The Cruyff Turn

The Netherlands' 'Total Football' side, built so that any outfield player could take up anyone else's position, went into their 1974 World Cup group match against Sweden as favourites and found a defence too disciplined to open up. Cruyff, the team's captain and central figure, was marked all afternoon by the Swedish defender Jan Olsson.

Receiving the ball with his back partly to goal and Olsson tight against him, Cruyff shaped as if to pass or cross with the outside of his foot, then dragged the ball behind his own standing leg with the sole of his boot, spun through 180 degrees and accelerated away in the opposite direction. Olsson was left facing an empty stretch of grass.

The match itself finished goalless and is remembered for nothing else. The turn is in coaching manuals as the 'Cruyff Turn', one of a very small number of pieces of individual skill named permanently after the player who invented it, and five decades on children are still being taught it.