How Ajax got the magic back under Cruyff disciple Erik ten Hag
Having worked with Pep Guardiola at Bayern Munich, Ten Hag shares the same Cruyffian tenets as a coach and has reinstituted them at Ajax
Ten Hag and Guardiola even share a taste in jumpers, it seems (Getty Images)
By Will Magee
April 29, 2019 1:44 pm(Updated October 7, 2020 3:28 pm)
Around the same time that Erik ten Hag launched his unremarkable playing career in the Eredivisie, Johan Cruyff left Ajax to coach Barcelona. In three years as manager at the club where he had helped to usher in the era of Total Football as a player, Cruyff failed to add to Ajax's 22 titles but twice won the KNVB Cup and, in 1987, the European Cup Winners' Cup with a team featuring future superstars Frank Rijkaard, Marco van Basten and Dennis Bergkamp.
Often credited with laying the groundwork for the Ajax side which would go on to win the Champions League under Louis van Gaal in 1995, Cruyff won the competition himself with Barca along with four consecutive La Liga titles. Already a global phenomenon and (counter-)cultural icon in the Netherlands – long hair now cropped back but cigarette still clamped in mouth, until he traded them in for lollipops – he was elevated to the halls of myth and deity as one of those rare few who evolve into genius managers having already been genius footballers.
This was the background to which Ten Hag spent his formative years, with Cruyffmania at dizzying heights. It should come as no surprise that, now Ajax manager himself, Ten Hag is attempting to follow the Cruyffian blueprint for success. Many Ajax managers have tried to walk in Cruyff's footsteps, however, and many have failed. Ten Hag, despite not having a major honour to his name as a manager, has already been credited with reworking the tenets of Cruyff's philosophy and making them his own.
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Guardiola admirer
Erik ten Hag during a practice session at Ajax's training complex De Toekomst (Getty Images)
If there is a thread leading directly from Cruyff to Ten Hag, then it is tied in with Cruyff's most famous student and advocate. Pep Guardiola – who, after his mentor's death from lung cancer in 2016, said "I knew nothing about football until I met Cruyff" – was manager of Bayern Munich when Ten Hag was put in charge of the reserves in 2013. Though they operated independently of each other, they worked together at Bayern for two years.
Speaking about Ten Hag in light of Ajax reaching the Champions League semi-finals, where they will face Tottenham after their controversial triumph over Manchester City, Guardiola admitted they "had lots of chats" during their time in Bavaria and said: "I was lucky to meet him at Bayern… I'm delighted where he is, a historical club."
Pep G. and Ajax manager Erik ten Hag. Ten Hag was Bayern's U23 coach between 2013-15, in the Guardiola days. #mcfc pic.twitter.com/SdDRrwIGX8
— Kristof Terreur ???????? (@HLNinEngeland) March 6, 2019
Ten Hag, for his part, has made no secret of his admiration for Guardiola. Asked about their time together ahead of Ajax's shock win against Real Madrid in the last 16, Ten Hag said: "Guardiola's philosophy is sensational and he has demonstrated this at Barcelona, Bayern and City. His structured attacking play is very attractive and I aim to implement this at Ajax."
Though City and Ajax operate on very different budgets, the fact that Ten Hag's side have gone further in the Champions League says everything about his success in implementing the attractive, attacking football with which he credits his former colleague. "Guardiola is an innovator and and inspiration," Ten Hag said before the Real Madrid tie, adding that the desire to "win by playing well" was a shared ideal. That should serve as affirmation that, when it comes to their original inspiration, it's hard to overestimate Cruyff's importance.
Total Football 2.0
Ajax players celebrate beating Juventus in Turin (Getty Images)
According to Rory Smith of the New York Times, there are three pictures hanging on the wall of Ten Hag's office. One is of Rinus Michels, the mastermind of Total Football at Ajax and the man who managed Cruyff as a player, one of Cruyff himself and one of Van Gaal. There is often said to be a fundamental dichotomy at Ajax between those who revere Cruyff above all and those who lionise Van Gaal for his Champions League triumph. This perception feeds off their bitter personal rivalry and the behind-the-scenes wrangle at the club which saw Cruyff and his faction – with several famous former players among them – block Van Gaal's mooted appointment as general director in 2012, a coup now known as Cruyff's 'Velvet Revolution'.
As Dutch football journalist and Ajax fan Elko Born once wrote in The Blizzard, many see Cruyff as representing the romantic tendency at Ajax while Van Gaal is the father of the club's pragmatic school of thought. Cruyff once said of his arch nemesis: "Van Gaal has a good vision on football. But it's not mine. He wants to gel winning teams and has a militaristic way of working with his tactics. I don't. I want individuals to think for themselves."
