Ajax

Ajax made Amsterdam a football reference

Ajax’s story began in Amsterdam on 18 March 1900. Their white shirt with its broad red centre was familiar long before television brought Ajax to viewers around the world. Under Jack Reynolds, Ajax won their first national championship in 1918 and developed a training culture that connected the senior team with younger players. With five league titles in the 1930s, Ajax were an established Dutch power well before the European sides for which they are best remembered.

Accounts of Ajax sometimes give Johan Cruyff and one extraordinary decade almost all the credit. There was much more behind them. Amsterdam provided the setting, the players and an expectation of ambitious football. European success later brought that local tradition to a wider audience. It did not begin the club’s story.

Total Football turned success into influence

Rinus Michels took charge in 1965 and built a side with Johan Cruyff at its centre. Movement and technical ability mattered, but so did taking responsibility together. Ajax’s players did not just wander out of position. They took up spaces vacated by teammates while the team worked to keep an attacking shape and regain the ball.

Ajax beat Panathinaikos at Wembley in 1971 to win their first European Cup. The idea had a trophy behind it. Michels was succeeded by Stefan Kovacs, whose team beat Inter in 1972 and Juventus in 1973. With three European Cups in succession, Ajax’s opponents had to take the football seriously as well as admire it. UEFA’s account of the 1971-73 team explains why that influence travelled beyond those finals.

Cruyff was the defining figure. Johan Neeskens, Piet Keizer and Ruud Krol, though, belong in the same account: the achievement was a team’s. This gives Ajax an unusual argument in a club ranking. Their greatest side changed expectations of what a great team could do on the pitch.

New generations found their own route through Europe

Ajax’s early 1970s peak passed. Other teams followed with major European wins of their own. Cruyff returned to coach the club; Marco van Basten supplied the winning goal in the 1987 Cup Winners’ Cup final. The UEFA Cup followed in 1992 under Louis van Gaal, whose side took Ajax back to the European summit in 1995.

Patrick Kluivert’s goal settled the 1995 Champions League final against Milan. Alongside the experienced players were younger men such as Clarence Seedorf; together they brought Ajax their fourth European Cup. The campaign is documented in UEFA’s season record.

The 2017 Europa League final went Manchester United’s way. In 2019 it was Tottenham who ended Ajax’s run, in a dramatic Champions League semi-final after Erik ten Hag’s team had knocked out Real Madrid and Juventus. Familiar Ajax traits showed through both campaigns. Neither brought a European title, but they help explain why Ajax can still unsettle the continent’s wealthiest clubs.

The academy and stadium connect the eras

The development tradition has a home at De Toekomst, Ajax’s training complex near the stadium. The aim goes further than producing one gifted player at a time. Ajax want their young footballers to understand the game and solve problems, taking their confidence on the ball into the first team. Ajax’s 2024 explanation of the academy’s framework emphasised game intelligence and varied learning, with age groups working to a shared approach.

An academy tradition does not mean that every important Ajax player grew up in it. Recruitment has always worked alongside development. What matters to the club’s identity is the central place given to teaching players and promoting them, rather than treating either as an occasional extra.

The move out of De Meer came in 1996. Ajax’s new home was the Amsterdam ArenA, a much larger setting for matchdays. It became the Johan Cruijff ArenA in 2018. Giving the modern ground their most influential player’s name keeps it connected to the earlier football tradition. The stadium’s own history records both milestones.

Why Ajax belong in the biggest-club ranking

Our biggest football clubs ranking gives Ajax a place for their European record, the players they develop and the influence they have retained. A current superstar or a recent league table is not needed to explain who Ajax are.

That argument has limits. Past influence cannot promise dominance today, just as an outstanding academy cannot promise that a successful side will stay together. Judging Ajax only by the revolutionary football of the 1970s would not justify a place alongside Europe’s largest institutions. The case needs their four European Cups as well as the later competitive peaks and the development tradition that has endured. It is on those grounds that Ajax are a major club with an importance that reaches well beyond Amsterdam.