This year was an insane sporting year full of regional highs and lows. Ajax’s championship race was the most bizarre for NH Sport chief Edward Dekker. At the end of March I will be on Museumplein with a cardboard bowl, two Ajax supporters and presenter Erik-Jan Brinkman to celebrate the upcoming title. It is quiet there that Monday morning and it remains so.
We have arranged the day-after PSV – Ajax (0-2) with two Ajax supporters for the NH Sport TV broadcast, regardless of the result. Only the cards were unexpectedly shuffled due to the sledgehammer blow that Ajax dealt. Ajax is nine points ahead of its competitor and becomes champion. That couldn’t be more wrong.
It was a creative inspiration for me to take a cardboard championship bowl that morning to Museumplein where the ceremony will take place for the first time since 2019. At the last moment I realize that it is only right to stick the head of trainer Francesco Farioli on it. After all the criticism he has had to swallow, the Italian can beautifulboy make a long nose.
Scissors and adhesive tape
Kneeling in the grass, I start working with scissors and tape. Watched with some surprise by passing and cycling tourists. The cardboard blows away twice, but in the end the mission succeeds.
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In good spirits we meet supporters Laurens Out and Bart Elshof in their Ajax outfit at the place where the ceremony will take place in a few weeks. We at NH Sport are convinced of this. It’s also nice that the mayor has allowed this to happen again on Museumplein.
Don’t jinx
But while talking we notice that the sporting crisis of the past two years has not affected both supporters. The big mouth (pardon me) has been replaced by some restraint. Holding up a cardboard bowl with Farioli’s head? No way. We’re told you shouldn’t jinx things.
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I laugh about it and eventually Erik-Jan decides to hold up the bowl himself. Because seriously: losing a nine-point lead in seven games against NAC, Willem II, Utrecht, Sparta, NEC, Groningen and Twente? That’s never ever going to happen.
The Amsterdam team wins the first two matches. Difficult, but that applies to more matches this season. Things go terribly wrong against FC Utrecht at Easter. The future champion loses 4-0. It is the beginning of the completely unexpected collapse. For the umpteenth time this season, Ajax surprises me, but now in a negative way.
Swimming pool in Portugal
A week later I am lying in the sun at the edge of a swimming pool in Portugal when I hear on the radio that Ajax – Sparta ends in an equally crazy 1-1. What’s happening? This was followed by a strong blow from NEC (0-3) and the knockout in Groningen (2-2).
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I think back to the interviews with Laurens and Bart on Museumplein. I think back to the bowl with Farioli’s head and the statue he deserves for the resurrection of Ajax.
I also think of his lyrics about not talking about the championship, which sounded quite ridiculous. “Seven games, seven battles, all together,” he said from the player bus after the 2-0 win over PSV. Apparently he already feels that he has as good as squeezed the lemon.
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At NH Sport, Ajax’s pain quietly fades into the background and makes way for the enormous success elsewhere in the province at FC Volendam and Telstar. We have to be in Volendam for the festivities the To and Forth and in IJmuiden on Plein 1945.The latter location in particular is at least as unreal as the fact that Ajax loses the title.
Museumplein remains empty. If Hugo Borst had been an Amsterdammer it could have been the title of a new book.
Edward Dekker