Three Little Birds

Ajax Amsterdam  1  SC Benfica   0

UEFA Champions League – Group Stage

Now into its fourteenth season, the infamous ‘Football Weekend’ began its life at the Amsterdam Arena, and little did we know on that day in October 2005, the journey we were going to embark upon.

It’s an oft told story, what started out as a weekend has now stretched to almost a week, based close to the Dutch / German border, we have seen umpteen games at some superb locations in some of the most fantastic towns and cities in both of those Countries, and now more recently, that’s been extended to Belgium.

This season, clad in our ‘Football Weekend 2018’official merchandise (please contact me for a catalogue), the journey began at East Midlands Airport and upon arriving in Amsterdam we were met by our fantastic host Theo de Reus and his driver/nephew, Jasja who had clearly been coerced into the proceedings!

Johan

A short drive took us to the district of Duivendrecht which in itself is no more than a ten minute walk away from the Johan Cruyff Arena, as it is now known. It was far too early for entering the ground so we found a bar-cum-Indonesian restaurant in the plaza to the South of the ground, and only a two minute walk from the turnstiles. Much tucker and lager was to be had.

I’ll be totally truthful, despite having visited the stadium four times previously for Ajax games, I’ve never quite taken to it. Our first ever game was a 0-0 draw against Heerenveen that was far from inspiring, while since then we’ve seen a midday kick off against PSV that was muted in terms of atmosphere and a game against Excelsior which was mightily frustrating as Ajax tried to score the perfect goal at every opportunity.

A Europa League game against Panathinkaikos was a little more atmospheric, but I think my reservations have been three fold. Firstly, and this was perhaps just the choice of games, the atmosphere was never that great. Secondly, and while the Arena is a fantastic stadium, the fact that it had multicolour seats, it didn’t seem to identify with a magnificent club like Ajax. Finally, watching Ajax can be mightily frustrating at times. They can play the Total Football Cruyff reveled in, but sometimes you have to be a bit more than that, you need to be able to be effective, decisive, ruthless and even a bit direct, but that didn’t seem to always be in the Ajax make up.

It Feels Like A Football Ground

Of course, Ajax have one of the best, if not the best, youth academies in Europe, with perhaps only Chelsea and Barcelona matching it, but in recent times they’ve been known as a selling club. Domestic football in Holland is not strong, certainly when compared to England, Spain or Germany, so they don’t need to invest heavily to achieve domestic honours. Great Ajax sides come in cycles, a crop of wonderful players come through at the same time, they go on to make a dent in Europe, but then the players are sold.

Tonight, Ajax were playing a game in the Group Stages of the Champions League, the first time in four seasons they’ve reached this stage.  Prior to that, they’d achieved it five years on the bounce, but again, in the five years prior to that, not once. In fact, since 1997 they’ve only got past the group stages twice, but the glory years were the three seasons between 1994 and 1997 when they were winners, runners up and semi-finalists. But again, in the twelve years prior they only qualified for the premier European competition three times, each time going out in the First Round. But go back to the early Seventies and they won it three years on the spin! See what I mean about cycles?       

Great Seats

What was once known as the Amsterdam ArenA, has now been named after the finest footballer Holland and Ajax has ever produced, Johan Cruyff. It’s a fitting tribute to a man that not only shaped football for his club and Country, but also across the World. Along with the renaming, it looks to have had a makeover, and for the better in my opinion. The garish multicolour seats have gone to be replaced by red, this now actually looks like a ground belonging to a football team.

The stadium is a bowl, with two rings, and it holds 54,000 spectators, it also has roof and serves very much as a venue as opposed to just a football stadium, with various concerts and events taking place. One thing that is strange though is that a road runs underneath the stadium, with car parks to either side.

I was hoping that a Champions League game would bring the best out of the Ajax support and we’d get a really cracking atmosphere, and to be fair, I wasn’t disappointed. Pre-match we had a repertoire of club songs and Dutch ‘Levenslied’ ditties such as ‘Bloed, Zweet & Tranen’ by the Amsterdam legend that is Andre Hazes.

In the first half, Benfica looked to have the edge in the game, but after we’d managed to sneak our way into a sponsor lounge for a snifter and the Ajax support had belted out their anthem ‘Three Little Birds’ by Bob Marley, the second half was a different matter.

It did look like the game was going to finish goalless, just like that night in 2005, but as we moved into injury time, a mistake saw Ajax work the ball into the box and as it fell to Noussair Mazraoui, his shot took two deflections and found its way into the Benfica net.

The F-Side Starts To Fill

The ground erupted, and even as we left the stadium and made our way back to the car, the crowd on the F-Side were still saluting their heroes. This Ajax side is one of the best for several years, but with players like Frankie de Jong and Hakim Ziyech tipped for mega-millions moves at the end of the season, who knows what happens next?

So, as we drove back to base camp, it was time to reflect on a game and an experience that had been very enjoyable indeed. My faith in Ajax and the Arena had been restored, the beer, cheese and sausage we had in the back of the car was accompanied by choruses of Bob Marley, for the Ajax faithful, they’ve learnt to accept that one way or another, every little thing is going to be alright, it just takes time!