Blind axes his Ajax love for United cause
SUCH is the importance of Wednesday night’s Europa League Final to Manchester United and the Jose Mourinho project, there is no sentiment allowed from even the lifelong Ajax fan in the camp. Daley Blind and his family are Amsterdam football royalty, with father Danny captaining Ajax’s 1995 Champions League-winning dream team of Edwin van der Sar, Frank Rijkaard and Patrick Kluivert, and Daley himself joining the club aged seven until he moved to Manchester in 2014.
But while the rest of the Ajax family stand united in Stockholm on Wednesday night — Van der Sar and ’95 team-mate Marc Overmars are now directors and Kluivert’s talented son Justin a player — Daley insists his dad will be breaking ranks.
‘We are both from Ajax but on Wednesday we are not,’ said Blind, with a pointed glare that will delight Mourinho ahead of United’s biggest game of the post-Sir Alex Ferguson era.
‘I am a Red and my dad will be as well. There are usually two clubs for us but for this game just one. The only thing that matters is bringing back the trophy to Manchester.’
Blind, normally milder in temperament than many of his Dutch colleagues, is clearly pumped up for this one, a tad confrontational even.
Mourinho will love that attitude as his entire first season at Old Trafford rests on the final result in Sweden.
Victory will give United two trophies and Champions League football, a return that will make it hard for his critics to fire their ammunition. Mourinho can then give a rousing speech about overcoming a punishing fixture schedule of 64 matches and an injury list that includes Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Marcos Rojo and Luke Shaw.
However, defeat against a youthful and inexpensively assembled Ajax side would leave United outside the European elite for the third time in four seasons — a shocking return for a club that has spent £455million (net) on transfers in three years.
Worse still, fingers would point at United finishing a distant sixth in the Premier League, lower than in either of Louis van Gaal’s seasons, or that they have scored only 52 league goals, two fewer than Bournemouth. The big players Paul Pogba, Marcus Rashford and Anthony Martial have not performed consistently.
One senses Blind is enjoying the high stakes of it all. Like Frank Lampard, he had to overcome unflattering comparisons with his father at the start of his career with Ajax. Even at United he was viewed as Van Gaal’s pet and was initially tipped to get his marching orders once Mourino walked in.
Instead, the 27-year-old Dutchman has become an increasingly important part of United’s injuryravaged season, winning only praise from his hard-to-please manager as he filled in at left-back, midfield and centre-back, while others like Shaw, Chris Smalling, Phil Jones, Martial and Rashford have had their mentalities questioned.
Clearly, Blind is tougher than his reputation would suggest and he will be the first name pencilled into the middle of defence where he played well in last season’s FA Cup Final win against Crystal Palace.
‘People created a battle between Mourinho and myself when Van Gaal left — two months later everyone was writing something different,’ said Blind. ‘I showed myself on the training pitch every day. I never stopped believing in myself or my quality.
‘Of course everybody knows I support Ajax. I am from Amsterdam and they are in my heart. But I want to win the final more than anything in the world. It is the only think that counts.’