Whenever someone says the tired phrase "the famous Ajax Youth Academy," the modern diehard Ajax supporter hears, "selling club." The hard truth is that following the Bozman ruling, as with other smaller clubs, top Ajax talent will always leave. This continually strips the club of the ammunition for Champions League winner contention. But Ajax is not a club, it's an idea of how football should be played: elegant, sophisticated, unpredictable, frenetic, persistent, tough. Top talent will always want to play with top talent no matter where. The Eredivisie, however wonderful a league, can not currently provide this. So the conception of Ajax suffers. But when Ajax is "on" you won't find better football anywhere in the world. So must we, manager de Boer, and company, resign ourselves indefinitely to the awful status of "permanent sellling club?" Or is there any hope the Ajax giant will ever rise again to conquer Europe?
This can probably just be merged with the Ajax thread but... I don't care a whole lot about being a force in Europe. I'm proud of Ajax's history and what the club represents...However that isn't my Ajax. I didn't start following the club closely until about 10 years ago right at the beginning of a bad period for the club. For me seeing us regain our position as the top dog in the Netherlands has been fulfilling enough for time being
That's a good point. And being on the verge of an unlikely second straight Eredivisie title is satisfying. I'm curious about the bad period. What marked it? What caused it? How did Ajax reconceive itself to get out of it?
Things that I would point to... 1. Poor transfer policy and wage structure. 2. Crappy tactics to accomodate overpaid crappy transfers. 3. Less turnover on successful transition of academy players to 1st team because of crappy tactics being employed in 1st team. 4. Poor management overall. I'm sure if we move this over to the Ajax thread there are some posters who are way more knowledgable than I am.
Thank you for your insight. What would be the best way to move this over to the Ajax thread? Sorry, I'm new to this.
No worries. A mod will have to merge the thread. Or we could just start discussing it over there and this will probably be closed. In the Dutch forum we normally try and keep our newly started threads to a minimum. Out of respect to the other club fans we try to keep Ajax related threads to a minimum. Otherwise this forum would get saturated with Ajax related threads.
They should look at the Portugese clubs. If Vertonghen & VDW was in Portugal they would have gone for 30 Million & Suarez for 45-50 Million. The Eredivisie should be marketted properly. Ligue 1 gets huge revenue for its stature & the Eredivisie has interest from outsiders. Commercial Revenue is another thing. Bayern are a glowing example of a team with very little League TV rights money compared to say Real but their Money through Sponsorship is highest in the world which is allowing them to compete with the best. I dont want to sound like a Bayern follower in here. But there is another thing they could emulate. Have 1 Vertonghen instead of 2 Fringe players. Shorten the Squad to 18-20 & add 7-8 Youth players from the Academy at low wages & sign 3-4 year contracts with them. Ajax is being stupid. Why should they have Boe,Sule & now even Narsingh. If I saw the Director,I would sell Sulejmani for 10-12 Million or try to Russina club & decrease the wage bill. Same with Theo. It should be policy not to sign any player over 25. TRIM the WAGE BILL by selling Theo,Sule & others. Decrease the squad number. And Pay Bigger salaries to Vertonghen,VDV & others to hold on to them. Revenue has to improved. Through Big Money Sales or whatever. Sponsorship & CHL money are at present the 2 easiest ways to increase REVENUE. Qualifying for the knock-outs this year meant a tie with APOEL & Ajax could have 10-12 Million more as Revenue. I think the thread title could be changed to "HOW DO DUTCH CLUBS COMPETE WITH RICHER CLUBS IN THE BIGGER LEAGUES" Then we can have a proper discussion. I feel this connects to all Dutch clubs or all the bigger Dutch clubs in general. Not Ajax.
Ajax can't compete financially with European top club, no matter how hard we try. That's simply a fact. If we were going way overboard and pay someone like Vertonghen 3 million per year, Real Madrid would just pay him €6 million. And besides money there are a dozen other reasons why players find it appealing to play for a foreign top club. Ajax wage bill has been trimmed significantly and that process will likely continue this summer when/if El Hamdaoui, Aissati, Lodeiro, Vertonghen and Van der Wiel leave. I too would like to sell Sulejmani for €12 million. However, just saying it doesn't make it happen and unfortunately there's nobody crazy enough to pay anywhere near that amount of money. Ajax are going to offer him a contract with a lower salary. @candiag, success for Ajax has gone hand in hand with the philosophy embodied by Johan Cruijff. He's always been the seed of our success. The problem has been that Cruijff has been systematically shunned by former Ajax directors. Ajax started to copy other clubs instead of trying to be smarter than them.
