Without winning in ten games, Ajax reaches last place in the Netherlands – 11/02/2023 – The World Is a Ball

Outside the main continental interclubs. Sequence without victories ever seen. Deplorable level of football. Third coach in less than three months. Fan revolt. Last place in the national championship.

The scenario presented would not be completely surprising for an ordinary team, for a small and unimpressive team, whether in Brazil or anywhere in the world.

However, those facing him are the famous Ajax, the biggest club in the Netherlands and one of the most respected in Europe, 36 times national champion (record in the country), 20 times champion of the Dutch Cup (idem), four Champions League trophies ( ditto), two Intercontinental Cup cups (idem).

The talent factory that revealed Rinus Michels, Cruyff (its greatest exponent), Kluivert, Frank de Boer, Seedorf, Bergkamp, ​​Ronald de Boer, Davids and Daley Blind, and where so many other stars passed through (Van Basten, Luis Suárez, Van der Sar, Overmars, Van der Vaart, Neeskens, Sneijder, Ibrahimovic), agonizing in the 2023/2024 season.

The previous one (2022/2023) had no longer been excellent for the parameters of the Amsterdam giant. Third place, behind Feyenoord, Rotterdam, and PSV Eindhoven, was the worst this century, equal to the 2000/2001 and 2008/2009 campaigns.

In all other disputes, Ajax was champion (nine times) or runner-up (ten).

The position had an air of tragedy, as it did not provide a place for the European Champions League, the most popular competition between clubs in the world and which pays large sums of money to its participants (more than 2 billion euros in total, with around 80 million to the champion).

In the transfer window, important players left (almost all for English football), such as defenders Timber and Bassey, midfielder Álvares, midfielder Klaasen, attacking midfielder and captain Tadic and attacking midfielder Kudus, and, administrative failure , there was no adequate replacement.

“It is not possible to bring in so many second-rate players and think that they will perform at a higher level”, declared Ronald de Boer, one of the idols in the history of the club founded in 1900, to the Voetbal International podcast, from the Netherlands, without mentioning names.

In the middle of the year, Ajax signed 12 reinforcements, including defender Josip Sutalo (Croatia, ex-Dinamo Zagreb-CRO), left-back Gastón Ávila (Argentina, ex-Antwerp-BEL) and forwards Chuba Akpom (Nigeria , ex-Middlesbrough-ING) and Georges Mikautadze (Georgia, ex-Metx-FRA). No one trendy.

Furthermore, the arrival of a new coach, Maurice Steijn, 49, who had had a good campaign with Sparta Rotterdam, proved to be a fiasco.

The coach who proclaimed that “attacking football is at the forefront of what I want from my team” (it didn’t even need to, as playing forward is in Ajax’s DNA), forgot that just attacking doesn’t always do the trick.

In 11 games valid for each competition (Dutch Championship and Europa League), Ajax showed a shaky defense, which conceded 22 goals, an average of two per duel. Result: five defeats, four draws and only two wins.

A run of eight matches without a win, which culminated in a 4-3 defeat to Utrecht on 22 October, brought Steijn down.

During this inglorious period under the coach, a game had to be interrupted because Ajax fans, outraged by what they saw at the Johan Cruyff Arena (0-3 against Feyenoord), started throwing flares on the pitch. The angriest vandalized parts of the stadium.

Three days later, when the match resumed behind closed doors, the visitors scored another to seal the victory.

After Steijn’s dismissal, Hedwiges Maduro, 38, a former player of the team, took over on an interim basis and her stay was very brief, seven days, with two games and two defeats, one against the English club Brighton (2-0), the other against the arch-rival PSV (5 to 2).

At the beginning of this week, Ajax management announced a more experienced interim, also a former club athlete, John van’t Schip, 59.

He takes over with the mission of urgently reviving a group weakened by the team’s worst start to the season on record.

And resume, from this Thursday (2), against Volendam (two points ahead in the table), the path to victory, which has not been seen for more than two months, since August 24th, a 4 to 1 as visiting team against Ludogorets, from Bulgaria.