The Torrelameu City Council (Noguera) inaugurates Johan Cruyff Street this Saturday. It is the second municipality in our country to name a street after Cruyff, after Vallfogona de Riucorb (Cuenca de Barberá) did so before anyone else in 2016, the same year of Johan's death.
Naming a street in Barcelona after him is occasionally talked about, but it hasn't happened yet, even though he died nine years ago and Barcelona City Council posthumously awarded him the Gold Medal for Sporting Merit months after his death.
It's a shame, because on the list of people who deserve to have their name on a city street, Johan's is undoubtedly on the list. The more years pass, far from fading his memory, the clearer his universal influence on football becomes, through the style of play that Barça has practiced, interpreted by players and coaches as diverse and at the same time as influential as Guardiola, Xavi, Iniesta, Messi, Tito or Luis Enrique until arriving at Barça's Lamine, Pedri. In Barcelona, Cruyff set a school and radiated to the world a football designed to make people have a good time.
And the more time passes, the more the genius of someone capable of transforming a victimized and victimizing club into an institution freed from paralyzing fears, and infecting it with the winning spirit, also grows. Cruyff's legacy is self-esteem and confidence in one's own strength, elements not always abundant in the Catalan personality. This, without forgetting the trickle of "Cruyff fields" that have been opened in poor neighborhoods across Europe (29 in Catalonia, 14 in Spain, and 306 worldwide) as part of the sport-for-all project carried out by the Foundation that bears his name. There's no need to dwell on the merits, then. And we shouldn't expect much.
