Ajax jeugdopleiding wederom 's lands beste

[Marillion]

....
Ik roep al jaren dat de jeugdscouting anders moet. PSV haalt Saibari en Bakayoko uit België en wij zitten met die Insta-artiest van 1.60 opgescheept. Wanneer scouten ze eens alsof het 2023 is?

Inderdaad, telkens weer die tengere spelers. Vergelijk dat eens met deze twee.

[Yopii]

Geen idee waar ik dit moet plaatsen, dus hier maar.

Kweekvijver: Ajax hakt knopen door en schuift zes talenten vervroegd door
Bron Ajax Showtime

Ajax heeft de puzzel voor de nieuwe jeugdteams voor komend seizoen zo goed als gelegd. Met de herintreding van de O19-teams is dat de lichting geworden waar de meeste knopen moeten worden doorgehakt. De O18- en O17-lichting worden teruggebracht tot één selectie. Ajax maakt ruimte in de nieuwe O19 door een viertal talenten vervroegd over te hevelen naar Jong Ajax. Bij de jongere jeugd slaan Denzel Darko en Elgyn Hato een team over.

Mylo van der Lans, Jinairo Johnson, Luca Messori en Emre Ünüvar behoren komend seizoen tot de selectie van Jong Ajax. Op basis van hun leeftijd mogen ze nog een seizoen uitkomen voor Ajax O19, maar de club acht ze toe aan het maken van vlieguren in het profvoetbal. Voor Ünüvar geldt dat hij nog twee seizoenen mag uitkomen voor het vlaggenschip van de jeugdopleiding.

Van het viertal debuteerde alleen Van der Lans nog niet voor Jong Ajax. Johnson speelde afgelopen seizoen elf wedstrijden voor de beloftenploeg, terwijl Messori en Ünüvar respectievelijk één en twee keer in actie kwamen voor de ploeg van Frank Peereboom. Overigens debuteerden zowel Messori als Ünüvar al een seizoen eerder voor Jong Ajax.

Doelpunten en verdedigers voor Jong Ajax
Ünüvar staat bekend als doelpuntenmachine en met het vertrek van Julian Rijkhoff naar Almere City, kan Jong Ajax een echte goalgetter goed gebruiken. In Messori krijgt het team er een buitenspeler bij die met zijn snelheid veel kan forceren en de nodige assists op zijn naam heeft staan in de jeugd.

emre unuvar debuut jong ajax
Hoeveel doelpunten gaat Emre Ünüvar voor Jong Ajax maken?
Van der Lans is al jaren aanvoerder voor diverse jeugdteams van Ajax en hopelijk laat hij zijn leiderschapskwaliteiten ook in Jong Ajax direct gelden. De voetbalslimme Van der Lans en powerhouse Johnson zijn goede en nodige toevoegingen voor de selectie van Willem Weijs, die met Precious Ugwu een verdediger ziet vertrekken en ook aanvoerder Nick Verschuren wellicht op huurbasis verliest.

Toptalenten slaan team over
Ook in de lagere teams zijn er verschuivingen. Darko start volgend seizoen in Ajax O17. De razendsnelle en doelgerichte aanvaller staat te boek als groot talent en slaat Ajax O16 dus over. Op Ajax Showtime viel eerder te lezen over de ontwikkeling van Darko, die volgend seizoen waarschijnlijk een linie zakt en op tien gaat spelen.

Tekst gaat verder onder de afbeelding.

denzel darko
Ook Hato slaat een team over. De uitblinker van Ajax O14 komt komend seizoen uit voor Ajax O16. Hato is een centrale verdediger annex verdedigende middenvelder met veel kwaliteiten zonder én met bal. Het talent speelt met veel lef en bravoure en liet dat afgelopen seizoen ook al bij Ajax O15 zien.

Tijdens het door de ploeg van Rik Verhage gewonnen toernooi op Mallorca schitterde hij tegen verschillende Spaanse grootmachten, waaronder tegen Valencia. Kenmerkend voor het lef van Hato was een actie die hij op de rand van zijn eigen strafschopgebied maakte. Onder druk wipte Hato de bal over de drukzettende spits heen om vervolgens rustig verder te spelen.

Dispensatiespelers
Een aantal Ajax-talenten begint juist in een lagere lichting. Dit zijn spelers die op basis van hun fysieke gesteldheid dispensatie hebben gekregen en tegen jongere tegenstanders beter tot hun recht komen, en zich daarom hopelijk ook beter ontwikkelen. Chris Tujeehut, Sean Calor en Zach Medrinal starten allen als dispensatiespelers in Ajax O15.

