong: 4-1) and, eventually, won the 'Big One' with Ajax in 1971, by beating Panathinaikos in the final at London's Wembley Stadium. Michels had built a team that is generally regarded as one of the best in the history of the game: the 'Golden Ajax' of the 1970s, with players such as Johan Cruyff, Piet Keizer, Ruud Krol, Arie Haan, Johan Neeskens and Gerrie Mühren.
The General left for FC Barcelona in the summer of 1971, having won four Dutch championships, three KNVB Cups and a European Champions Cup. He served as Ajax's head-coach for 393 games, in which 1,099 goals were scored. Ajax went on to win the 'Big One' again in 1972 and 1973, with Stefan Kovacs as a coach, but the Ajax team of the 1970s is generally regarded as Michels' team.
Cruyff and Neeskens joined Michels in Barcelona in the summer of 1973. The Dutch threesome clinched the Spanish championship for Barça after fourteen years of (politically controversial) Real Madrid superiority. To thousands of Catalonians 03 February 1974 still is the most beautiful day of their lives: the day that Barça, coached by Rinus Michels and led by an unstoppable Johan Cruyff, destroyed Real Madrid by the historic score of 0-5 on the pitch of their own Bernabéu Stadium. To the Catalonians it wasn't just a football game, but a political and cultural triumph over the military regime of general Franco, who had officially forbidden the Catalonian flag.
Rinus Michels was assigned by the KNVB as the 'man in charge' for the World Cup of 1974 in West-Germany, for which a shaky Oranje had qualified in an extremely fortunate way. Expectations were low, but Michels - re-united with the large part of 'his' Ajax squad - introduced a tactical system that was revolutionary. He called it 'total football' because none of the players seemed to have a fixed position. Everyone showed up everywhere as Holland took the tournament by storm, made countless fans worldwide and, eventually, suffered a traumatic and totally unexpected defeat in the final against hosts West-Germany (1974).
Michels returned to Ajax, as the successor of coach Hans Kraay, who stepped down before the season had even started. It was an unsuccesful season, followed by a second spell at FC Barcelona (1976-1978), which brought Michels another trophy he had not won yet: the Spanish Copa del Rey. The now 50 year-old coach then moved to the United States, where he coached the L.A. Aztecs (1978-1980). Back in Europe, Michels signed a contract at Bundesliga outfit FC Köln (Cologne). He won the German DFB Cup (1984) with Cologne, but was eventually fired for the first and only time in his career.
Two spells at Ajax, two at Barcelona... It did not come as a surprise that Michels also returned to Oranje. It was the summer of 1984, precisely ten years after the World Cup final in Munich. Michels worked as technical director for the KNVB, before accepting the coaching job in 1986. Holland had failed to qualify for three major tournaments in a row (WC 1982, Euro 1984 and WC 1986). The man to bring the men in orange back into the spotlights had to be Rinus Michels. Holland qualified for Euro 88 in unusually convincing style and ended up grabbing their first and, so far, only major trophy that summer. In Munich's Olympia Stadium, cradle of the '1974 trauma'. And: after having booked a legendary 2-1 win over hosts West-Germany in the semi-final. The circle was perfect.
The last years of his coaching career were not the nicest: Michels unsuccesfully coached Bundesliga outfit Bayer Leverkusen (he resigned in April 1989), was - according to many - single-handedly responsible for the fact that Johan Cruyff did not coach Holland at the 1990 World Cup and had a third, not very memorable spell as coach of Oranje (1990-1992) before retiring at age 64 -- although he continued to represent the KNVB as an ambassador. Rinus Michels was decorated as Knight of the Royal Order of Oranje-Nassau, was a Member of Honour of AFC Ajax and was presented the UEFA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.
Johan Cruyff may be the number one icon of Dutch football; the man behind his glory was Rinus Michels, the coach under whose supervision both Cruyff and Marco van Basten had their finest hours. With them as his finest apprentices Rinus Michels made The Netherlands a football-mad country. That is his inheritance to his country.
And now The General is dead. Hopefully he has been re-united with his beloved wife Wil, whose death in 2004 devastated Michels. He was his remarkable, unforgettable self until the end. Rest in peace, General. You will be sorely missed. (MP)
Source: VI.nl, NOS Teletekst, Ajax.nl and 'De Generaal' (biography by Bert Hiddema)
