When sorrow is tinged with joy at memory of Dutch master Johan Cruyff

The sad news on Thursday of the death of Johan Cruyff sent me back to David Winner’s Brilliant Orange, a book as unconventional and imaginative as the Dutch football culture which it investigates and celebrates.

Among its quirkier revelations is that, on the afternoon of their ill-fated World Cup final against West Germany in Munich in 1974, the notoriously superstitious Dutch players suffered a blow to their usual pre-match ritual, when a tape of songs by Dutch rock band The Cats, with which the squad liked to join in on their way to games, “mysteriously” disappeared.

“So, instead of their beloved Cats,” the author relates,“they travelled to the World Cup Final to the tune of David Bowie’s ‘Sorrow’.”