At soccer’s best talent factory, the future is always now
At soccer’s best talent factory, the future is always now: Arco Gnocchi thinks he’s too old to buy a jersey with his favorite Ajax player’s name on the back, but he made an exception for this year’s World Cup.
He doesn’t think it’s appropriate for someone in their early 40s to be so obviously devoted to their heroes. His generalization: “It’s for kids.”
However, Gnocchi deviated from his usual practice this summer for the first time in ten years.
The name and number 9 of Ajax’s 20-year-old attacker Brian Brobbey are proudly displayed on the new jersey he purchased. When asked about his preferred candidate, he said, “He symbolizes everything Ajax embodies at the moment.”
That includes the fact that Gnocchi believes Brobbey will make his jersey irrelevant in a few years at the most. Brobbey had already left Ajax once, when he was a youngster, for a disappointing stint with the German club RB Leipzig, and he will likely go again if all goes according to plan.
Statement
“He is tremendously talented,” Gnocchi remarked. By the time he’s 23, he’ll be long gone.
That is the way things have always been done at Ajax, as far back as anyone can remember. This region has a long history of producing soccer players and is regarded as one of the best places to find top-tier talent worldwide.
Many famous Dutch players have played for Ajax, including Johan Cruyff, Marco van Basten, Dennis Bergkamp, Wesley Sneijder, Frenkie de Jong, and many more. And for fifty years, it has watched them leave as well.
With that in mind, this summer was typical. Before the transfer season opened, former goalkeeper and current club CEO Edwin van der Sar said goodbye to André Onana (who left for Inter Milan) and Noussair Mazraoui (who went to Bayern Munich) with a heavy heart.
Remarks
Even the idea of losing Ryan Gravenberch, a talented 20-year-old midfielder who followed Mazraoui to Munich, did not seem to bother him too much. He wants to leave,” van der Sar remarked.
It was not unexpected that he was calm. When it comes to work, Ajax doesn’t fool itself. As a result, it braces itself for the departure of players. It allocates funds for it, makes preparations for it, and even depends on it.
Gnocchi, host of the most popular Ajax podcast in the Netherlands, “Pak Schaal,” described the team as “a stepping stone team.” While that may be tough to accept, know that if we are a steppingstone squad, we are the best steppingstone team.
However, the club’s leadership had a change of heart by the month’s end of August. As we saw with the departures of Mazraoui, Onana, and Gravenberch, this trend was not at an end.
Ajax’s star forward Sébastien Haller left for Borussia Dortmund. Italy’s Torino announced the signing of defender Perr Schuurs. Former left defender Nicolàs Tagliafico has transferred to Lyon.
Antony, a dynamic and virtuosic Brazilian wing, and Lisandro Martnez, a tenacious and competitive Argentine defender and a definite fan favorite, were the two players who were harmed.
Declarations
He’s the type of player that plays with his teeth bared, according to Marcel Stephan, an Ajax fan who has been a journalist since the late 1970s. Ajax also lost coach Erik ten Hag this summer, and he joined Antony and Martnez at Manchester United.
It’s safe to assume they weren’t sent off with the club’s warmest regards. Ajax held out long enough for United to offer $101 million for Antony’s signature, and Martnez reportedly confronted sporting director Gerry Hamstra about the club’s apparent hesitation with letting him depart.
Alfred Schreuder, who succeeded ten Hag as head coach, expressed concern that there had been too much upheaval before Antony’s official departure.
“We’ve already let a lot of players go,” he remarked, addressing the possibility of losing the Brazilian. We need to maintain a formidable roster. There are now new participants, and we have shared our plans with them.
The club’s relief is self-evident. The annual budget for Ajax is close to $170 million. About $150 million came from just the sales of Martnez and Antony.
With that sum, Ajax was able to buy Steven Bergwijn from Tottenham for a Dutch transfer record fee and maintain a salary budget that dwarfs that of any of its local rivals. Since 2019, Ajax has won every Eredivisie championship because of its financial edge.
The impact on Ajax supporters is more nuanced, representing a near-perfect distillation of the advantages, disadvantages, fairness, and unfairness of modern soccer; it is, in fact, difficult to think of a club that has been more exposed to the repercussions of the sport’s willing obeisance to a ruthless free market.
Of course, there’s a sense of loss, a realization that Ajax’s “success is also its doom,” as Gnocchi put it; the more talented the team is at generating players, the more likely they are to depart.
There is also a feeling of “if only”: “if only Gravenberch could have played with de Jong, rather than instead of him; if only Antony had stayed one more year; if only the club was not engaged in what is, intrinsically, a Sisyphean undertaking.”
Observations
Marjan Olfers, a professor of sport and law at the Free University of Amsterdam and a former Ajax’s supervisory board member, has observed, “It is always difficult when a player goes.” The phrase “five years is not enough time to establish a team” comes to mind. Restarting is something that is constantly necessary.
Although Gnocchi opted to have Brobbey’s name printed on the back of his jersey, he thinks Ajax’s senior playmaker Dusan Tadic’s shirt is the most popular among fans at the stadium. Tadic is currently 33 years old. He has a deal with the club that keeps him there until he turns 36. He’s that extremely uncommon commodity, a sure thing.
It’s not just the money that makes Ajax proud, though; it’s also the fact that they’re cranking out massive quantities of a commodity that the world’s wealthiest clubs can’t get enough of. The pot said, “There is beauty to it.” There is also a tremendous deal of optimism, a conviction that the future will be at least as good as the present.
Having a feeling of who you are is the most important aspect. The names on the jerseys may change frequently, but the club’s identity represents something its members previously thought was gone for good. For fans, that’s the one constant in a world where everything else is always changing.
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