Nafairon Landvreugd krijgt juist geen dispensatie meer. De creatieve buitenspeler speelde vorig seizoen voor Ajax O16 met dispensatie en zal komend seizoen aansluiten bij Ajax O19. Landvreugd kan terugkijken op een uitstekend seizoen en gold als de gevaarlijkste aanvaller van de ploeg van Stan Bijl. De cijfers van Landvreugd onderstrepen een sterk seizoen: in competitieverband scoorde Landvreugd veertien keer en gaf hij twaalf assists.

Tekst gaat verder onder de afbeelding.

nafairon landvreugd
Gedurende het seizoen gaat Ajax ongetwijfeld nog spelers doorschuiven en wordt er ook per week nog wel eens gekeken wie bij welk team meedoet. Op de beelden van de training van Ajax 1 verscheen Ajax O19-speler Pharell Nash. Hij is een van de spelers die aanspraak maakt op minuten in Jong Ajax.

Tja, welke spelers zien we in de toekomst terug in Ajax1? Ik gok op Hato, als die tenminste niet voortijdig zijn broer achterna gaat. Ook kleine Hato is vroegrijp.

[Orange14]

Sorry for posting in English but my Dutch is too rusty. The Athletic just posted a good article and podcast on the Ajax Academy and the role of Cruyff. I don't know if they are behind a paywall as I have a NY Times subscription that includes these. Article: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/644536 ... an-cruyff/ A podcast is here: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/podcas ... isode-277/

[WP_Legend]

Thanks a lot, I copied it from the website!

This is the first of a six-part series looking at figures who have played a pivotal role in a modern football success story. Each article comes with a related podcast, which can be found here on The Athletic FC Tactics Podcast feed.

“People thought, when the Plan Cruyff started, that nobody cared anymore if the youth sides won,” says Jasper van Leeuwen. “That’s not true. If you walk through the gates of Ajax as a player, you have to want to win. That has to be in your DNA.

“But you, as a coach, should not do everything in your power to win the match. I remember once joking with the under-15 coach. I said: ‘Look, if being under-15 champion is so important, then why is it never in the newspaper?’. It never is because it is not important. It’s important for you, but not for the world in general.

“What is important is for you to develop the super talent in your team. If you do that well, he’ll be all over the newspaper. That’s what your role in the academy is about.”

With conversations like these, it is clear why the battle to reform Ajax’s academy was truly a battle for the soul of the Dutch giant. After the legendary Johan Cruyff and his followers regained control of the De Toekomst (The Future) in 2011, they began working with a generation of young players who are now in their prime.

Arsenal’s Jurrien Timber, Liverpool’s Ryan Gravenberch, Manchester United pair Matthijs de Ligt and Noussair Mazraoui, Newcastle United’s Sven Botman, and Barcelona’s Frenkie de Jong all passed through their doors.

It may have been almost a decade since Cruyff passed away from lung cancer, but his legacy is still very much alive.

“This is not Ajax any more,” Cruyff famously wrote in De Telegraaf in September 2010, following a 2-0 defeat by Real Madrid. The Netherlands’ most famous institution was tearing itself apart.

Within a year, the club’s complex board structure, allied with disparate viewpoints over the future strategic direction of the team, meant some disputes would ultimately end in court, with Cruyff attempting to block the appointment of Louis van Gaal as the club’s new director.

“Ajax is a company that is publicly traded,” explains Ruben Jongkind, one of Cruyff’s close confidants and a key figure in the club’s academy. “It is also an association with hundreds of members, many of whom have been at the club for a long time. All have a heart for a club. But this structure makes everything difficult to run.

“It’s a big umbrella under which everybody hopes for the best for Ajax, but not everybody agrees on the direction. The finances were also a big problem. There was no room for gradual improvement or small changes — it was a do-or-die moment. Either you change and reform, or you continue and Ajax really suffers. And this shock therapy caused resistance.”


Cruyff was at Barcelona in 2010 but returned to Ajax a year later (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)
Central to Cruyff’s gripes was a belief that the club’s academy was no longer producing elite talents. He thought the club was stuck in a stasis, whereby they could win the odd Eredivisie title, but were effectively an afterthought in wider significance.

Having been convinced to rejoin the board from Barcelona in 2011, Cruyff began working with like-minded coaches and executives to implement sweeping changes, drawing on the lessons from his legendary playing and coaching career.

One of these assistants was Jongkind, who initially specialised in coaching athletics, but who had begun working at Ajax to improve the form and explosiveness of the club’s academy players. Van Leeuwen, meanwhile, was later brought on board as an advisor, first auditing the academy structures before eventually serving as Ajax’s head of talent recruitment.

