5. Johan Cruyff:
At number five in the list of Top Ten Footballers Of All Time is Johan Cruyff.
The former Netherlands international is the finest exponent of Total Football. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dutch football rose remarkably and Cruyff played an integral role in it, He led the Netherlands to the final of the 1974 FIFA World Cup and received the Golden Ball as player of the tournament.
At the 1974 finals, he executed a feint that subsequently was named after him, the “Cruyff Turn”, a move widely replicated in the modern game.
At club level, Cruyff played for Ajax before moving to Barcelona. With Ajax he won eight Eredivisie titles, three European Cups and one Intercontinental Cup. In 1973, he moved to Barcelona for a world record transfer fee, winning La Liga in his first season and was named European Footballer of the Year.
In 1999, Cruyff became European Player of the Century in an election held by the International Federation of Football History & Statistics, and came second behind Pelé in their World Player of the Century poll. He was third in a vote organised by the French magazine France Football consulting their former Ballon d’Or winners to elect their Football Player of the Century. He also made it to the World Team of the 20th Century in 1998, the FIFA World Cup Dream Team in 2002. In 2004, he made it to the FIFA 100 list of the world’s greatest living players.