ABSTRACT
Developing future athletes typically requires a fundamentally different approach than facilitating or supporting athletes’ current performance. This chapter addresses one specific perspective on the development of the players of tomorrow. Johan Cruyff started playing football on the streets of Amsterdam. Ascending from a humble neighbourhood, to the greatest stadiums around the globe, Johan delighted the world with a brand of football that would grow to enthrall generations of football fans and profoundly influence the modern game. Johan Cruyff was the personification and mastermind of total football. Plan Cruyff’s primary topic of reform was to change the academy philosophy: Clearly saw this required a paradigm shift and translated this schism in terms of a paradigm contradistinction: the team paradigm to the player paradigm. The team paradigm typically manifests itself in an academy culture that focuses on team results, on the level of players and the importance of the coach as an instructor of the players.
