Why do Old Firm never learn from Ajax model?
FOOTBALL magazine Voetbal International once set out to measure how the Dutch nation felt about the success of Ajax.
They learned that the Amsterdam club boasted 3.7million fans and 85,000 members. That was the good news.
The bad was that another 13million people said they would rather gouge out their eyes with a pair of clogs than watch the nation’s biggest club win another trophy.
To overseas fans, Ajax have always been a romantic ideal. What Johan Cruyff could do with that iconic shirt on his back beggared belief. The club which gave birth to Total Football won four European Cups when these things were still dictated by brilliant footballers and groundbreaking coaches like Rinus Michels instead of middleeast Sheikhs with a sovereign wealth fund.
That’s why Ajax have always been the club Celtic, Rangers, Anderlecht and Porto aspire to be. They have no interest in turning up for the Champions League and tapping their toes to the theme tune. They’re Dutch and they expect to win it. So much so that the only way teams from England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France can keep them in check is by pinching their best players.
The Ajax model has always accepted periods of brilliance interspersed with years of necessary transition. They rear great players, sell them and start all over again.
Two years ago, when Manchester United took Donny van de Beek, Barcelona paid £75m for Frenkie de Jong and Juventus picked off Matthijs de Ligt, fans fastened their seat belts and adopted the brace position. They feared a crash was coming.
Yet here we are once more in 2021 and Ajax are at it yet again. While Celtic and Rangers paper over the cracks in the Europa League, the Dutch champions are mixing it with the big boys.
A 2-1 win at Besiktas the other night made it five wins out of five in Group C. Erik Ten Hag’s team have scored 16 goals, losing just three. After years of shameful gerrymandering to serve the interests of the third and fourthbest teams in the big five leagues, Ajax are offering Dutch courage to Europe’s no hopers.
And if they can hold their own at that level with revenue of £100m and a wage bill far closer to Celtic and Rangers than it is to PSG or Man City, then you have to ask the question. Why can’t Scotland’s top clubs do the same?
Ange Postecoglou admitted his side were nowhere near the level of Bayer Leverkusen after a late collapse. To have any chance of winning a game away from home in Europe, Angeball needs three goals of a start. And the sight of £5m substitute Albian Ajeti giving the ball away in the final minutes brought a reminder of an old truth. How much money clubs like Celtic spend is less important than how they spend it.
When Ajax reached the last four of the Champions League in 2019, they did it with a salary bill of £46m — £13m less than the team from Glasgow’s east end.
Churning out technically-gifted players from the finest talent factory in world football, they sell them on for a huge profit. Thanks to prudent player trading — unfettered by ten-in-a-row baggage — they’re now thrashing Borussia Dortmund 4-0 to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League with a win rate of 100 per cent. Contrast that with a Celtic squad lacking depth and taking solace from a play-off place for the Europa Conference League in February.
A third straight year of knockout football in the Europa League offers Giovanni van Bronckhorst a solid start at Ibrox. But no one would argue this is where Rangers or Celtic want to be. Next season offers a chance to be up there with Ajax showcasing their first-class youth development and astute player trading. And right now they’re doing neither especially well.
For an investment of £2m a year on their academy, Celtic have produced the likes of James Forrest and Callum McGregor, and raked in £25m from Arsenal for Kieran Tierney. Yet over the last ten years their profit margin of 28 per cent from transfer dealings compares poorly to the 128 per cent surplus raked in by Ajax. The last time Rangers sold a player for more than £3m, meanwhile, was Nikica Jelavic in 2012.
Ibrox sporting director Ross Wilson insists the club don’t need to sell players in January. But Ten Hag’s Ajax offer the best possible argument for biting the bullet, selling academy products like Nathan Patterson for big money and picking the brains of new coach Dave Vos to invest the cash wisely.
If it’s good enough for Ajax, it’s good enough for Celtic and Rangers.