Ajax have shifted from Champions League freewheelers to serious contenders – their spirit can seize the moment

Ahead of their Champions League semi-final against Tottenham, Ajax know they have the opportunity to do something special in European history

In the immediate aftermath of Ajax’s first Champions League knockout game of this season, when so many were understandably deflated by their entirely predictable 2-1 defeat to Real Madrid, those in the home dressing room felt very differently.

They didn’t see it as just another depressing example of a much wealthier team always being able to do enough, of the established order asserting itself. The game for them didn’t reflect the immutable laws of modern European football. It merely told them they were better than Madrid. Far better.

They actually saw it as opportunity, and then went and seized it. That has been the story of Ajax’s entire Champions League run, and one other reason why they are so thrillingly dangerous for every other side left in the competition.

The young players that invigorate that team have more than internalised the message from the film shown to them last summer by officials Edwin van der Sar and Marc Overmars. In that, seven of Ajax’s most highly sought-after young stars were cast alongside another legend from the past – so Matthijs de Ligt was paired with 1970s rock Barry Hulshoff, Andre Onana with Van der Sar himself – and had the idea impressed upon them that there was something special here. That there was no need to rush. It was impressed upon them how, if they accepted the first big offer that came from a major European club, they would be missing a huge opportunity at history; to become – in Van der Sar’s words “a legend at Ajax, and in Holland”.

Except the players have internalised that so well they have gone beyond. They know they have the opportunity to do something special in European history.

That sense of opportunity also works in two ways. There is first of all the beautiful basic fact that young stars have so aligned in a season like this to play so electrically well. There is secondly the knowledge that a core of them will indeed leave this summer. This, then, is a rare moment in time, for a rare team. It is also a rare feeling, if not a unique one.

The temptation has naturally been to compare this Ajax to that of the young Champions League winners in 1995, but there are arguably more relevant similarities – at least in terms of the passage of their campaign, and the growing belief – with Monaco 2016-17, Porto 2003-04, Bayer Leverkusen 2001-02 and above all Dynamo Kiev 1998-99.

These have been all the surprise semi-finalists in the time since the Champions League first expanded beyond league winners in 1997, and began this process of becoming increasingly loaded towards the wealthiest clubs. These were all also very good teams, which would be proven by how quickly they would be stripped for parts, but also underwent that moment of realisation they were – for a brilliant but all too brief moment in time – as good as the wealthiest clubs. They were invigorated by the same spirit of opportunity.

It was almost a psychological momentum that took over the clubs, and created a unparalleled feeling of invulnerability in every match that is arguably required to really elevate such sides.

Dimitar Berbatov was a mere 21-year-old in that Leverkusen 2001-02 side, and remembers a similar mindset. A side driven by Michael Ballack would come back from 1-0 down away to a very good Liverpool to win 4-2, and then knock Manchester United out on away goals in the semi-finals.

“Until this point, you are really just playing,” the Bulgarian, speaking as Betfair Ambassador, says. “Nobody gave us a chance and you are just wondering ‘what are we doing here?’ We were just enjoying playing. Then, all of a sudden, we beat Liverpool in the quarter-final, and you go to Man United in the semi-final and think ‘wait a minute, we have a chance to be in the final’.”

And then did everything possible to seize their chance in the final, pushing a Galactico Real Madrid so hard that young substitute Iker Casillas made the spectacular saves that effectively made his name.

All of these sides went through something similar. For Jose Mourinho’s Porto in 2004, it was after their own victory over Manchester United. They got somewhat lucky with Tim Howard’s late error and Costinha’s goal, but that was really just what it took for the moment of realisation.

There is a familiar collective spirit about Ajax (Reuters)

“We really started to believe when we knocked out United,” Pedro Mendes told Champions magazine in 2013. They believed so much by the end of their quarter-final win over Lyon, then, that their response to the shock news of defending champions AC Milan collapsing to Deportivo La Coruna was “we’re going to clean up”.

Kiev probably had their moment of truth a season earlier, when they thrashed Barcelona 4-0 at Camp Nou in the 1997-98 group stage with a hat-trick from a 21-year-old Andriy Shevchenko. The fact that supreme team could still carry that confidence through to the next season – without Shevchenko or Sergei Rebrov getting sold – shows how football’s market forces have accelerated, but allowed them to play at a belting pace in 1998-99. They very quickly seemed like one of the outstanding powers themselves, rather than upstarts.

And this is the wider point with these sides, and Ajax now. It is about the point they went from freewheeling teams enjoying the ride, to players suddenly fully aware of their greater quality, and in control.

That was only emphasised in the second leg against Juventus. They didn’t just go at the Italian champions. They took full control of the matches, and that against such a mature side, specifically famed for how they game-manage. They just couldn’t manage Ajax.

It is in that way that Ajax arguably take this sense of seizing opportunity further than any of those previous semi-finalists, both because of their extreme youth and the extent of their attacking football – not to mention the current size of the club. They just create even more opportunities, with the exuberance of their football.

Berbatov encourages them to keep that going.

“Until now, when they were facing Real Madrid or Juventus, they were the underdogs. Nobody expected them to win, maybe only themselves. Now they are semi-finalists, one step away from the final. That can hit you. This can lead to fear in some way… fear of mistakes, because there is so much at stake. But at the same time they are a very young team and when you are young you are not over-thinking things, you just go out there and play. Like they are doing. They need to take it.”

That, however, has been the entire spirit of their campaign.