When the Netherlands lost the 1974 World Cup final to Germany, Johan Cruyff became a convert to the concept of the moral victory. Cruyff, as Simon Kuper recounts in his book ‘Barca’, was entering a brave new world “for a man who cheated at dominos and Monopoly to beat his kids”. A German journalist called this loss at Munich “the melancholy zenith” of Cruyff’s career but Kuper points out that it made a profound impact on Cruyff who would argue that his country really won the final and had made them more famous than victory could have. He carried this…

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