Ajax Coaches

[King Litti]

I guess the ball control game so rooted in Ajax, that it's difficult to change. They practise this style of play from the youngest juniors to the first team. We know the benefits. Every year good young players come out with technique and all around skill. And sometimes there's a jewel that has the chance to become a world class player but this doesn't happen every year. And there's the question that you have already pointed out. Do we have enough talent to play this way properly since the jewels don't come every year and even if they do, they won't stay with us more than a couple of years because of the money. I'd say we can't at least always play this way. It's far too difficult for us to make that penetrating combo or through pass and our passing game is too weak. Far too many give aways that are punished with counter attacks.

It's all very good for Barca to play this way with their player budjet and academy that they copied from us, but even with the likes of Messi and Iniesta, Barca's total football has failed them on occasion, but they never change. They always play with the same style no matter what the opposition does. This way of playing is a part of the clubs identity. If we would change it and parked a bus in defence, I wonder would the fans like it even if we would win? Would Ajax be Ajax with out at least trying to play the total football game?

I also think there has to be a middle ground to this. We need sometimes to adapt according to the opponent. We would benefit if we could play at least in a bit more counter attacking style sometimes, because we have fast wingers in El Ghazi and Kishna who can exploit space and chalenge defenders in one on one situations (but they can't beat three defenders). The trashing by Vitesse must have got FdB thinking. Then again there was no change after the Salzburg humiliation. Guess we just have to wait and see, but I'm sure FdB has to feel the heat to develop his game plan.

[SPL]

Interesting thoughts and I think our big problem this year is the quality of the squad is not as good.In the first half of last season we had Blind at LB and Poulsen DM, both in a different class to Viegever and Serero.OK Serero has looked decent at DM but I still feel the need for an experieced quality player there.Viegever is moderate, well poor.

Up front we are starting to benefit from Milik as striker and not Siggy,who is not suited to the Ajax style.Still think we should have 2 real wingers and not a midfielder as a surrogate winger.

I agree there are times we should try and play different but we must stay with our style of footy trying to play total football.

A few years ago Menno did some sort of poll and I think nobody wanted us to play defensive and win. They all wanted Ajax attempting total football.( I use the word attempting as the class of the 70's were perfection and we can only attempt to copy the football of those gods). Barca can continue to play this style due to the sheer talent plus in Messi they have one of the all time greats as a finisher.

I think Frank is doing a decent job given the players he has got. Some have potential but the only player who would go to a Spurs or Newcastle type of club at present would be Klaassen,and he is not the finished article or ready to leave us yet.

I think we are going in the right direction on transfers,salaries and going back to youth(apart from not contracting 16 year olds). Our biggest problem is in waiting for the youth to come through we are not only not spending much on players but most we have signed are poor. Sana Duarte,Zimling,V d Hoorn Sigthorsson,Viegever are not the standard of players who we should have signed.For similar amounts we could have signed better and maybe thats down to poor scouting .

Final thought on Frank ,I dont think he ie ready yet for a premiership club like Liverpool and he needs to stop all this current crap about I am up for another job. He needs to prove himself in Europe before he is ready for the EPL

[aveslacker]

Ultimately I think that we will always be hamstrung by the fact that we can't hold on to our best players like we did in the pre-Bosman era. Imagine if we'd kept Anita, Eriksen, Vertonghen, Vermaelen and Alderweireld for a few more years? That team would have dominated the Eredivisie and could have gone deep into Europe. Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury anymore, and Frank can only play with the players that he has available to him. It can be frustrating when he holds onto a guy like Siggy (or De Jong) too long, but in my opinion most of the problems we have result from a lack of quality on the part of our players.

Looking at last night's game, how different would things have been if we had Eriksen instead of Anderson and Anita instead of Serero? I can't blame Frank for that. Ajax is one of the few clubs in the world where fans aren't happy with a manager who has won four titles in a row. Typisch Ajax publiek, imo.

[Tom_]

Totally agree that the results are mostly down to the quality of the squad. The importance of tactics on the outcome of a match is mostly overrated IMHO. But it's the manager's job to get the last 5% out of the team with tactics, good substitutions etc. And you can have a great squad and still play crap football (Chelsea, PSG), and this is down to the manager.

[rjf1]

I make a distinction between total football, and even possession football and pitty pat football. Barca plays possession football but it is never pitty pat -- when they circulate the ball it is never pointless passing back and forth -- they are always poking and probing at the defense -- pulling it this way and that to break the shape -- players moving in and around the box. The defense has to work like crazy to keep them at bay. We do nothing like that.

