Johan Cruyff. Dennis Bergkamp. Frank Rijkaard. Marco van Basten. Clarence Seedorf. Wesley Sneijder. Frenkie de Jong. Ajax and the Netherlands have been enmeshed for the last 50 years.
An old cricketing phrase can be adapted here: strong Ajax, strong Netherlands.
But in 2023-24, the Amsterdam club finished fifth in the Eredivisie, their worst result this century. One month later, Ronald Koeman’s Netherlands slumped to third in their group, though an improvement from that point means they will face Turkey in the quarter-finals on Saturday.
The Ajax-Netherlands connection has been lost. Across the Netherlands’ three group stage matches at the 2024 European Championship, not one Ajax player appeared for a single minute. There are just two in the squad — attackers Steven Bergwijn and Brian Brobbey.
Even more troublingly, until Bergwijn started against Romania in the round of 16, not a single minute had even been played by an Ajax academy graduate — that number also includes Matthijs de Ligt and Ryan Gravenberch — one of the most famous and prolific talent development centres in world football.
“Dear Europe: We Are Back,” proclaimed Ajax’s own social media after they reached the 2017 Europa League final. That side was the youngest team to ever reach a major European showpiece. Two years later, a squad made up of largely the same players were within a kick of becoming the first team from outside Europe’s top five leagues to reach the Champions League final in the last 20 years.
What happened?
To walk from Ajax’s academy at De Toekomst (literally translated as ‘The Future’) to the Johan Cruyff Arena, there is a large pedestrian bridge spanning the motorway which speeds commuters south from Amsterdam. The journey takes approximately five minutes, but the image is hugely symbolic — from their first moments in the Ajax academy, young players are told that their aim is to one day cross it.
This year, however, that route has been diverted. Ajax’s training centre is being rebuilt. There are traffic cones rather than training cones, chainlink fences, and mustard-coloured cranes blocking the view of the bridge from the central building. The symbolism now is different, yet no less clear — this is a team under reconstruction.
The Johan Cruyff Arena is also the Netherlands’ main home, and throughout the club’s history, that bridge has also been a pathway into the national side — more Ajax players have played for the Netherlands than from any other club.
In March, there was shock when manager Koeman picked a 26-man squad without an Ajax player for the first time in 29 years. That occasion, in 1995, only took place because of a dispute between the club and the Dutch FA, with eight players initially called up to Guus Hiddink’s squad.
There is mitigation behind Ajax’s lack of visibility at this Euros, for both current players and academy graduates. De Jong, likely the best player to emerge from De Toekomst this century, would have started in central midfield but for an ankle injury, which ruled him out on the eve of the tournament.
Arsenal centre-back Jurrien Timber, who left Ajax last summer, would have been in the squad, if not necessarily a starter, but for only returning from an ACL tear one month before the tournament. De Ligt did make the squad, but his own knee issues have meant that Inter Milan’s Stefan de Vrij is starting in his place. Eighteen-year-old Jorrel Hato, who became Ajax’s youngest-ever captain last November, will make plenty of future squads.
But the reality of the situation is that, outside of De Jong, no Ajax graduate is integral to this Netherlands side. This is far below the standards of one of Europe’s most productive clubs, who enjoy dominant access to Amsterdam’s talent development scene, one of the most rich in Europe, albeit access which is now being eaten away at by rivals Feyenoord and PSV Eindhoven.
There were six Ajax players among the Netherlands’ legendary 1974 World Cup finalists, not including Cruyff, the architect of ‘total football’, who had only left the previous summer after developing the style at the club alongside coach Rinus Michels.
At the 1988 Euros, as the Netherlands won their only major tournament, there were five, with three more key players – Koeman, Rijkaard and Van Basten, all developed in Amsterdam.
In 2010, the last time the men’s team reached a major tournament final? Only three, including goalkeeper Maarten Stekelenburg, but key players Sneijder, Rafael van der Vaart, Nigel de Jong, and Johnny Heitinga all came through the academy.
The best players in Koeman’s current squad have been supplied by FC Groningen (Virgil van Dijk), Feyenoord and Chelsea (Nathan Ake), Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona (Xavi Simons), and PSV Eindhoven (Cody Gakpo).
So what has been happening at Ajax? Back in April, The Athletic visited Amsterdam for a deep dive into the state of the club.
“This is a club on fire,” one member of Ajax’s coaching staff, speaking anonymously to protect their job, said upon arrival. Another employee, who had worked for the institution for 14 years, described the 2023-24 season as the most difficult of their tenure.
Here is a potted summary. In 2022, off the back of successive league titles, head coach Erik ten Hag departed for Manchester United, while technical director Marc Overmars was forced to resign after admitting to sending inappropriate messages to female staff.
A power vacuum was left at the top of the club. “Ajax is not a football club,” former director Arie van Eijden had said in the early 2000s. “Ajax is a political party.” His observation came true once more, with different factions of the club’s three-tier board system pushing different managerial and head coaching candidates, while simultaneously pushing against others to protect their own positions.
Two managers — Alfred Schreuder and Maurice Steijn — lasted less than a season each. CEO Edwin van der Sar briefly attempted to step in as temporary sporting director, before former Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal technical director Sven Mislintat was given carte blanche over recruitment.
