14 quotes capturing the essence of Johan Cruyff

Cruyff ran the show while running around the pitch

To speak of Cruyff is to speak of football. He made the sport about entertainment and titles. - Luis Enrique, treble-winning coach, Barcelona

David Winner explains a bit better in book Brilliant Orange -

"The ultimate space-measurer in Dutch football is of course, Johan Cruyff. He was only 17 when he first played at Ajax, yet even then he delivered running commentaries on the use of space to the rest of the team, telling them where to run, where not to run. Players did what the tiny, skinny teenager told them to do because he was right. Cruyff didn’t talk about abstract space but about specific, detailed spatial relations on the field. Indeed, the most abiding image of him as a player is not of him scoring or running or tackling. It is of Cruyff pointing. ‘No, not there, back a little… forward two metres… four metres more to the left.’ He seemed like a conductor directing a symphony orchestra. It was as if Cruyff was helping his colleagues to realize an approximate rendering on the field to match the sublime vision in his mind of how the space ought to be ordered.”

Johan Cruyff's legacy can't be measured in trophies

Forget about the titles, I won more titles than him. Our gratitude is infinite and his legacy as well. And this legacy is not measured in trophies. It is rather the fact that he has enforced changes. Johan changed two clubs. But not only Ajax and Barcelona, he also changed the national teams of the Netherlands and Spain. There is nothing that can compare to what Cruyff has done for football. The football of the last 25 years at Barcelona belongs to him and that is something indestructible.

— Pep Guardiola (again, his greatest disciple)