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BARCELONA. — It was Johan Cruyff who “made us champions”, wept long-time Barcelona fan Jose Gilabert Cortina, a retired printer who joined the thousands of soccer fans who came to the Camp Nou 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. — AFP.