Needing to trim €30million (£25m, $32.5m) from the wage bill after Ajax’s failure to qualify for the Champions League, he sold high earners such as Timber (Arsenal), Edson Alvarez and Mohammed Kudus (both to West Ham United). That in itself was not a problem — it has been part of Ajax’s model for decades — but the issue was how he replaced them.
Last summer, Mislintat chose to recruit 12 players for a combined €109million, signing players such as Chuba Akpom from Middlesbrough (€12m), Carlos Forbs from Manchester City (€14m), Benjamin Tahirovic from Roma (€8m), and Georges Mikautadze from Metz (€16m). None have been an unqualified success, the majority have been inglorious failures.
Mikautadze has starred in Germany but his Ajax team have struggled (Photo: Chris Brunskill/Fantasista/Getty Images)
Mikautadze, the most expensive recruit, has impressed for Georgia these Euros, but found himself back at Metz by January after failing to score in Amsterdam. Mislintat was sacked in September.
Perhaps the best summary of his decisions were provided by former Ajax player Kenneth Perez to ESPN: “I think this is a Harvard case study about how quickly you can ruin your own advantage over the rest of the league in two transfer windows.”
In April, Ajax lost 6-0 at bitter rivals Feyenoord in De Klassieker, their largest defeat in 97 years. It felt like rock bottom.
Earlier that week, incoming CEO Alex Kroes had been suspended for alleged insider training. He denies wrongdoing. Though he has since returned to work in the new role of technical director, pending an investigation from the Dutch market regulator, the circumstances of his suspension, coming amid a battle for power at boardroom level, exhibited the Gordian knot of politics which will have to be untied.
Part of that process involved a report into Mislintat’s reign — examining the extent to which his signings had blocked the academy pipeline.
In some ways, it had appeared in rude health — Hato is already an international at 18, the under-17s won the prestigious Future Cup at Toekomst, while, at the full-time whistle of their 1-1 draw with Go Ahead Eagles in April, all 11 players had been born in the 21st century.
However, the reality is a little different. Several of the players involved against Go Ahead Eagles were bought by Mislintat, while, with the exception of Hato, there are serious questions over whether the remainder are high-potential players. Jong Ajax struggled this season, while there is a perception in the Netherlands that PSV’s academy, and arguably Feyenoord’s, have overtaken them in terms of quality.
Last season, Jong Ajax were 15th in the 20-team Eerste Divisie, a league which they won in 2017-18, and finished seventh in just two campaigns ago. They began the year with eight losses from their first 12 games, improved slightly, but then slumped to nine defeats from their final 14 matches.
A look at the make-up of this Dutch team bears that out — nine players have spent time at PSV, compared to six at Feyenoord and five at Ajax. In the under-19s, it is a similar story — there are double the number of PSV players (eight) compared to Ajax.
“If you know the phrase about Ajax being a political party, then the academy is a political party on its own,” explains Dutch journalist Sjoerd Mossou. “Jong Ajax are performing terribly right now — and it’s not just the results, there’s not one player who is clearly a really big player.”
“In 2016, they changed the academy to a different philosophy,” explains one former Ajax academy coach, speaking anonymously to protect relationships. “It was much more team-focused, in terms of concentrating on results, and they also put a lot of weight on physicality.
“And if you change the philosophy of an academy in a bad way, it is five to 10 years down the line that you see the results — and that’s where they’re at now.”
Bergwijn, left, is the only Ajax player to appear for the Netherlands at Euro 2024 (Photo: Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images)
There have been widespread changes in recent years, with several longtime members of academy staff coming and going. Kelvin Duffree, one highly-rated technical director, left to head the Moroccan FA’s Mohammed VI Academy last year. Another important figure, former striker Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, whose job involves transitioning players from Jong Ajax to the first team, is currently off work with burnout after needing to take on extra responsibilities over the past two years.
There is hope — but it will be a long process. Without European income, Ajax need to make sales and slash their wage bill this summer.
In May, the club appointed Francesco Farioli as head coach — the Italian will become the first non-Dutch manager since 1998. There is hope that this will provide the shake-up which Ajax needs — his Nice side were the surprise entity of Ligue 1 for the first half of last season, boasting one of the best defences in France.
His route into football was unique, studying philosophy to PhD level at the University of Florence. There, he was particularly interested in Jean-Paul Sartre and Fyodor Dostoevsky — writing a final thesis entitled “Football as rebirth: the aesthetics of the game and the role of the goalkeeper”. Ajax need a deep thinker.
Making his breakthrough into the professional game through the staff of former Brighton head Roberto De Zerbi, who had read several of his articles, the 35-year-old is from a similar ideological school — though he spoke the right names on his Ajax unveiling.
“Of course, Johan Cruyff, that is clear,” he replied when asked about his greatest influences. “I have said it before — Cruyff is one of the football mentors I have had in my life, so to speak.”
There is optimism at Ajax that Farioli will be the fresh voice they need on the first-team side — with Ajax arguably guilty of relying on a small network of Dutch coaches and old boys. Kroes, who enjoyed success at AZ Alkmaar and Go Ahead Eagles, has also been given a mandate to reform structures across the club. He is effectively the spoke at the centre of Ajax’s wheel, his job is to get it spinning once more.
“Ajax is one the few clubs in the world that has a clear DNA,” Farioli went on to say during his unveiling.
But that DNA had been lost — and as much as that DNA runs through Ajax, that red and white double-helix also runs through the national team. It is in the interests of both — and European football in general — that it comes back.
(Photo: Kevin Voigt/GettyImages)