Over the phone, Cruyff, Jongkind, and academy chief Wim Jonk wrote out a plan to reform the club — sketched out on a roll of wallpaper from an Airbnb — before presenting it to club officials, including Marco van Basten, Dennis Bergkamp, and Frank Rijkaard.

What You Should Read Next
Johan Cruyff and the incredible wallpaper drawings that explain modern football
Johan Cruyff and the incredible wallpaper drawings that explain modern football
Patterned with roses, folded four times and buried at the bottom of a box sits a document that explains Johan Cruyff's football vision
“Wim and I went for a coffee before meeting all these Ajax greats and Cruyff,” remembers Jongkind. “And we were walking on the street and I was like: ‘Hey Wim, did you bring our plan?’. He said: ‘No, did you? Oh s***’. We realised we left it in the bar. I sprinted back to grab it and it was still there, luckily.”

The absence of an overzealous waiter may have changed the course of Ajax. At the end of discussions which lingered onwards for months, Cruyff and his disciples had a deal — they would be in control of the academy, which had its budget increased by 25 per cent.

“That was controversial,” remembers Van Leeuwen. “And it depends how you calculate, but the sales of players developed in the academy have exceeded €400million. Seeing as we ended up with a budget of around €8m, you can imagine the return on investment. It was crazy.”

But this was all some way off. Back then, they were walking into an Ajax who were not quite Ajax. Martin Jol’s brand of football was uninspiring, while the only youth players of note to have been produced over the previous decade were Daley Blind, Jan Vertonghen, and Christian Eriksen (of which only Blind was predominantly developed at Ajax).


Blind was one of the few successful Ajax products of the 2010s (Ned Dishman/Getty Images)
“Obviously, there were people working to make things better, but the whole structure was not in place,” says Jongkind. “Players of high quality were not coming through, they were below Champions League level. And how would we get back our attacking style of play?

“A big factor for us was the disappearance of street football — the technical, physical, and mental level was changing compared to the 1970s, 1980s, and the beginning of the 1990s. So our old model of attractive football had to be redefined and reinvented in the new context of society.”

One of the first things they addressed was the academy’s structures. Traditionally, coaches had been paid on a sliding scale, with those in charge of the older age-groups, such as the under-16s, on a higher salary than the under-9s.

“In my view of development, this was completely absurd,” says Jongkind. “If it was anything, it should have been the other way around. In human development, what are the most important years of your life? It’s between zero and six when your brain is formed. Their minds are more plastic and able to absorb more information.

“Ultimately, every year is important. So we asked: ‘Why is it right that the under-19 coach earned three times more than the under-7 or under-8 coach?’. It caused a vicious cycle of performance-related thinking. How can I show I’m a good coach? By winning, by playing the best players in their best positions. Then I can move up. But then everyone is wanting to earn more for doing the same work. So we broke this up and said everybody earns the same.”

Other parts were more practical than philosophical. As part of their scouting network, the older model, which evaluated players’ skills, known as TIPS, needed to be updated. Many of Cruyff’s thoughts had historically only ever existed within the maestro’s head.

“We needed to put them into a workable methodology,” explains Van Leeuwen. “Entering the Ajax youth system, I was a bit surprised that we had this big old-school Excel file filled with the names of 1,200 players around the country. Soon, we started to hear the stories of this special kid from the south of Holland, which was Frenkie de Jong.

“So I took this old list, entered the name, and he was not even there. How was this possible? It was crazy because we had two or three people recommending him. But then we were told how he was when he was 12, 13, 14. And Frenkie was one of those examples of a late-maturing player who had the skills, had the vision, and then when the power came into play, that’s when he exploded.

“Let’s make it clear that he was not in Ajax’s academy for very long — Willem II nurtured him — but I think he was heavily influenced by Ajax’s physical performance programme, which made him even better.”


De Jong featured in a Europa League final for Ajax in 2017, aged 20 (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP via Getty Images)
De Jong was just one of several successes that Ajax had with late developers. Coaches had noted the prevalence of the relative age effect within the academy — the overrepresentation of physically dominant older players within a particular age group, which at one point saw 70 per cent of the academy born in the first half of the year.

One way they reacted was to change the structure. Instead of organising everything in terms of each individual team — under-10s, under-11s, and so on — players were considered as part of wider groups. Though they still played in their own age groups at the weekend under competition rules, players were considered as part of the 6-9 group, 9-12 group, 12-15 group, or 15-18 group.