A team has 90 minutes to score more goals than the opposition -- every minute you waste pitty patting is that much more time you take away from your chances to score -- you are not hurting the opposition, you are killing yourself. At least if they made the opposition run around trying to defend so that they are worn out in the late minutes and can't defend effectively, that would be one thing -- but with pitty patting that doesn't happen -- the defense could be sitting in patio chairs for all the running it makes them do.

[Tom_]

Totally agree that the results are mostly down to the quality of the squad. The importance of tactics on the outcome of a match is mostly overrated IMHO. But it's the manager's job to get the last 5% out of the team with tactics, good substitutions etc. And you can have a great squad and still play crap football (Chelsea, PSG), and this is down to the manager.

Just quoting myself because I forgot to mention luck. I think luck is more important than tactics. Last season we were crap but lucky; the season Twente won we were good but very unlucky.

[Tom_]

Oops, doppelgepostet! Carry on ;)

[Cedric]

A team has 90 minutes to score more goals than the opposition -- every minute you waste pitty patting is that much more time you take away from your chances to score -- you are not hurting the opposition, you are killing yourself. At least if they made the opposition run around trying to defend so that they are worn out in the late minutes and can't defend effectively, that would be one thing -- but with pitty patting that doesn't happen -- the defense could be sitting in patio chairs for all the running it makes them do.

What are you talking about? Either you speak about Eredivisie and I would simply say it's wrong, as I when I look at the ranking(s) it seems rather efficient (btw: De Boer never had that many points after 17 games so far, and in terms of goals scored, it's ok (its second best season so far)), or you speak about Champion's League and then I would quote Cruijff, who said if I'm not wrong: "If you have the ball, they can't score". And that's a nice thing when your the underdog. But it gets less nice when someone give them the ball like Zimling did for example...

[Tom_]

Cedric, I'm somewhere in the middle as usual but my question is: are you enjoying the football Ajax has been playing for the last 1.5 seasons?

[Cedric]

More or less, depending of the game. Or depending of the part of the game...
I don't pretend that everything is great, but it's definetly not that bad either. I mean: we're speaking of the second best attack (yeah, even when you have played with Sightorsson most of the time) and rjf1 can state that :"every minute you waste pitty patting is that much more time you take away from your chances to score"...

"Hey, what do you expect?" A rate of 5 goals per game?

Ok, at times it can be very static and boring when they play "in reverse". But at times only. They can score nice goals too. And they can also be outplayed as they were against Vitesse, but that's just happen when they can't play that "pitty pat" football. That team is not that gifted... (and F. de Boer could be blamed for this) Would you have swapped a midfield "Sneijder - Gabri - Davids" for Andersen - Serero - Klaassen some years ago?

Ah, and I just can't stand that "pitty pat" expression. Don't know why.

[zeux]

Problem for me is that the team seems clueless at times. No creativity, no forward push, no idea how to break up a compact defense. If a team defends well grouped against them and leaves them little space to work with, they seem to have no idea how to force an opening.

[aveslacker]

Problem for me is that the team seems clueless at times. No creativity, no forward push, no idea how to break up a compact defense. If a team defends well grouped against them and leaves them little space to work with, they seem to have no idea how to force an opening.

This is my concern as well, and this is where I think we miss Eriksen, who could move quickly through traffic and play that perfect pass to unlock a defense. It's hard to beat a bunkering team through the middle, but again, this is more of a personnel issue than a tactical one.

[rjf1]

A team has 90 minutes to score more goals than the opposition -- every minute you waste pitty patting is that much more time you take away from your chances to score -- you are not hurting the opposition, you are killing yourself. At least if they made the opposition run around trying to defend so that they are worn out in the late minutes and can't defend effectively, that would be one thing -- but with pitty patting that doesn't happen -- the defense could be sitting in patio chairs for all the running it makes them do.

What are you talking about? Either you speak about Eredivisie and I would simply say it's wrong, as I when I look at the ranking(s) it seems rather efficient (btw: De Boer never had that many points after 17 games so far, and in terms of goals scored, it's ok (its second best season so far)), or you speak about Champion's League and then I would quote Cruijff, who said if I'm not wrong: "If you have the ball, they can't score". And that's a nice thing when your the underdog. But it gets less nice when someone give them the ball like Zimling did for example...

Just looking at the rankings is misleading. We have been lucky, pure and simple, as far as the rankings go -- we have managed to win a number of games (including the last one) where we have been totally outplayed and could easily have lost. But luck has a way of evening out over the long run. If we depend on that kind of luck the rest of the way, we could well wind up mid-table. Another point about the rankings is that I want to see us win because we were the better team and outplayed the opposition, not that we played like crap, were completely outplayed but somehow wound up with the points. To me, those are hollow points -- yes, I'll take the points, but I don't feel good about how the team is playing.

