Rinus Michels, the coach who invented the total football played with such verve by Ajax Amsterdam and Holland, has died aged 77.

He had undergone heart surgery in a hospital in the Belgian town of Aalst when he died.

Michels coached Ajax from 1965 to 1971 when a team led by the incomparable Johan Cruyff won four Dutch titles.

They won the first of three successive European Cups, against Panathinaikos in 1971, after losing the 1969 final to AC Milan, before Michels accepted a big-money move to Barcelona whom he coached from 1971 to 1975.

Ajax's other two European Cup wins, against Inter Milan and Juventus, were under the Romanian Stefan Kovacs who allowed Cruyff to run the show.

Cruyff then joined Michels at Barcelona and they won the Spanish title in 1974.

Michels, known as The Sphinx, coached Holland, with Cruyff, Johan Neeskens, Ruud Krol and Johnny Rep, in the 1974 World Cup where they played the best football but lost the final 2-1 to West Germany when they failed to match the Germans' fighting spirit.

Michels started the same 11 players in every match of Germany 74, except in the group match against Sweden when he inserted Piet Keizer for Rob Rensenbrink.

Holland, without Michels and Cruyff, lost the 1978 final after extra-time to Argentina.

But Michels, named coach of the century by FIFA in 1999, won the European Championship in 1988 when a Holland side containing Marco van Basten and Ruud Gulllit matched the flowing football of Cruyff's era to beat the Soviet Union in the final.

England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson later paid his tribute to Michels, describing the former Holland coach as "a legend". 

(Agencies)