Ajax dust off old formula
IF you are a football fan and above the age of 30, you probably remember a time when Ajax were relevant beyond their borders.
If you are older still, you will remember them as dominant trailblazers – Johan Cruyff, counterculture, total football and all that.
Since then, it has been a slow and melancholy slide, at least set against the benchmark established by Louis van Gaal’s 1990s teams. Go ahead and blame globalisation, commercialisation, polarisation and whatever other “-isation” which strikes your fancy.
But it is hard to deny that Ajax – once darlings of neutrals and innovators in terms of youth development and tactical expression – feel a bit like the carriage-maker who was driven out of business by the motor car. Or the once-booming village by-passed by the motorway.
This is a side that managed to win four consecutive Eredivisie titles between 2010-11 and 2013-14 – a club record – all the while failing to advance past the Champions League group stage, collecting just four wins in 24 in the process.
Contrast this with the 1990s, when they won four domestic titles in five years (three of them under Van Gaal), but reached at least the quarter-final of every European competition they entered, winning a Champions League and losing another final on penalty kicks.
That side, like this one, had to endure the cycle of selling and reinvesting year-on-year, sacrificing their top players and finding replacements on the cheap. And perhaps that is where the starkest contrast comes into focus. Van Gaal’s Ajax featured players of the calibre of Clarence Seedorf, Edgar Davids, Patrick Kluivert, Nwankwo Kanu, Edwin van der Sar and the De Boer brothers. Make a list of the seven most highprofile players who left the side during their recent run of titles and you end up with Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, Christian Eriksen, Daley Blind, Jasper Cilessen, Arkadiusz Milik and Vurnon Anita.
Not quite the same thing. What is perhaps equally striking is that while Van Gaal’s version was stuffed with players who had joined the club at a very young age and came all the way through the youth ranks, this decade’s version relied heavily on players plucked from abroad (although Anita and Blind are both academy products).
Everybody in Holland is aware of this. And the Dutch, being Dutch, have long debated the slide and the best way to halt it. This season has seen a return to the past, a belief in youth and old-school Ajax values: wingers who hug the line, nifty creative players in midfield, defenders who can spray the ball all over the pitch. The semi-final return leg against Lyon saw them end the game with 10 men after Nick Viergever was sent off. Those 10 had an average age of 20. Not that the starting XI was much more experienced – their average was 22.
But here is an even more telling statistic. Of the XI who started that game, just four – right-back Joel Veltman, midfielders Davy Klaassen and Hakim Ziyech and winger Amin Younes – had started more than 15 games last season. In other words, this is a team who have been revolutionised.
Just as, in many ways, it has been revolutionised on the bench. When Peter Bosz was appointed in the summer, he became only the second Ajax boss in the past 35 years who had neither played nor coached at the club. It was felt that an “outsider” like Bosz could complement the deeply entrenched Ajax culture.
He was a man who was hugely motivated – this is his big break in coaching – and, over the years, established a reputation as someone who valued youth development.
In some ways, it is an easy sell. Playing kids wins you plaudits from neutrals and gives you an alibi with supporters. What’s more, it fits the club brand and is good for the coffers, since established players cost more, both in terms of fees and wages.
Where you run into trouble though is if the youngsters aren’t good enough and the trophies dry up. If Ajax fail to beat United on Wednesday, it will mark their third straight campaign without a trophy. That would match their longest drought since the mid-1970s. Bosz won’t come under pressure – after all it’s a young team, the cup run is an achievement in itself and they lost the league by a single point – yet there are only so many times you can hit the reset button.
The broader question is what constitutes realistic expectations for a club like Ajax and at what point – if at all – does their glorious history become a millstone? The landscape has changed, perhaps forever. Do you accept your new place in the pecking order? Or can you reinvent yourself and overachieve consistently, the way they did in the 1990s?
Wednesday will offer an indication.
YOU almost wonder whether Alisher Usmanov, Arsenal’s second-largest shareholder after ‘Silent’ Stan Kroenke, is looking to stir the pot at a critical moment in the club’s history.
The Gunners are on the verge of an empty-handed season, if they fail to beat Chelsea in the FA Cup final on Saturday. And, barring an unlikely Liverpool collapse at home to Middlesbrough today, they won’t even have the derided – but financially important – “fourth-place trophy” to show for it. Their manager, Arsene Wenger, has yet to decide whether he is sticking around, with a loud plurality of supporters demanding he move on. Their two highest-paid players – Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez – are a year away from free agency and have shown little willingness to extend their contracts.
Amidst all this comes a billionpound offer for Kroenke’s majority share in the club, one that would net him a profit of more than £250m.
One initial reading is this is some kind of a power play, aimed at putting pressure on Kroenke and finally shifting power to Usmanov – who, despite his 30 per cent shareholding, has no seat on the board and no say in the club. A more likely interpretation is this is a final roll of the dice. If he doesn’t get his way, he moves on.
And it will be business as usual at Arsenal. The way it has been for the last decade.