It was Johan Cruyff who "made us champions", wept long-time Barcelona fan Jose Gilabert Cortina, a retired printer who joined the thousands of fans who came to the Camp Nou on Saturday to pay tribute to the Barca legend.
Dutchman Cruyff, who first moved to Barcelona from Ajax Amsterdam in 1973, died on Thursday in his adopted city aged 68 after a five-month battle with lung cancer.
"When he arrived as a player 43 years ago I came to all the matches for the sheer entertainment he provided," recalled the bespectacled 69-year-old.
"We were a team of losers, it was 14 years since we'd won the Liga and he changed everything. You would have thought that football had been transformed into another sport," he recalled with tears in his eyes like many of his generation who mixed with the international crowd including Spaniards, Chinese, Japanese and Moroccans who came to the special condolence area opened by the club at the Camp Nou.
Cruyff's debut in 1973 "was like a revelation," recalled 74-year-old retired taxi driver Fidel Diaz Fernandez.
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