And, pardon me for blasphemy, but there is one big fallacy in the Cruijff dictum -- which is, you can't control the ball for 100% of the time. If you control the ball even for 95% of the time, but don't use it efficiently to score goals (i.e. pitty pat the time away with meaningless back and forth passes), and the opposition only has the ball 5% of the time, but manages to get a goal (or more) in the time that they do have it -- your precious ball possession is a total waste.

[rjf1]

... and rjf1 can state that :"every minute you waste pitty patting is that much more time you take away from your chances to score"...

"Hey, what do you expect?" A rate of 5 goals per game?

I expect them to be TRYING to score as many goals a game as possible -- 5 would be nice -- wasting time with meaningless back and forth passes from one back to another and back to the goalie, and more back and forth, does nothing to accomplish that.

... Ah, and I just can't stand that "pitty pat" expression. Don't know why.

And I just can't stand pitty pat football -- I use that expression because it reminds me of two little girls sitting across from each other playing pitty pat with their hands.

[Orange14]

The goals scored is misleading. I don't have the statistics but it's my feeling that we really have scored very little in the first half of matches this season (many of my adverse comments on the game forum are indicative of this). We have also not scored much against quality opposition (only one goal in each match against Twente, PSV, & Feyenoord & we were really fotunate to win at Feyenoord). The club does well when they get the first 1 or 2 goals and are able to open the match up when the other team gets stretched. Similarly when we are playing 11 vs 10 things go well. We did well in the first match of the season against Vitesse (4-1) but away to AZ our winning goal was at the 70th minute with a gift goal by el Ghazi at 90 to make it 1-3. We were terrible at Groningen and then had horribly played draws with ADO and and PEC Zwolle.

I have to agree with Zeux:

Problem for me is that the team seems clueless at times. No creativity, no forward push, no idea how to break up a compact defense. If a team defends well grouped against them and leaves them little space to work with, they seem to have no idea how to force an opening.

the other thing I would note, a big positive, is that our team appears to be physically able to play a full 90 minutes at a good speed and they don't appear to tire as much as the opponents. Perhaps that's why they are able to score decisive goals late in matches.

[aveslacker]

The goals scored is misleading. I don't have the statistics but it's my feeling that we really have scored very little in the first half of matches this season (many of my adverse comments on the game forum are indicative of this). We have also not scored much against quality opposition (only one goal in each match against Twente, PSV, & Feyenoord & we were really fotunate to win at Feyenoord). The club does well when they get the first 1 or 2 goals and are able to open the match up when the other team gets stretched. Similarly when we are playing 11 vs 10 things go well. We did well in the first match of the season against Vitesse (4-1) but away to AZ our winning goal was at the 70th minute with a gift goal by el Ghazi at 90 to make it 1-3. We were terrible at Groningen and then had horribly played draws with ADO and and PEC Zwolle.

I have to agree with Zeux:

Problem for me is that the team seems clueless at times. No creativity, no forward push, no idea how to break up a compact defense. If a team defends well grouped against them and leaves them little space to work with, they seem to have no idea how to force an opening.

the other thing I would note, a big positive, is that our team appears to be physically able to play a full 90 minutes at a good speed and they don't appear to tire as much as the opponents. Perhaps that's why they are able to score decisive goals late in matches.

I think that's also a function of our tendency to play a lot of passes, which forces our opponents to chase the game for long periods of time while the ball does all the work for us.

[SPL]

Not alot to add to some interesting comments. I too hate the word tiki taki.Its passing and possession football.
I do get frustrated at us passing the ball between CD and goalie too much and we dont press up field enough ie last Sunday was a classic case.

[zeux]

the other thing I would note, a big positive, is that our team appears to be physically able to play a full 90 minutes at a good speed and they don't appear to tire as much as the opponents. Perhaps that's why they are able to score decisive goals late in matches.

The approach of Van Gaal in Brasil: wear them out and capitalize in the last part of the game. That's also why he stressed that players had to be really fit when going to Brasil.

[Orange14]

The approach of Van Gaal in Brasil: wear them out and capitalize in the last part of the game. That's also why he stressed that players had to be really fit when going to Brasil.

And that was the thing that really surprised me. I figured the NT would get out of the group as they usually do but given the extra time matches they played in the knockout round and that they were still pretty fresh even at the 120 minute mark was a big plus. Lots of people though van Gaal would lay an egg with this team and proved everyone wrong. Had it not been for Macharano's diving kick save on Robben, Oranje might have been world champions!

[Dubbel]

And that was the thing that really surprised me. I figured the NT would get out of the group as they usually do but given the extra time matches they played in the knockout round and that they were still pretty fresh even at the 120 minute mark was a big plus. Lots of people though van Gaal would lay an egg with this team and proved everyone wrong. Had it not been for Macharano's diving kick save on Robben, Oranje might have been world champions!