Others recognise that both Cruyff and Van Gaal, the idealist and the realist, in fact shared more of their outlook than either man might like to admit, with the latter building on foundations laid by the former during Ajax's nineties golden age. Ten Hag certainly seems to admire the two and – with Ajax currently on course to win a domestic double and contest the Champions League semi-finals for the first time since 1997, while also playing aesthetically excellent football fit for the purists – he has arguably taken his cues from both.
When it comes to Ten Hag's favoured style of play, the Cruyffian influence is unavoidable. There is a reason that his approach has been dubbed 'Total Football 2.0'. If the original premise of Total Football was that outfield players should be flexible, adaptable and to some degree interchangeable in their positioning as they sought to create and exploit space, Ten Hag's side live up to their billing. Their full-backs, usually Nicolas Tagliafico and Joel Veltman, push high and double up as auxiliary attackers, while their wingers, David Neres and Hakim Ziyech, are equally capable of roaming in-field dangerously. Dusan Tadic, revitalised after leaving Southampton last summer, has thrived across Ajax's front three in something of a free role.
In his myriad use of full-backs as overlapping wide men and wingers who can cut inside and attack the heart of the opposition defence, Ten Hag's use of Tagliafico, Veltman, Neres and Ziyech is not too dissimilar to Guardiola's use of, say, Olexandr Zinchenko, Kyle Walker, Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling. Ten Hag encourages star midfielder Frenkie de Jong to drop into the defence when Ajax are under pressure, with some noting that it is often hard to tell whether De Jong is a defensive midfielder, a deep-lying playmaker or a box-to-box power runner. If that makes him Ajax's most effective adherent to the Cruyffian method, then Barcelona will no doubt feel that the €75m they have pledged to sign him this summer is money well spent.
Read more: How Dusan Tadic turned things around to become a star for Ajax
Then there is Ten Hag's focus on controlled possession, one of the central pillars of Cruyff's philosophy as a manager. With De Jong as their passing metronome and Donny van de Beek as their creative hub in the midfield, Ajax have averaged over 58 per cent possession and an 84 per cent pass completion rate this term. Lasse Schone is another confident distributor of the ball, while teenage sensation Matthijs de Ligt looks looks like the archetypal ball-playing centre-back. Ten Hag's reliance on youth is another Cruyffian touch. The players he fielded over two legs against Juventus, who tore the Bianconeri to pieces in Turin, had an average age of around 25.
On top of all that, Ajax are a team with genuine individuality and flair throughout. Far from the formalism and militarism which Cruyff held in such contempt, Ten Hag's players seem more than capable of self-expression. Fortunately for him, they have also shown a Van Gaalist winning instinct with their storming victories at the Allianz Arena and the Bernabeu.
Ajax reborn
Dusan Tadic and Frenkie de Jong have been just two of the success stories at Ajax this season (Getty Images)
When Cruyff thwarted Van Gaal's attempts to return to Ajax as general director, it was primarily because he was in the midst of instituting a reformist agenda at the club. During Martin Jol's contentious tenure back at the start of the decade – an era in which Ajax were often called 'FC Suarez' by opponents because of their reliance on the Uruguayan striker – Cruyff famously wrote a column in Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf headlined 'This is not Ajax anymore'.
Cruyff sought a return to an ethos of nurturing and cultivating talent, overseen by ex-players as opposed to a bureaucratic top-down hierarchy. Ten Hag has abided by Cruyff's legacy in that sense, building his team around academy graduates. Of the side which started the 2-1 win in Turin which sealed Ajax's progression to the Champions League semi-finals nine out of 11 had previously featured for Jong Ajax, with Schone and Tadic the only ones not to have learned their game at De Toekomst, the club's sprawling training ground.
Ten Hag has been ably supported by the network of ex-players who now hold the main positions of power at the club. Edwin van der Sar, originally recruited as marketing director under Cruyff's direction but now chief executive of the club, has worked hard to increase Ajax's income and free up their spending accordingly. While Ajax's financial model still necessarily revolves around moving on youngsters at considerable profit – they sold academy graduate Justin Kluivert to Roma for around €20m last summer, for instance – Van der Sar has sought to hold on to young talent for longer while also sanctioning more experienced signings to supplement the squad. Former Arsenal winger Marc Overmars, now sporting director, has overseen transfer strategy, helping to secure Tadic from Southampton and the return of Daley Blind from Manchester United.