Nobody will pay Vertonghen 6Million. Do you know what some of Madrid players earn?? Di Maria gets 1.8 Million. Ozil who has long term 6 year contract gets 5.5 Million Higuain gets 3.5 Million Pepe who is on his peak gets 4 Million per year & Ramos gets something around that. Even Casilas a World CLass GK gets 6 Million a year. Nobody bar City & maybe Chelsea sometimes,if you have them by the balls like Cahill had will pay 6M to Vertonghen. I am willing to bet any amount that Vertonghen would not get more than 3 Million if he goes to Spurs or NewCastle. 2 Million is what is an adequate salary for him. 1.8-2 Million for a CB. Same for guys like VDW. Nobody pays that salary to a Central Back. Hell I think Thiago Silva gets 4.5-5 Million odd,so 6M is way off the mark. And as per success goes LVG won the CHL with Ajax something which Johan failed to do. So in that respect saying Success is only reserves for everything Johan touches is WAY off the mark.
Highly unlikely that these figures would be realized. Huge population difference between France and The Netherlands and even so, French clubs cannot keep their good players at home. Look at the Lyon model, buy cheap and develop youth; sell at high prices. This is not much different from what all Dutch teams do. I would love to hear who the outsiders are that will come in to the Eredivisie. These clubs are not as attractive as those in England, Spain, Italy, and even France (witness PSG being bought). Yes, they are an amazing money machine but they have an international brand as well. Other than Ajax, no Dutch club have such a brand that can be marketed. Commercial growth will be limited and the only real way to increase money would be through television revenues and I don't think there is a lot of room to grow there. This is exactly what the club is doing right now. Your valuation of Sulejmani is way to high and there is no way we ever come close to realizing the money we spent on him (€16M plus the salary over the years). Janssen has ZERO value given his age and ability. I expect him to leave on a free transfer when his contract is up since no Dutch team will spend what we would ask. We have the same problem in carrying El Hamdaoui on the books. Nobody wants him and we are paying him a lot of money to play an occasional reserve game. You are making an argument that means you have to win the Eredivisie every year and get the certain CL spot. This is a recipe for disaster as we have seen with PSV. You cannot have a high player wage bill in the Dutch league relative to the EPL and other big leagues. Sponsorship money will not increase much at all. Right now Ajax make the most of all teams in the league here. CL football is a huge risk and yes we should have qualified for the knockout round but it didn't happen. It would be a short thread because the simple answer is that they cannot. It will be interesting to see if the Spanish league implodes at some point in the next year or two because of the economic problems and the disjointed television deal that gives Madrid and Barca gazillions of €s and bread crumbs for all the other teams. An instructive lesson here is Villareal which are in a small town, have a small stadium, yet qualified for CL football. They got bounced out and are now trying to avoid relegation.
Perhaps you are right about the salaries here, I don't know but this is not the whole story. Players also get a percentage of the transfer fee which can be significant. The club then has to amortize that fee over the life of the contract on their balance sheet which can have a huge impact in the case of a club like Madrid (or any club in fact). I can't remember what Kaka's transfer fee was but say he came in on a five year contract with a €50M transfer fee. This means Madrid MUST write off €10M/year on amortization. If you look at all the players they bring in this adds up really fast. Now you can argue that they can afford to do this but again clubs can quickly get in big trouble (look at a number of high profile problems in England and Glasgow Rangers; Dortmund were facing administration not that long ago; and there is always my favorite problem team, Leeds United, which is still adrift. West Ham United were relegated last year and may not come in 2nd place for automatic promotion, having go through two rounds of playoffs to see if they can make it back. Do you think the EPL wants to see a 2nd division team playing in the new Olympic Stadium next year as West Ham are scheduled to do?)
