AFC A1AX
WINNERS OF THE EUROPEAN CUP WINNERS' CUP 1987
When Ajax Amsterdam beat
Lokomotiv Leipzig 1-0 in Athens in
May to land the Cup-winners' Cup,
they were celebrating their first
European final for 14 years. But
despite that time lag, nothing had
really happened to challenge their
status as one of Europe's great clubs.
Apart from the memories of the
great days of the Johan Cruyffs total
football revolution, there are all the
statistics to prove the point. Ajax
have won the
World Club Cup once (in 1982);
European Champions' Cup three
times (1971, 1972 and 1973);
European Cup-winners' Cup once
(this year);
European Supercup twice (in 1972
and 1973);
Dutch championship a record 22
times;
Dutch cup a record 11 times (in
cluding this year, when they beat
Den Haag 4-2 in extra time).
They also finished runners-up in
the league this past season, behind
PSV Eindhoven, having run up 92
goals1 in 34 games, one of their very
best scoring rates in Europe. But
then, an attacking approach is what
you would expect from any team
directed by Cruyff and including
two ofwestern Europe's most prolific
marksmen in John Bosman (23 goals)
and Marco Van Basten (31 - but who
has now left to replace England's
Mark Hateley at centre-forward with
Italy's Milan).
Ajax are 90 years old unofficially
this year. The club had its beginn
ings in 1897 though it was not until
March 18,1900, at a meeting called by
'Pa' Dade in an upstairs room of the
Cafe East India in Amsterdam's
Kalverstraat that Ajax Amsterdam
was formally founded. They began in
the third division organised by the
KNVB, which had been running
since 1889.
In 1908 Ajax merged with another
small club, Holland, and in 1911 they
broke through to the first division -
trained by an Englishman named
Kirwan.
Relegated briefly in 1913, Ajax
returned to the top flight after the
war and won the championship for
the first time in 1918. Another
Englishman arrived as coach in the
Verlatt celebrates in Athens
1920s, Jack Reynolds, and he laid the
foundations for the team which
dominated Dutch football in the pre
war years. Ajax won the champion
ship five times in the 1930s and were
runners-up once.
But that, although for years
remembered as Ajax's Golden
Decade, was as nothing compared
with the glories of modern times.
Cor Van der Hart and Rinus
Michels were star players in the
1950s but it was not until the late
1960s, when Michels returned as
coach, that Ajax took off into interna
tional orbit. The warning signs for
everyone else were there in the
1966-7 Champions' Cup when they
thrashed Liverpool 5-1 in a second-
round tie in the Amsterdam mist.
Two years later Ajax became the first
Dutch side to reach the Champions'
Cup final and although they lost 4-1
on that occasion to Milan, they learn
ed their lessons well.
Two more years and Ajax were
back as winners, beating Panathin-
aikos of Athens 2-0 at Wembley. The
next year they beat Internazionale
2-0 in Rotterdam and then Juventus
1-0 in Belgrade. Cruyff was the star,
the inspiration, but he was surround
ed with many fine players such as
Wim Suurbier, Rudi Krol, Arie Haan,
Gerrie Muhren (elder brother of Ar
nold who is still a first-teamer), Johan
Neeskens, Johnny Rep and Piet
Keizer.
Their trademark was the total foot
ball system which involved taking
full advantage of a generation of skill
ed all-rounders whose versatility and
football intelligence allowed a
bewildering inter-change of posi
tion. It was The Whirl, as envisaged
early in the 1950s by that football pro
phet, Willi Meisl.
It was a style which very nearly
earned Dutch soccer the game's
highest prize. But the Dutch national
team, built around the Ajax stars, lost
in both the World Cup Finals of 1974
(2-1 to West Germany) and 1978 (3-1 to
Argentina) and the great days were
over. In truth, the greatest days for
Ajax had ended in the summer of
1973 when Cruyff left to join Michels
at Barcelona in a then world record
£922,000 transfer. A year later
Neeskens would follow the same
path.
It took the second coming of Johan
Cruyff to being the 1980s revival. That
was in the late autumn of 1981 when
he was winding down his career
after stints in the NASL with Los
Angeles Aztecs and Washington
Diplomats. When Cruyff came back,
Ajax were trailing PSV in the league.
But by the end of the season they
were five points clear and Cruyff had
inspired Ajax to a Dutch league scor
ing record of 117 goals - 32 of them
falling to Golden Boot-winner Wim
Kieft.
Cruyff went off to Feyenoord to end
his career, then returned to Ajax as
technical director in 1985 and
brought his Midas touch as well as a
free-wheeling new tactical style. Ins
tant reward was a 3-0 victory over se
cond division Roosendaal in last
year's cup final, followed by a repeat
this year (over Den Haag) plus the
Cup-winners' Cup.
PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT
RANGERS MATCHDAY MAGAZINE
