“As we walked out of the tunnel I said to him, ‘Johan, we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other’.” Berti Vogts may have been grinning as he uttered those words ahead of the 1974 FIFA World Cup™ final, but he was deadly serious. West Germany’s game plan was to starve the Netherlands of possession, to neutralise ‘Total Football’, to reset its palatial practitioners into anti-'Clockwork Oranje'. In order to do that, Helmut Schon had assigned ‘The Terrier’ to man-mark ‘The Lord of the 14’.

Before West Germany had even touched the ball, however, they were behind. It was long before tiki-taka, but a forefather of that philosophy was central to ball-monopolisation at its most breathtaking. Rinus Michels’ men kicked off and put 16 passes together until the ball arrived at the feet of Cruyff, who turned hare and made Vogts his greyhound. As West Germany’s No2 struggled to keep up, his team-mate Uli Hoeness lunged in to try and help.

Cruyff’s balletic feet were too quick. Jack Taylor, taking time off from work as a butcher to referee, awarded the first-ever penalty in a World Cup final, and what remains the earliest ever given in the fixture.

Johan the first had done his job. Now it was time for Johan the second to do his (they had started being known in that way recently after Neeskens had agreed to join Cruyff and Michels at Barcelona). The Heemstede native was, in truth, an unlikely choice to take such a monumental kick. When Cruyff scored on his Netherlands debut, Neeskens – named the Best Hitter at the European Youth Baseball Championship in Rome – was on a three-month trial with the Chicago Cubs and fantasising about becoming the next Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio or Hank Aaron.

He ultimately elected to make a living with a bigger, lighter ball, but began his career as a right-back. Furthermore, until three months before Germany 1974 began with an unforgettable opening ceremony in Frankfurt, Neeskens had never taken a spot-kick in his four seasons with Ajax. Gerrie Muhren, penalty-taking royalty, had netted 18 straight on the Dutch domestic scene. Then he missed one, at 0-0, in the second half of a must-win game against AZ in March 1974. When, two minutes later, the Amsterdammers were awarded another, Muhren didn’t fancy it and, with Piet Keizer off injured, urged Neeskens to step up. The kid with the blond mop and bushy sideburns obliged. He banged it into the bottom corner. “Michels told me I was now the penalty taker for the national team,” said Neeskens. “I said, ‘No problem’. I didn’t think much of it. We got two penalties against Bulgaria in the group stage and I scored them.”

When Taylor pointed to paint after 56 seconds of the Olympiastadion decider, Michels was supremely confident. The player his long-time assistant Bobby Haarms had referred to as “a kamikaze pilot, a frontline soldier” felt the polar opposite. “Throughout my career, I was always really confident taking penalties, but I have to be honest: when we won a penalty in the final, I was suddenly overcome by nerves,” Neeskens explained candidly. “Only a-minute-and-a-half had been played. I’d barely kicked the ball, got a feel of it. My legs weren’t warmed up. Plus there was 75,000 Germans screaming against me. I felt the jitters. “When I became a coach, I always emphasised to my players: ‘When you’re taking a penalty, make your mind up where you’re going to put it and stick to it.’ I always did that expect with the biggest one I ever took! I was going to go left, but as I was running up I thought, ‘Maier knows where I’m going to put this’, so I decided to go right. “I didn’t have enough time to adjust my footing though. I didn’t catch it right. You can see the chalk fly up from the turf where I scuffed it a little. Fortunately the result was that Maier dived where I thought he would and the ball flew down the middle. When the ball came back out, I belted it back into the net – that was a feeling of immense relief!”

Neeskens had, after merely 88 seconds, scored what is still the fastest goal in a World Cup final. Astonishingly, they had done so without their opponents touching the ball. The World Cup’s first penalty may have taken 44 years to be awarded, but the second took merely another 23 minutes. Another 22-year-old, Paul Breitner, converted it and West Germany went on to triumph. ‘Total Football’ and its exhilarating exponents had, nevertheless, wowed the sport and drenched their people in pride. There was hysteria when they touched down at Schiphol Airport. They enjoyed a royal party hosted by Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard. They were serenaded by the masses amid a carnival atmosphere at Leidseplein Square.

The highlight ‘Clockwork Oranje’ left on the competition will live on eternally. Will the records Johan I and Johan II set do the same?