If there is one player who must look back on his career and wonder just how he never managed to win a World Cup winners' medal, it is Johan Cruyff. At the time when the Dutch produced their 'total football' in the mid-1970's, the flying Dutchman was instrumental and inspirational in their achievements.

The 1974 World Cup Finals in Germany should have provided the enigmatic playmaker with the trophy that his ability so richly deserved, but it was old adversary Franz Beckenbauer that was to lift the trophy that year.

Named three times European Footballer of the Year, Cruyff may have made only 48 international appearances but he managed an astonishing 33 goals from his attacking midfield role. Not bad for a boy who got his big break at Ajax because his mother worked as a cleaner for the club.

The now famous 'Cruyff turn' - or at least attempted versions of it - can be seen on any and every school playing field, and Holland's greatest player of all time can be happy in the knowledge that he more than played his part in putting Dutch football on the world map.