This season, Prostate Cancer UK is the Official Charity Partner of The Football League, and to celebrate we're staging an end-of-season fundraiser. On Friday 14 June club officials, players, volunteers and loyal supporters will join forces to conquer a 155-mile cycle challenge from Wembley Stadium to Amsterdam's Dam Square. If you'd like to book your place in the saddle or to find out more, click here.

To mark our journey to the low-lying land of windmills, canals and clogs, this week's feature has a distinctly oranje flavour to it. We asked football tactics expert Michael Cox to analyse what is arguably Holland's greatest gift to the world - Total Football...  

Genius: Johan Cruyff epitomised Total Football for Ajax and Holland. Photo courtesy of Action Images

 

Every two summers, previews of the Netherlands' chances at major international tournaments unfailingly open by referencing the Dutch 'Total Football' of the 1970s. It is probably the most famous, celebrated and influential tactical innovation in modern football - all the more extraordinary considering Holland contrived to not win anything with the system - and yet the weight of its legacy appears to hold back the current national side.

Total Football is all about space - creating and exploiting it in an attacking sense, minimising it when the opposition have possession. Perhaps this is natural for one of the most densely populated countries in the world, a nation that is constantly forced to reclaim land lost to the sea. It's impossible to separate Dutch footballing ideology from its country's culture, and in David Winner's excellent history of Dutch football, Brilliant Orange, he deems it necessary to discuss the 'Total Architecture' found in Amsterdam before outlining the virtues of Total Football.

Rinus Michels was the system's pioneer, making his name at Ajax before moving to Barcelona, and later becoming the Dutch national team coach. Although he arrived at Ajax and initially focused on strengthening the defence with a firmly functional objective - avoiding relegation - he became an attack-minded ideologue who influenced football across the world. When Ajax destroyed Italian football's defensive 'catenaccio' system in their 1972 European Cup final victory over Inter, Total Football became the most revered concept in the game.

Michels' key player was Johan Cruyff, one of the most gifted players in history and a remarkable football thinker who explicitly advocated and epitomised Total Football. A centre-forward who insisted on dropping deep and popping up wherever he pleased, he was the perfect player for Michels; Cruyff would not have become so revered without total football, and vice versa.

Total Football's main principle was that defenders must be able to attack and attackers must cover defensive positions. Michels ruthlessly cast aside experienced but limited defensive players, replacing them with talented, attack-minded players who often had never played in defence before.

But that was fine, because the defenders had licence to attack. In fact, they were encouraged to. A full-back would charge forward and catch the opposition by surprise - the wide midfielder would drop back and fill in. But although this switching was a key part of Michels' system, he also insisted that players returned to their 'proper' position as quickly as possible. Leaving defenders in attacking positions for too long was counter-productive, Michels believed - and the whole point was the element of surprise, after all.

Its most enduring legacy involved something different - the pressing high up the pitch, and the brave offside line. The two concepts were inextricably linked: by defending high up the pitch, Ajax (and later Holland) forced opponents away from goal, but they also had to prevent players getting time on the ball to play simple forward passes over the defence for onrushing strikers. Some of Holland's defensive positioning in the 1974 World Cup was extraordinary, with multiple players rushing up the pitch in unison to render various opponents useless.

Arsenal's 'Invincibles' of 2003-04 were often described as showcasing Total Football, but the English game has never come close to producing a genuinely comparable side. That said, the offside trap (although less aggressive because of recent changes to the offside law) is an established part of modern football, and Barcelona have taken attacking football to new heights partly because of their pressing, their high defensive line and their ability to maximise space in possession. Michels and Cruyff were huge influences at Barcelona, with the latter credited with introducing the principles that Barcelona's stunningly successful youth academy is based upon.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that the Netherlands lost the last World Cup final to a group of Barcelona-schooled Spain players who owed so much to Cruyff, Michels and the Dutch. One way or another, it always seems to come back and haunt Holland - but now the national job has been taken over by Louis van Gaal, a more classically Dutch coach than predecessor Bert van Marwijk, Dutch Total Football may rise again.

What's the closest your team has come to playing Total Football? Tell us in the comments section below.