As well as backing the Swans to prove Wales manager John Toshack wrong in his prediction of struggle, Cruyff – who played with Roberto as a junior – said that the line to his father – the legendary Johan – is always open should the Swans look to seek advice down that route.<\/p>\n
Cruyff junior was speaking after the Swans four match tour of Spain that saw them win 2 and draw 1 and they now are back in the UK preparing for their final three pre-season games starting tomorrow at Roberto's previous club – Chester.<\/p>\n
Cruyff told the Western Mail "I watched the games against Espanyol and Palamos and you have to say it was difficult for Swansea<\/p>\n
“But this was quite different than games in Britain because they were playing against teams with the same system and style.<\/p>\n
“The difference is Espanyol have been playing it for 10 years and Swansea 18 months.<\/p>\n
“It is the same through Spanish football, but these games will be good for Swansea because of the questions that have been asked with the way these teams play.<\/p>\n
“And, even though I know Roberto has a very young team, you can see they are also very hungry and I think they will be all right.<\/p>\n
“They had a brilliant season last year and I’m sure they will do well.<\/p>\n
“The door is always open for Roberto to speak to my father<\/p>\n
“Whenever he wants to speak to my dad about something, or any advice I could give him, we are always available.<\/p>\n
“And Roberto knows that – but he also knows there are probably not a lot of tips I could give him any more.<\/p>\n
“He has done brilliantly and has had a great season last year and now they find themselves in a new division.<\/p>\n
“He’s won more games than he’s lost, but, of course, he’s now going into a new league and we will all have to see how things go.<\/p>\n
“You are always learning in football, but, in my opinion, he’s capable of handling any pressure and his tactical approach is spot on.<\/p>\n
“He can see things happening out on the pitch very quickly and has the ability to make a tactical move to change the game. He’s taking another step this season but I think he will be fine.<\/p>\n
“I sort of grew up with Roberto, when we were both 14, I was in the Barca youth side and he was with Real Zaragoza and we got to know each other.<\/p>\n
“Then, when I moved to Manchester, Roberto was at Wigan and we spoke pretty much every day – he was a real friend for me.<\/p>\n
“We’ve stayed in touch since and quite often we’ll speak on the phone after a game.<\/p>\n
“He was always football crazy and the perfect professional – he was always about team spirit where I was the type of player that would be frustrated if I wasn’t playing.<\/p>\n
“I never doubted he could turn his hand to management and I don’t think he did either.<\/p>\n
“When he had the chance to take over at Swansea he still had a couple of years left at Chester and I think that was the only sort of decision he faced at that time.<\/p>\n
“I knew how much he loved playing and I knew he thought he would have to give up playing if he wanted to go into management properly.<\/p>\n
“So when he phoned and asked me what he should do, knowing how big his feelings were for Swansea,<\/p>\n
“I just told him this was his destiny. It was his moment.<\/p>\n
“And I think he already knew that and the possibilities he saw at Swansea were a bigger pull than any desire to keep playing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As well as backing the Swans to prove Wales manager John Toshack wrong in his prediction of struggle, Cruyff – who played with Roberto as a junior – said that the line to his father – the legendary Johan – is always open should the Swans look to seek advice down that route. Cruyff junior […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":453,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/453"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}