Please allow me to introduce myself

This blog is devoted to the most glorious football institution of all – AFC Ajax.

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is John, and I love Ajax. I spent my childhood dreaming about my heroes who played at the Amsterdam ArenA, pondering the choices of Morten Olsen, Jan Wouters, and Co Adriaanse, and quietly fantasizing about a return to glory. By my teenage years I was less naïve about the chances of success at the European level, and hardened by year after year of disappointment and embarrassment in Holland. While Ajax was struggling with its identity in the post-Bosman arrest era of globalization, I was struggling with my identity as an awkward, bespectacled teenager. Now I am a young adult, but Ajax doesn’t quite seem to have figured out its proper place in the 21^st century. In recent years Ajax has been haunted by its success of the 1990’s, but also by its failures in the 2000’s.

I have been following Ajax with an almost obsession-like focus for as long as I can remember. Whilst at first glance this may hardly seem unusual for a young Dutch football fan such as myself, I have thus far neglected to mention an important fact: I haven’t lived in the Netherlands since I was four years old. I’ve spent most of this time in Geneva, Switzerland, and New York, New York. Being an Ajax fan from outside of the Netherlands hasn’t always been easy, but luckily it has gotten more manageable with time. In the early days the highlight of my week was always the weekly episode of Eurosport’s Eurogoals. For European games, I always hoped that Ajax would draw either a Swiss, French, German, Italian, or Austrian team, because then I knew that I would have chance to see Ajax play live on television – a rare and always exciting occurrence. About once a year or so I would get the chance to attend an Ajax game in person, always at the Amsterdam Tournament, except once – Ajax against Heerenveen in December 1998. It was Jan Wouters’ first game in charge, it ended 0-0, Frank de Boer missed a penalty, and Jesper Gronkjaer was fantastic on the left wing. Over time the internet made it easier and easier to follow Ajax from abroad. Today it is really easy to catch any Ajax game on a live stream from almost anywhere, whether they happen to be playing ADO Den Haag or Zenith St. Petersburg.

Since Ajax USA shut down a few years ago I’ve been disappointed by the dearth of English-language Ajax-related web content for the Ajax fan abroad. That is why I’ve decided to create this blog. I plan to post regularly about Ajax’s games, players, tactics, history and just about everything else that has anything to do with Ajax. I hope that you enjoy it!

Thanks,

John