"During my time in the army, I visited clubs in Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and England, Litmanen tells FourFourTwo. Someone arranged a week for me at Leeds. I played one reserve game and trained once with the first team, but English football back then was completely different. Even if they'd offered me a contract, I would have said no it wasn't for me. It was a lot of long balls, too much football in the air, not the kind of game I could play."
"One evening, the phone rang in my hotel room. Someone said: Hello, are you Jari Litmanen? This is Johan Cruyff, I'm the coach of Barcelona. Do you know me? I thought someone was messing with me, but he said, Tomorrow you're coming to train with us, is that OK? I said yes, thinking I was going to train with the second team. Then he told me, No, with the first team."
Jari Litmanen became one of the world's top attacking midfielders in the mid-1990s and Finland's first global football superstar. He was the talisman of Ajax during a seven-year spell that included the 1995 Champions League and 12 other trophies after arriving from MyPa. Early trials included a week at Leeds where he played one reserve game and trained with the first team, but found English football too direct and aerial for his style. After leaving Ajax in 1999 he reunited with Louis van Gaal at Barcelona and trained with the first team under Johan Cruyff, playing alongside several elite teammates. He earned 137 caps for Finland.
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