Cruyff in the Bedroom




More music and football.


Cruyff in the Bedroom are a Japanese Shoegaze band, who many people believe were heavily influenced by My Bloody Valentine, but who in my opinion have a much wider dimension to their music. They were formed in Shimikitizowa in 1998, which was the same year that Japan held the World Cup jointly with Korea. I don't know why they chose this name for the band, but we can safely assume that it was influenced by the former Dutch player, Johan Cruyff. I think that they are probably football fans, as one of their early EPs, Shoegazer of Happy Valley, featured a picture of a football pitch on the cover. Their debut album was Perfect Silence, which was released in 2002(see link below). Since then they have continued to release more music and are responsible for the only feedback club nights in their home town and the Only Feedback record label.


Johan Cruyff is obviously one of the biggest names in World football, from 1964 - 1973 he spearheaded the Ajax team who won 6 League Championships, 4 Dutch Cups and 3 European Cups. He was then transfered to Barcelona, where he became a favourite with the fans and managed to win a Spanish Championship, despite the sanctions set against Barcelona by the Franco regieme. He was also named European player of the year in 1971, 1973 and 1974. He is a famous proponent of Total Football, which was perfected during his time at Ajax and later used by the Dutch national team and Barcelona.While playing for Holland in the 1978 World Cup he inspired a total football team to the final, unfortunately they lost to an Argentinian team, who were playing at home in the final, and who were too worried about what the ruling military juncta would do to them if they failed to win, to play real football He also had some success as manager of Barcelona after he returned from playing football in the USA, and he has been praised for his methods employed at the Barcelona Academy, where many top players including Cesc Fabregas and Lionel Messi have graduated from. In fact Messi has said that the methods that were introduced by Cruyff are part of the reason behind his success. Johan Cruyff is currently working for Ajax as Director of Football or something else with a daft name. It is not clear what his actual official role at the club is, but it seems that he's at least partly running the coaching side in a bid to restore some of the glory back to the club after a few years in the doledrums.


Jordi Cruyff is Johan's son and recently wound up his career here in Ukraine at Metalurh Donetsk. He was born in 1974 and was named after the patron saint of Catalunya, at the time his name was illegal in Spain due to Franco's oppression of the Catalan Language. However, as he was born in Amsterdam there wasn't much the authorities could do about it. Needless to say the choice of name made his dad even more popular with the fans. Jordi spent his early years in Barcelona, but started his football at the Ajax Academy at the age of 8 after his family had returned to the Netherlands. He returned to Barcelona in 1988 when his old man became coach, and he graduated from the famous Academy there. He was bought by Manchester United in 1996 for 1.4 million quid. He started well scoring in his second and third games for the club, but won't go down as one of Ferguson's better buys and was finally sold to Deportivo Alaves in 2000 after making a limited number of appearences and spending time on loan at Celta Vigo. It can safely be said that he was haunted by his father's reputation, and when playing for Holland particularly, he appeared with the name Jordi on his shirt rather than Cruyff. Jordi's greatest moment probably came in 2003 when his relatively minor club, Alaves reached the final of the UEFA Cup. It was one of the greatest games played, however they finally lost 5-4 to Liverpool in extra time, unfortunately due to an own goal. The following year Jordi signed for Barcelona's city rivals Espanyol, before going into semi-retirement, training and occassionally playing for Barcelona's B side. The lure of the Hrivna brought him to Ukraine for the 2006-2007 season. He has recently retired and is now running his own fashion company.


The Cruyff in the Bedroom album Perfect Silence can be downloaded at: http://sharebee.com/4cf45a70

If you like their stuff there's plenty more at:


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