Departing Ajax coach Ten Hag gave Ajax back its self-esteem

Manchester United, like Ajax with the arrival of Ten Hag, urgently needs faith in success and regaining pride. The Premier League club has had to do without a league title for ten years, but would like to dare to go through life again as the potentially largest club in England.

Nobody should think that Ten Hag already confirms that he has already signed in England, even though everyone in football suspects that. ‘I serve Ajax, which has my full attention. We want to win titles’, he said on Friday, sitting next to the KNVB cup, prize for Sunday’s final against PSV in de Kuip. That he himself was already negotiating, according to numerous media, apparently does not violate that focus. ‘We don’t get out of balance and focus on what it’s all about: winning matches.’

ten Hag; that is two national titles and two KNVB cups, and in a few weeks maybe even three titles and three cups. Ten Hag is synonymous with attractive football with many goals. But it is mainly the great European duels that stick, which established his name internationally. “One of the best in the world,” captain Dusan Tadic said on Friday.

Connection to top

The Ten Hag episode will soon be remembered by thousands of supporters, singing with pride, in their shirts on Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Piazza San Carlo in Turin or in the Bairro Alto in Lisbon. Ajax rewrote stories about the illustrious club from that relatively small Netherlands, which reconnected with the top.

Now that he is leaving, a year before his contract expires and his successor cannot be predicted so easily, the sentiment of hypochondria can be felt in Amsterdam. Ajax will collapse without Ten Hag the magician, the team thinker who reasonably balanced attacking and defensive play, who linked attraction to realism, who gave talent opportunities and with the departed director of player policy Marc Overmars gave Ajax’s investment power an impulse. Ajax took financial risks, only justified by European performances. In that respect, the model is under pressure, because after the peak season 2018-2019, the performance visibly decreased in Europe, although it will not collapse anytime soon.

With oriental realism, Ten Hag numbed the tendency for overestimation in Amsterdam, to build a new team twice out of humility, a job that also awaits the new trainer. Ajax was a club of cynicism. First the revolution of Cruijff, followed by joy, and later aversion to the game under Frank de Boer, the revival without prizes under Peter Bosz, the sad dismissal of his successor Marcel Keizer. Then the arrival of Ten Hag, his difficult start and the recognition that he lacked mental strength in the selection after the scrubbing at PSV at the denouement in 2018.

turnaround

This was followed by new, much more expensive paid policies. So the turnaround, with European duels as the highlight. Just as Frenkie de Jong, Matthijs de Ligt and Hakim Ziyech owe their million-dollar contract to duels in Madrid, Turin or London, this also applies to the trainer. Yes, becoming champion of the Netherlands with such a budget, winning 9-0 against van Cambuur or 13-0 against VVV, is great anyway, because you have to do it despite high expectations, while everyone at Ajax wants to win . It’s just not the performance that gets them excited in Manchester, it’s not why they choose Ten Hag over Pochettino. He owes this to those unforgettable duels in Europe, to that semi-final of 2019, to six group matches won in a row this season.

There is one blemish on Ten Hag’s performance. Ajax has been glorious in far away matches, but at home all crucial duels of recent years have been lost: against Spurs, Valencia, Atalanta and Benfica. A wonderful starting position for even more success is lost every time. A final against Spurs, twice an eighth final because of Valencia and Atalanta, once a quarter final at the hands of Benfica. Ajax all went wrong.

Ten Hag stated that it was easier to play football for Ajax. Ajax is giving away more space at home, partly because of its preference for the attack. That is modern football in a nutshell. The holy grail of conversion. It wasn’t always easy either, Ten Hag muttered. Ajax was often better in terms of football, an opportunity was lost here and there and the defeat was clumsy. But if something like this happens four times in a row, it can’t just be a coincidence.

Ten Hag will do at Manchester what the task of his successor at Ajax will also be, although he has much deeper pockets in England: looking for the right mix, building up from humility. Let Manchester be Manchester again, as he let Ajax be Ajax again.