![]() But, he said, you have come from the university of football, the university of life, what a player must learn: setbacks, success, pressure, winning finals, losing finals, making a mistake in the 89th minute, making a save in the 91st minute. “Johan Cruyff told me normally it’s a lawyer or businessman who knows about balance sheets who can become CEO. “We reached a level of football that nobody really expected from the outside world.” ![]() Crucially the feeling of being catapulted to a whole new level came at the Bernabéu. “That was a firm message he got from us,” Van der Sar says. Criticism was fierce in his early days at the club and he was instructed about playing with a style that reflects Ajax panache, cutting out the sideways passes to be adventurous and expressive. We wanted to combine the abundance of young talent with experience.”Īnother vital move came when Van der Sar and Overmars had an important conversation with the coach, Erik ten Hag. We reflected a bit on the old success from ’95. They had played in World Cups and won Champions Leagues. But going back to our experience, in ’95 we had a very young and talented team with Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf, Overmars, Frank and Ronald de Boer, Patrick Kluivert – but we also had Frank Rijkaard and Danny Blind. “We were maybe a bit reluctant to put money into older players and we thought we could solve things with our academy. “Economic-wise it was not the best idea,” he says. Van der Sar admits it was out of character but logical.Įrik ten Hag on Ajax's 'unfair advantage' in Champions League match at Spurs – video Daley Blind and Dusan Tadic were both immediately influential. A key to unlocking the current team came with the decision last summer to buy two older players to bring experience and guidance. Together with Overmars, the two veterans of the last Ajax team to conquer the Champions League in 1995 used lessons from their old squad to shape the team that this week continues its quest to reach this year’s final via a tie against Tottenham. We have TV rights and a shirt sponsor but we are a country of eight or nine million so to compare to the top five leagues around us it is small change.” A lot of clubs have lost the perspective of what is a football club. In the last 20 years many things have changed in the world of football, mainly on the TV and commercial side. “If you have a love for sport, everybody knows the success of Madrid in the 60s, Ajax in the 70s, Bayern Munich and so on. He appreciates, though, that Ajax’s European revival has a global impact in reminding people that sporting values can outpunch big money. Van der Sar is, by his own admission, quite a relaxed person so he has generally kept remarkably calm about the ride his club are on this season. If you have no spaces then talent underneath is suffocated.” Also, for the young players from the academy to have a path to the first team we need to open up spaces. That’s not a problem as long as they give two, three, four good years of service to the club, win the league, play amazing football. ![]() We have flown the nest at a certain point to find another challenge and we know that is going to happen. It is not realistic forever but Van der Sar intends to sustain it for as long as possible. Still, it feels extraordinary they have created a contemporary example of something generally far too idealistic in today’s globalised and lavishly funded game. That ideal of forming a successful team round its youth is classically Ajax. We are going to make sure there is a team that is going to challenge.’ It has worked miracles for us.” The defining moments in the life of a team tend to happen on the pitch but Ajax would not currently be in the Champions League semi-finals, having already swatted aside Real Madrid and Juventus in swashbuckling style, without this injection of inspiration off the pitch. “We needed to talk to the younger players: ‘Wait for us. “They had faith in the club,” he adds proudly. With the exception of Kluivert, who perhaps had his own reasons for branching out to create his own path, everyone absorbed the message.
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