IT’S MEN VERSUS BOYS AS AJAX FAIL TO SHOW
WE HAVE all heard ex-players talk of cup finals that passed them by, big occasions about which they can’t recall the real details. Well, here it happened to the young players of ajax. This was a final they never really lived.
It is said that if you play well and still lose then even the greatest disappointments can be weathered. Maybe that’s debatable. Maybe losing is just losing.
But what is not in doubt is the feeling of emptiness that follows the failure to perform and it is this that will haunt ajax this morning and through the long weeks of summer.
We expected much of them last night, a group of players who had rolled off a conveyor belt that had not delivered much of note for some time.
It was uplifting to see the famous red and white shirt back on a big European stage. We have missed it and ajax’s mere presence here in the Friends arena represented a triumph over steepling financial odds. The Dutch Eredivisie is not a wealthy league and this ajax team cost just £15million to assemble.
That is £240m short of what United’s starting XI cost.
But none of that matters now. here, there were glimpses of ajax’s talent and some of the precociousness Europe has been talking about this season. We saw flashes of excitement from players such as the Chelsea loanee Bertrand Traore.
But what ajax didn’t provide was anything approaching a performance. This was an occasion that was ultimately too big for them and that is one of the reasons Manchester United were deserved winners of the Europa League.
This was not classic United but it wass classic United of this season.
Mourinho, still wound up like a spring afterwards, asked for a smart, professional performance, an execution of a plan. he gotot exactly that. he got the kind of bespoke, big-bigmatch display that he remains capable of masterminding. So all the credit goes to the United manager.
ajax coach Peter Bosz, meanwhile, could only reflect on the opposite. he watched a collection of talented individuals playing as such.
This ajax team — or some of their members — may go on to great things but here they played only on their wits. There was no collective clarity, no cohesion, and they paid a very heavy price. This was a defeat that looked likely from the opening minute and, by the full-time whistle, could have been a fair deal heavier. There were positives here for ajax and there were memories, too. Twenty-two years to the day since Louis van Gaal led his wonderful young ajax team to one of European football’s greatest triumphs over AC Milan in the 1995 Champions League final, he was here in Sweden to watch this. The goalscorer from that night in vienna — Patrick Kluivert — was here as well, while the great forward’s son Justin was among the ajax substitutes. So, there were reminders of a glorious past but ultimately nothing more
than a glimpse of what may await this famous club in the future.
On the field, it looked bad for Ajax from the start. Beforehand Bosz had admitted that nerves could be a factor for a team who contained nine players under the age of 25 and, in Kasper Dolberg and Matthijs de Ligt, two teenagers.
Sure enough, Ajax wore their anxiety like a beacon. In the very first minute goalkeeper Andre Onana flattened one of his own defenders. Poor communication is always a sign of a cluttered mind.
And on the uncertainty continued until Ajax presented United with the lead in the 18th minute.
Fortunate for United? Yes, given the deflection on Paul Pogba’s shot. Unfortunate for Ajax? Not at all, just poor football.
Ajax had the ball at a throw-in 10 yards from their own corner flag. United’s Ander Herrera had just played a pass clean out of play. But what should have been respite turned into self-harm as the throw-in landed straight on Juan Mata’s head and he was able to feed Marouane Fellaini, who passed laterally to Pogba for the fateful blow.
So, with less than 20 minutes gone, Ajax were in stick-or-twist territory and gradually they did improve.
The jolt of the goal served to nudge them from their inertia and slowly we began to see some of the sharp passing and intelligent movement for which this young group are known.
Traore was impressive, a menace. Briefly the 21-year-old made life uncomfortable for United’s left flank duo of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Matteo Darmian. But any semblance of recovery from Ajax was strangled almost at birth, a United set-piece goal pretty much ending the game in only the third minute of the second half.
Afterwards, the words from coach Bosz sounded sour. It was, he said, a ‘ boring game’ with ‘no chances’. That was just disappointment speaking.
Tellingly, his own striker Dolberg did not touch the ball until the restart after the first goal, while United goalkeeper Sergio Romero made only two saves of note all evening.
‘This was not the Ajax I know,’ said Bosz. ‘We didn’t do the things we normally do, we didn’t play the way we normally play.’
For the first time all night, somebody from Ajax had got something absolutely right.