I am not. You guys are being overly pessimistic. I think it is possible. Maybe not CHL contenders. But Quarter Final Appearance regularly & big upsets are possible. I hope there will be a Golden Generation coming,7-8 top players & the club will be intelligent enough to sign 5 year contracts with them & we can keep them for a while. It is possible. For example,if Eredivisie had 3 CHL spots & had overtaken Ligue 1 then that would bring more CHL money to the teams. Now we have only Ajax in CHL this team,then we can have 3. I still feel Eredivise as a brand can be marketted outside to Ligue 1 TV rights money in a few years. Staging a WC or Euro might help. I am not talking about Sugar Daddies in here. PSV were fantastic in CHL a few years ago & Ajax can do the same.
In so far as Ajax supporters demand the club is at least competing for the Eredivisie title each year, and to that end, we are successful of late, then what do we do with the Champions League? Again to our credit, we were headed to the round of 16, until Lyon's freakish luck. There were all indications de Boer would send us into that round, going for it, with nothing to lose. That is what I hope for for modern Ajax each season: compete for the Eredivise title, get a CL spot, get past the group stage, and pick off a round of 16 or round of 8 appearance. Then sell off your ripe top players, re-invest in youth, and maybe "pull a Lyon" every rare few years with a semi-final appearance. But keep that cycle going each year for maximum potential. Otherwise, there's no point in Dutch clubs being in the CL at all, if just for cynical money. Yeah the money's necessary, but where's the romance?
I think that is called amortization or something of that sort. That has nothing to do with wages. The 50 Million goes to the CLUB. A small part goes to the agent & sometimes the players. However when a player wants to come to Madrid & there is a huge bargain over the price(say Ozil case where Madrid were reluctant to pay over 15M),the player would not get anything or negligible simply because he desperately wants to go to Madrid. There is probably a signing fee but thats not huge.When I mean wages I mean 2M odd for guys like Vertonghen who are sureshot Would be Top CLass players. Not adding a 28-29 year old Theo which was ridiculous stupid & just f***s up the wage bill. I mean hold to your best players. Say Suarez who is in a clusterf*** of a club named Liverpool. For that the whole league has to improve & I believe getting 3 CHL spots is a HUGE HUGE step in that regards.
Why don't we ease up on Theo a bit. What are we going to have? A bunch of kids running around each year? You need the Bulykins and the Theos thrown in to give some anchor to this glorified youth club. Have we gotten our full money's worth with Theo? I might not have paid that much, but the guy's come to work each Sunday and put up with the board politics and the instability. He didn't have to sign for us in his prime. He's part of the reason there even is a title race for Ajax.
I have watched every single Ajax match this season and can count ONE game where he had a decent performance. This was a huge waste of money and I said so last year when the signing was announced. FdB further screwed things up by playing him instead of Anita as the holding midfielder. He cannot defend, his free kicks have been poor, and he is not mobile. In short, he doesn't fit in with the Ajax style of play. I cannot point to single match where he was a critical factor for a victory. Bulykin was a different story as we needed a back up striker because of the El Hamdaoui situation. He got him on the cheap and he has scored some valuable goals for the club. We are not going to "have a bunch of kids running around each year" but rather have some good young talent that will stay for 4-6 years on the first team depending on their transfer value. With a solid system in place with the academy, young players can slot into the first team without missing a beat. Just look how well this has worked in the past 18 months (I don't count the Jol time).
Take an accounting class because you are missing the point here. The transfer fee that is paid out has to be accounted for over the life of the player's contract at the club. I'm not talking about the money that the team selling the player receives (in the case I cited, Milan) It's not always small and depends on the contract that the player has with his parent club. You might want to visit The Swiss Ramble to see how various clubs have gotten in and out of financial trouble. He did a post on Ajax a while back and PSV more recently. You can get in depth information on the balance sheets here.
The long term future is hard to predict. Depends on the way European football will develop. If a permanent UEFA European wide league would appear, anything is possible. Under the current conditions the CL is an uncompetitive playground for the richest (read a revenue of 150-200 million euro and upwards) teams of the EPL, La Liga, Serie A and to a lesser extent the Bundesliga. The structure of the CL rewards consistency most of all, and consistency often follows from wealth. Only from the quarters and onwards the highest seeded teams lose their protected positions. I don't see a reason why the Dutch teams should put their financial futures at risk and ruin the Eredivisie in a vain attempt to compete in the CL. The Eredivise has been the most competitive and exciting league in Europe this year. I can live with Dutch teams only being able to compete for the EL if it means that the Eredivisie will remain fun to watch.