One player who benefited was Mazraoui, now playing at right-back for Manchester United. Knocking on the coaches’ room door for advice one evening, he was told by Jongkind to continue focusing on his skill set — that with a well-built father, his physical development would come later. As previously reported by The Athletic, Ajax actually played him down a year, so Mazrouai was playing alongside those who were his physical equals — and began to shine as a result.

Another challenge, conversely, was how to challenge the early developers.

“One that comes to mind is Ryan Gravenberch,” says Van Leeuwen. “He was at the Ajax academy from a very young age, before we even got there, and he was a spectacular youth player. We nicknamed him ‘The Snake’ because of the way he moved, he was always quite tall with this physical maturity. He didn’t beat opponents because of his strength, it was because of his fluid movements and silky touch.

“But everyone saw his talent, so he was quite hyped and the academy could be quite an easy ride for him. So his struggle did not come until he joined Jong Ajax, and even in the first team, when he made it, he had up and down moments.”


Gravenberch, aka ‘The Snake’ (Maurice van Steen/ANP/AFP via Getty Images)
Other early developers were played out of position to develop other parts of their game. The Timber brothers, Jurrien and Quinten, were one example, tempted over from Feyenoord to develop their ability on the ball. Previously, the pair had started together at centre-back, scarcely ever conceding a goal or being tested. The best example, however, was De Ligt.

“He was very strong and very talented at a young age,” says Van Leeuwen. “So we moved him up two or three years, but not only that, we moved him into midfield for a long time, even though we knew he’d be a centre-back.

“For winning matches at that point, it was quite a stupid move, so some coaches didn’t like it. But it was perfect for Matthijs’ development because he developed his 360-degree vision, his speed of action, his versatility.”

Newcastle’s Botman, just four months younger than De Ligt, had a very different experience. Like his fellow centre-back, Botman was an early developer, but was far less highly rated.

“Sven grew very quickly into a tall player and he was like a newborn giraffe,” says Van Leeuwen. “His weapons were his heading, aerial duels, and blocking people with his long legs, but he had difficulties with his movement, his motor skills. He especially struggled with attackers making diagonal runs, which meant he did not stand out.

“In all honesty, we did not expect him to reach the level he has. But then we need to not forget about everything that’s not football related, but which is about character, your upbringing, your environment. All those things were good with Sven.”


Botman: a late developer (Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Back on the pitch, one concern in the coaches’ pursuit of attacking football was how to implement the same philosophy across the club. Self-evidently, there were different ability levels between the under-9s and Jong Ajax. Cruyff’s philosophy was central — together, they worked with the Ajax advisor to distil his vision into eight principles which could be pursued across any age group.

“You had to train them, you had to implement them in your game,” says Van Leeuwen. “The actual tactics themselves were more flexible, so you could adapt to the moment in the game, but this step was the paradigm shift.”

This was total football, distilled into coachable steps. The eight principles were:

Compact the pitch (when defending)
Counterpressing (win the ball back immediately)
Deep before wide (the first pass should always go forward)
Create an extra man in the midfield
Third-man runs (create opportunities for players who cannot be found with a direct pass)
Create one-vs-ones
Positional interplay (players should be capable of fulfilling multiple roles)
Forward defending
Coaches occasionally disagreed. On counterpressing, for example, Cruyff spoke of a three-second rule, a time limit for winning the ball back. Once, current PSV head coach Peter Bosz, then at Ajax, told Cruyff that he personally favoured a five-second rule.

“Count to five in your head,” Cruyff replied. “Now think how far the ball can go. That’s half a pitch.”

Sometimes, the pursuit of the more difficult ideals meant that youth teams lost matches — defensive lines would be set too high against rapid opposition strikers; a midfielder playing out of position at left-back for their own development would be beaten one-vs-one. The senior coaches were not dissuaded.

“Of course, it’s important to have your standards high,” says Jongkind. “But defending forward can be dangerous. Players might anticipate the action wrong and go too soon or too late, and as the last line of defence, there is a lot of space behind them. You can easily have a goal. For compactness, the same thing. You can concede a few goals and lose the match.

“Of course, against Feyenoord, some were still against this risky football. But this is related to the structural problem in youth academies — there is too much focus on the result. And this is one of Cruyff’s main principles — education is a long process. We need to use matches for children to learn so they can win the matches in the future.”

For both Jongkind and Van Leeuwen, one of the players who best exemplified these eight principles was Abdelhak Nouri, a late developer with creativity running through his veins.