Overmars was one of the ex-pros who supported Cruyff's reformist agenda over the return of Van Gaal. When Ajax beat Real Madrid 4-1 at the Bernabeu, he and Van der Sar celebrated in front of the travelling fans as if they had played the full game. Ten Hag has certainly benefited from a wider resurgence at Ajax, as well as the groundwork laid by some of his managerial predecessors. Peter Bosz, for instance, led Ajax to the 2017 Europa League final and fielded several of the players who have come into their own under Ten Hag, including De Ligt and Ziyech as well as De Jong, Van de Beek and Neres from the bench.
According to Arco Gnocchi, long-time Ajax season ticket holder and one of the hosts of the Pantelic Podcast, the fans weren't always sure about Ten Hag. "A year ago we lost the title to PSV Eindhoven in a direct confrontation, 3-0, we got trounced," he says. "Ten Hag had been in charge for three or four months at that point and everybody felt it was dismal. The players didn't understand what he was getting at, while everybody thought he was a strange man with a strange accent." Ten Hag comes from the eastern province of Overijssel, which Gnocchi explains gives him something like "a Welsh accent", though he also admits that Amsterdam has a superiority complex when it comes to rural areas of the Netherlands.
Speaking to other Ajax fans, their self-professed superiority complex becomes a common theme. "We're the most critical fans in the country," says Kjell Bakker, Ajax supporter and fan of the podcast. "We aren't happy with a one or 2-0 win. We are happy when [we] score loads of goals and humiliate the opponent." For the first few months after Ten Hag took over from Marcel Keizer – the former Jong Ajax coach who was sacked after his side failed to make it through the qualifiers of either European competition and then lost to FC Twente in the KNVB Cup – the results were better, but not enough for the club of Cruyff where the fans are characteristically hard to please.
Read more: Ajax undermine haughty facade of Cristiano Ronaldo project at Juventus with Total Football 2.0
Now, though, Ten Hag is writing himself into Ajax folklore. "I've never seen Ajax this good, it's unbelievable," says Bakker. "Playing with your own style. High pressure and controlling the game at the Bernabeu and the Juventus stadium. I never thought it would happen that Ajax are in the semi-finals of the Champions League."
For Gnocchi, Ten Hag's success is rooted in the Cruyffian agenda of the last few years. "I think this is what Cruyff had in mind when he had his revolution a few years ago," he says. "Ten Hag was not a brilliant player in his day but he is a football player through and through. I think that's the Cruyffian way… we haven't seen anything like this since the Van Gaal years, but I think this [football] is more playful."
Champions League finalists?
Can Ajax get the better of Spurs in the Champions League semis? (Getty Images)
When Ajax face Tottenham in the Champions League semi-finals, they will come up against a core group of former players including Christian Eriksen, Davinson Sanchez, Toby Alderweireld and Jan Vertonghen. Evidence of their status as one of Europe's biggest talent factories – those players earned Ajax almost €80m in transfer fees – the fact that Ajax go into the game with a good chance of progression suggests that they have struck an incredibly rare balance between turning a profit and not only remaining competitive, but strengthening.
Missing Harry Kane and Harry Winks through injury – Moussa Sissoko is also struggling with his fitness, while Son Heung-min will be suspended for the first leg – Spurs have numerous vulnerabilities to be exploited. While they lost 1-0 at home to West Ham on Saturday, Ajax have had a week off after the Dutch Football Association moved their Eredivisie fixture against De Graafschap to give them enough time to rest and prepare.
Having shocked the European establishment by getting this far, it feels like Ajax have nothing to lose and everything to gain at this stage. "Ajax fans always feel confident," Gnocchi laughs when asked what the mood is like ahead of the semi-finals. "Everything is at stake obviously – now you want to get to the final, now you're getting greedy – but I'm going to London as well to see a great game and we haven't said that about a Champions League semi-final in some time."
Read more: 'It's crazy': Jan Vertonghen on Ajax, Tottenham and the hottest ticket in town
As for Ten Hag, he has the KNVB Cup final next Sunday, two more league fixtures and, at most, three more games in Europe to make himself a legend in Amsterdam. Were he looking for a few words of inspiration for his players ahead of their visit to London this week, he could do worse than to echo Cruyff once more. Ahead of their 1992 European Cup final against Sampdoria at Wembley, Cruyff's final words to his Barcelona players were: "Go out and enjoy it." Ajax are certainly enjoying themselves at the moment, playing football which surely would have pleased even the most demanding Ajax supporter of all.
Erik Ten Hag
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