Van Basten : A New Ajax On The Way...

Marco van Basten is clearly one of the world’s up and coming young coaches. He was the talk of the town this summer in Swissaustria until he met up with an established Dutch legend in Guus Hiddink. He’s got the playing career which allows him to tell his players without even a hint of doubt, “been there, done that“. And now he’s in charge of a club once a tried and true European giant, now stumbling a bit, having only won the Eredivisie twice this decade, and devoid of a title celebration since 2003-04. The club is obviously in shambles.

So what Marco has done is walk in the door with a big ol’ axe and swing away with no concern for women and childen, bringing about sweeping changes to the current club’s roster and seemingly going back to what made Ajax the European superpower: youth, and much of it derived from their world class youth system. In fact, it’s so world class it was named by FIFA or UEFA or some other relatively important organization with an acronym name recently as having the best youth system in Europe, with FK Partizan in second.

What this means is the pink slips have been flying out in a fury for mediocre vets and youngsters deemed unworthy of Marco’s time. No less than eight players have been told they can look around for clubs, and if no one finds them desirable, they’ll be sent to the reserve team with a dunce cap on. So Laurent Delorge, Nicolae Mitea, Edgar Manucharyan, Jurgen Colin, Robbert Schilder, Kenneth Perez and Albert Luque will be exiting stage left. A number of others -including George Ogararu, Dennis Rommedahl, Leonardo, and Kennedy Bakirciogluv - have been told they’re on depth duty, which means they’re also free to start dating other people…should anyone be smitten, that is.

Taking their places will be a host of young talents, some from that crazy good youth system and others purchased for insane cash amounts and a bevy of body parts, including Miralem Sujlemani, Ismael Aissati and Dario Cvitanich. And of course, the likes of Klaas Jan Huntelaar, jewel of many an eye across Europe, and Luis Suarez, two enormous stars in the making. Plus he brought Dennis Bergkamp back to Amsterdam in a coaching role, simply some fantastic juju.
In today’s economic football climate, the way to success for a team like Ajax is to build through excessively talented youth and sell them off to the highest bidder when the time has come. Still a far cry from the days of the Twelve Apostles, even the 90’s, but with a coach like van Basten and supreme talent coming through the pipeline, the return to glory for Ajax may not be far off.