Nouri won Jong Ajax’s player of the season in 2016-17, made his first-team debut at 19, and, in July 2017, had just been promoted into the senior squad. That month, he collapsed due to cardiac arrhythmia during a pre-season friendly. He spent over a year in a coma, suffering severe brain damage as a result.

Later, an Ajax investigation found that he received “inadequate” medical treatment on the field. The club continue to pay his medical bills, have retired his jersey, and renamed their Talent of the Future award after the No 10.


(Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images)
“I knew him since he was nine,” says Jongkind. “He was the embodiment of Ajax, the embodiment of what we were working on, in terms of how we wanted football to be played. It’s free, it’s like the street, and the most beautiful things can happen with their joy. That’s what he was about. We still pay tribute whenever we can. When I go to the gym, I’ll always pick locker 34 for my clothes.”

“I think you could call him the attraction of Ajax at the time of the Cruyff Plan,” adds Van Leeuwen. “I remember us playing in the UEFA Youth League against Barcelona and PSG and he was fantastic. He was the super special player on the pitch. There were three to four thousand people at the academy just to watch him.

“You could compare him a little bit with (Andres) Iniesta, maybe (Martin) Odegaard, those types of very skilful, not physically strong players. He didn’t even seem to calculate — it was just freestyle. It was very unfortunate what happened. I think his team-mates keep talking about him because they know he was the biggest talent. It’s a tragedy for any person — to happen to him is extra, extra pitiful.”

By this point, Jongkind and Van Leeuwen had already left Ajax as part of 14 departures from the club.

“Ajax is a political party, not one with one colour but with a few,” says Jongkind. “There were a lot of people who hadn’t wanted Cruyff in — and when he got ill (with the lung cancer from which he eventually died), there was the chance to get rid of him and seize power back. So when some officials tried to force out (academy head) Wim Jonk, because they knew Johan would follow, we decided to be loyal to both of them.”

After a spell at Eredivisie club Volendam, the pair are now working with clubs and FAs across Europe as part of the ONEFORTHEGAME advisory group, named after Cruyff. Recently, they helped the Greek FA, currently blessed with a talented generation including midfielder Konstantinos Karetsas and striker Charalampos Kostoulas, develop a new national football plan to nurture future generations.

Elsewhere, Bodo/Glimt, the club from a tiny coastal town in northern Norway that made a fairytale run to the semi-finals of the Europa League, have taken on many of the academy’s lessons.

“They weren’t even in the Norwegian first division,” says Van Leeuwen. “But they visited us almost every month, they’d stay for a few days, and they were interviewing us all the time. It wasn’t just the academy manager, it was seven or eight coaches. They implemented lots of the ideas, and look how they’ve built up this really small club. It’s an attacking style of football, with opportunities for young players, who are sold for big profits — they’ve become the most dominant team in Norway.”


Bodo/Glimt, who reached the Europa League semi-finals last season, have implemented Cruyff’s principles (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
Cruyff’s legacy spreads over football like falling leaves. His playing career alone places him in the conversation of the greatest European footballer of all time. And then there are his tactics — total football, his pioneering use of the diamond. He is indelibly linked with two clubs, Ajax and Barcelona, as an advisor and administrator, too, helping reform La Masia even before returning to Amsterdam. The current crop of Barcelona academy graduates — Lamine Yamal, Gavi, Pau Cubarsi — would be different players without Cruyff’s historic work.

“If you ask us the question of where we see Cruyff’s legacy, people would expect us to answer in terms of style,” says Van Leeuwen. “But it’s also about a particular vision of talent development — producing special players and getting them first-team minutes.

“Throughout history, particularly at Barcelona and Ajax, the pattern is clear. If those clubs lean into the Cruyffian principles of talent development, the fruit will become visible. As soon as they leave that path and start to splash money, you inevitably see the clubs deteriorate. You have to fight to help the lesson stick.”

[Yopii]

“We needed to put them into a workable methodology,” explains Van Leeuwen. “Entering the Ajax youth system, I was a bit surprised that we had this big old-school Excel file filled with the names of 1,200 players around the country. Soon, we started to hear the stories of this special kid from the south of Holland, which was Frenkie de Jong.

“So I took this old list, entered the name, and he was not even there. How was this possible? It was crazy because we had two or three people recommending him. But then we were told how he was when he was 12, 13, 14. And Frenkie was one of those examples of a late-maturing player who had the skills, had the vision, and then when the power came into play, that’s when he exploded.

“Let’s make it clear that he was not in Ajax’s academy for very long — Willem II nurtured him — but I think he was heavily influenced by Ajax’s physical performance programme, which made him even better.”

Typerend voor de periode JOR.