“This isn’t Ajax anymore,” wrote the late Johan Cruyff in his column in leading daily De Telegraaf in 2010. The godfather of Dutch football was fed up. His beloved club, once an institution of global footballing delight and a beacon of advanced game theory, was no longer a super power. Ajax simply weren’t Ajax anymore.
And so began the Velvet Revolution, with echoes of the 1989 non-violent overthrow of communism and the dismantling of the plan economy. At Ajax, Cruyff also rallied against repressive conditions: the investment in expensive, foreign imports and the betrayal of the in-house playing philosophy. He wanted progress by going back to the old virtues, the reaffirmation of Ajax through anachronistic prosperity.
That required reform. Nostalgic dogmatism was to replace nondescript modernity. Cruyff envisaged youth development and player presence at boardroom level as the cornerstones of a sweeping renewal at his club, but his Velvet Revolution was a fleeting one.
Ex-players Edwin van der Sar, Wim Jonk, Frank de Boer and Marc Overmars were appointed to senior coaching roles and powerful positions. They knew how football had to be played, but in the end the club’s board sidelined Cruyff. Would his vision survive his personal banishment? Under coach de Boer, Ajax were highly successful in the Eredivisie, but the playing style was diluted – it was an endless sequence of sideways passing. They became a symbol of the profound malaise in Dutch football – together with Oranje, a lateral stasis wrapped up in stagnation.
On top of the orange crisis, economic imperatives reduced Ajax and the Eredivisie to a feeder industry. “When players improve they will leave the Netherlands,” Ajax’s director of football Marc Overmars says. “I was 24 and Ronald de Boer 28 when we went abroad. That way, staying longer at a club, you keep players together in a team long enough and you get a tight and mature squad. You can possibly achieve the results you want, but, in today’s climate, that is not possible. That is a problem for football.”
“The Netherlands has become a development country,” explains Overmars. “The financial world has passed us by and overtaken us. That influences our approach completely.”
Cruyff’s vision reaffirmed
But the “Ajax way” is still rooted in Cruyff’s vision. The argument goes that Ajax’s current renaissance is a direct consequence of Cruyff’s muddled rebellion. “The tension between Ajax and Cruyff was related to the style of play and with Peter Bosz, Ajax chose a coach who adheres closely to Cruyff’s philosophy,” explains De Telegraaf’s sports editor Jaap De Groot. “Bosz is inspired by Cruyff and he was one of the last to speak with Cruyff.”
This Ajax team is a tribute to Cruyff, with a flexible 4-3-3 formation that blends contemporary athleticism with the high press, buttressed by the old adage that attack is the most effective form of defense. Proaction trumps reaction. Ajax play an upgraded version of Total Football – a tactical theory in which any outfield player can take over the role of any other player in a team.
“In recent seasons, Dutch football has moved away from the Cruyffian vision,” says De Groot. “The tendency has been to play 5-3-2. That system is about anticipation of what the opponent is going to do, but not about imposing your own style. Bosz is a Don Quichotte, Jordi Cruyff told me that at Maccabi Haifa. Bosz’s style was also too attacking, but Ajax’s match against Schalke 04 [3-0] caused an eruption in Holland. Bosz is solely responsible that Dutch football isn’t going for the run-of-the-mill style.”
“Everyone had written off Holland,” says famed Chelsea scout Piet de Visser. “Ajax, Feyenoord and PSV were never going to win a European Cup again, but the Netherlands must stay true to itself. We are a small, but creative people. The Netherlands was flooded, but with our creativity with build dikes and made sandbanks. Ajax can stimulate other clubs and the Dutch FA to rekindle the Dutch game.”
De Visser’s rallying cry draws on the wider Dutch culture. They have been space exploiters for centuries with the ever-threatening sea, and it is no different in football. Cruyff and Rinus Michels spread a simple paradigm: whoever controlled space would win the match.
“Cruyff was the master, also as a coach,” says de Visser. “He saw everything. At Ajax practice is often focused on technique. The youngsters Justin Kluivert and Matthijs de Ligt get skills and team training at a young age at the Ajax academy and that propels them to the top.”
Road to Europa League final
The average age of the Ajax team against Lyon in the first leg of the semi-finals was 21 years and eight months. In the second leg, Ajax had seven players who were 21 years or younger. Their superlative 4-1 home victory rekindled memories of Ajax’s 1995 European Cup adventure when Louis van Gaal’s brilliant and brazen boys defeated AC Milan.
The 1995 Champions League final was not exhilarating, but those 90 minutes represented a culmination of Ajax’s admirable ascension to the European top with a van Gaal-curated team of youngsters and veterans. Patrick Kluivert, Frank Rijkaard and others toppled Fabio Capello and Paolo Maldini. This Ajax are not so different: they have been fostered at the club academy and proffer football the way it is supposed to play.
Perhaps the idea of perpetual movement – every player attacks, every player defends, everyone is interchangeable – could have been misguided idealism from a club that has remained in the periphery of European football for too long. But in reaching Stockholm and the Europa League final, Bosz and Ajax – an XI who all together cost a good €20 million; or roughly the equivalent of Paul Pogba’s leg – have been rewarded for playing Cruyffian football; painting Rembrandtesque patterns with incessant impetus. Ajax have been brave and bold, valorous and player-ish, the exact antipode of Jose Mourinho and his Manchester United.