Search the web for 'WADA' and 'Xenon' and you will have a pretty good idea of why Holland and some other teams (Belgium, Germany) looked so fit toward the end of their matches.

[Cedric]

The goals scored is misleading. I don't have the statistics but it's my feeling that we really have scored very little in the first half of matches this season (many of my adverse comments on the game forum are indicative of this).

You can find the statistics here : http://ajax.netwerk.to/stand/index.php?helft=1
Ajax only scored 3 goals more in second half (20 vs. 23) , but also conceded 7 more. Ajax is simply better in first half looking at these rankings. A bit surprising, though Ajax was terrible in the first 15 minutes after the break in the first 3-4 games of the season

[Orange14]

@Cedric - thanks, it appears that our memories are often wrong!! For fun I looked at our results against the eight teams in the top half of the table and it's the same story. Seven goals in the first half and six in the second. Our total of 13 goals for is in stark contrast to the 30 goals that we scored against teams in the bottom half of the table!! We were shut out by both Groningen and PEC Zwolle and managed only one goal against PSV (loss), Feyenoord (win), and Twente (draw).

With the exception of the draw vs ADO we defeated all the other lower ranked teams.

[aveslacker]

And that was the thing that really surprised me. I figured the NT would get out of the group as they usually do but given the extra time matches they played in the knockout round and that they were still pretty fresh even at the 120 minute mark was a big plus. Lots of people though van Gaal would lay an egg with this team and proved everyone wrong. Had it not been for Macharano's diving kick save on Robben, Oranje might have been world champions!

Search the web for 'WADA' and 'Xenon' and you will have a pretty good idea of why Holland and some other teams (Belgium, Germany) looked so fit toward the end of their matches.

I hate to be that guy, but I agree with you that it's likely that teams use this stuff. Considering how widespread doping is in elite sports, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the teams you mentioned are doing this I hear stories about the Welsh rugby team's amazing late-game fitness being the result of cryotherapy or Novak Djokovic's insane fifth-set stamina being down to a gluten-free diet and I just have to wonder. Guys are running, full-blast, for 90 straight minutes, and going as fast in minute 90 as they did in minute 5. That's just too good to believe.

[Orange14]

Search the web for 'WADA' and 'Xenon' and you will have a pretty good idea of why Holland and some other teams (Belgium, Germany) looked so fit toward the end of their matches.

I hate to be that guy, but I agree with you that it's likely that teams use this stuff. Considering how widespread doping is in elite sports, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the teams you mentioned are doing this I hear stories about the Welsh rugby team's amazing late-game fitness being the result of cryotherapy or Novak Djokovic's insane fifth-set stamina being down to a gluten-free diet and I just have to wonder. Guys are running, full-blast, for 90 straight minutes, and going as fast in minute 90 as they did in minute 5. That's just too good to believe.

Doping is no longer widespread because of testing in most major sports. I don't know if the various football leagues in Europe have testing protocols but certainly this is the case in the USA for football and baseball. Same is true in most Olympic sports where there is regular year around testing. Different sports require different physical attributes and the only systematic studies of sports performance enhancement were those conducted by the East Germans in the 1970s (mostly in track & field and swimming) and of course those were not ethical since youth athletes were given drugs without their consent (see: 'Faust's Gold: Inside the East German Doping Machine' by Steven Ungerleider).

The major class of drugs where there is a clear link to performance enhancement are the anabolic steroids which build up muscle mass and strength. These have been the most widely used. Oxygen utilization is key in cycling and long distance running and can be improved by training at altitude, blood doping and EPO injections (the latter two being illegal). The Xenon literature at this point is uncertain in terms of a true benefit.

If anything, the genetic component is far more important and there is good literature on this (see: 'The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance' by David Epstein).

From my vantage point as a spectator, I've never seen any football player running full bore for 90 minutes. Statistics on distance covered in football matches are regularly reported these days and maybe 12.8km (8 miles) is about right for the most active midfielders (forwards and defenders don't run nearly as much and Leo Messi only runs sporadically ). I walk an hour every day for exercise (gave up running some years ago to save wear and tear on the knees) and my route is about 4.5 miles so I don't think this is anything outstanding.

[aveslacker]

Doping is probably as prevalent today as it ever has been. It remains widespread. As Tyler Hamilton noted in his book, every time the anti-doping authorities come up with a test, it takes the dopers about 15 minutes to figure out how to beat it.

To prove this, give these articles a gander:

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/bo ... tters.html

http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/astana- ... tic-doping

Even the foremost anti-doping researchers in the world agree that modern testing and biological passport programs (which UEFA does not use yet) still can't eradicate doping, which remains widespread.

Also, NFL drug testing does not at this time cover HGH. I believe that it will starting next year. Expect to see NFL players get a whole lot smaller and slower.