Meet all the key people who got Ajax to the Europa League final

Ajax is one of the world’s great footballing institutions, but as the sport became a huge global business, the Dutch giants were left behind. By the late 1990s, they had no hope of holding onto their top academy products, and they became a selling club.

Wednesday’s UEFA Europa League final is Ajax’s first European final since they won the Champions League in 1995, but their recent lack of success is even more serious than that. The last time Ajax even made a quarterfinal was in 2003.

But with the right combination of coaching, academy products, solid role players, and smart bargain purchases, Ajax has built a great team. You should get to know them before Wednesday’s match.

Ajax has always hired and promoted their own former players. Edwin van der Sar is the CEO, Marc Overmars is the technical director, and Dennis Bergkamp is a highly regarded assistant coach. The manager is a bit different — Peter Bosz had little professional connection to the team before he was hired this season.

Bosz had an 18-year pro career and won a few Netherlands caps before getting into coaching, but he never put on an Ajax shirt. The best part of his career was spent with his current employers’ biggest rivals: Feyenoord.

But Bosz lives and breathes Ajax’s longtime ideals. He idolized Johan Cruyff and followed the great team of the 1990s. “I knew from the age of 16 that one day I will become a coach,” he told Jacob Steinberg of The Guardian. “So I was preparing by writing down what my coaches were doing right but also reading a lot from Johan. With some friends, we more or less wrote our own book. Every article, all his interviews were in there. We collected them and tried to organise them — this is for attacking, this is how you defend, this is tactical.”

If you’re familiar with Ajax and Cruyff’s philosophy, you’ll know what to expect from Bosz’s Ajax — high pressure, ball-playing defenders, fluid movement, lots of possession, and almost always a 4-3-3 formation.

Ajax actually stumbled in the Eredivisie, losing the league title to Feyenoord. Their struggles in the first three rounds of the season were ultimately a big deciding factor — Feyenoord were wire-to-wire leaders — but Ajax’s biggest disappointment came just a month ago. Their loss to PSV Eindhoven in the third-to-last game of the season was what handed Feyenoord the title.

Europa League hasn’t been easy either. Ajax needed to come back in the second leg of the Round of 16 against Copenhagen, fight through extra time in the quarterfinals against Schalke, then barely hold off a desperate charge from Lyon in the last round, ultimately winning 5-4 on aggregate.

You’re probably wondering which players in this Ajax team are future Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, or Serie A stars. Talking about this in the buildup to a final will likely annoy Ajax fans to no end, but this is the reality of supporting Ajax. Toby Alderweireld, Jan Vertonghen and Christian Eriksen are currently Tottenham Hotspur’s top players, while Daley Blind will suit up against them on Wednesday.

Some of the players you see on Wednesday will not be at Ajax long, and we’re going to talk about who they are.

Given Hakim Ziyech’s excellent performances at FC Twente over the last two seasons, it’s a complete mystery how he ended up at Ajax in the first place. He’s been a spectacular playmaker for them this season, and it’ll be stunning if a big-league club doesn’t move for him this summer. Ajax can expect to collect roughly double the €11m they paid for him.

Striker Kasper Dolberg is in his first season as a first team player, but he’s already attracting huge attention. He joined from Danish club Silkeborg in 2015, spent one season in the youth ranks, and is now Ajax’s star center forward at just 19.

While Ajax might be happy to flip Ziyech for a profit, they’ll probably play hardball when it comes to Dolberg’s eventual transfer. Ziyech’s value might be near its ceiling, but 19-year-olds who score a goal every two games are nearly impossible to find. From his highlights, you can see Dolberg has a bit of everything you’d want from a striker.

A couple of Ajax’s local defensive products might have progressed enough that they’re ready to make big moves too. Jairo Riedewald and Kenny Tete both joined the club before they were 12 and have finished their second seasons as clear first-choice players. Tete is a pretty well-balanced attacking right-back, while Riedewald can play left-back, center-back or defensive midfield. However, it’s possible that Tete does not start the final, as Bosz might opt for his most defensive possible back line.

While none of these players is likely to fetch exorbitant transfer fees or go on to superstardom at the world’s biggest clubs, they’re key pieces for Ajax and could become solid contributors in a big league if they ever chose to move on.

Joel Veltman joined Ajax when he was just a 9-year-old, and he’s been one of the team’s most consistent performers over the last four seasons. He’s proved equally adept at playing center-back and right-back, and he could start in the latter position on Wednesday.

Captain Davy Klaassen might not have the physical attributes or tricks to attract attention from big clubs’ scouts, but his work rate and nose for goal are huge for Ajax. He’s scored 20 goals this season and 54 over 169 games since he became a first team regular. He’ll be partnered in the middle by 30-year-old Lasse Schöne, who also has a nose for goal, but both will have to do quite a bit of defending against Manchester United.

Borussia Mönchengladbach product Amin Younes and Chelsea loanee Bertrand Traore haven’t quite been stars, but they’re still good contributors on the wings. They’ll need to be even better than usual for Ajax to beat the Red Devils.

Ajax has always lost its top players but had youngsters ready to replace them, and this team will be no different.

If he starts on Wednesday, the spotlight will be on 17-year-old Matthijs de Ligt. He’s made quite a few high-profile errors — both for Ajax and in a Netherlands shirt — but that’s to be expected for someone his age. None of those errors appears to have shaken his confidence one bit, and the good usually outweighs the bad, so Bosz keeps playing him.

Last week, de Ligt was asked at a press conference how he felt about Ajax’s entire team costing less than Paul Pogba. His response was perfect:

De Ligt will become the youngest player to ever participate in any European final if he gets onto the pitch. He still has a lot to learn at Ajax and won’t be moving anywhere this summer, but he might already be the most famous name on this Ajax team.

One player who deserves a lot more attention than he gets outside the Netherlands is Davinson Sánchez, a 20-year-old Colombian center-back who’s much more likely to start than De Ligt. He’s been spectacular in his first season at Ajax after arriving from Atlético Nacional, a team he helped lead to a Copa Libertadores title. It seems unlikely that Ajax flips him after just one season — or that big clubs are already calling — but Sánchez will see his stock soar if he has a second straight great campaign.

Twenty-one-year-old goalkeeper André Onana was handed some big shoes to fill when Jasper Cillessen was sold to Barcelona, but he’s performed admirably in his first season as the starter. Onana made that same move in the other direction in 2015 before having a promising season-and-a-half as the Ajax B-team keeper. His improvement has been rapid, but like most young goalkeepers, he still has work to do technically and tactically. Still, he’s further along than anyone thought he would be at 21, and his physical talent gives him a limitless ceiling.

You’re likely to see less of David Neres, Justin Kluivert, Mateo Cassierra, Abdelhak Nouri, Václav Černý and Donny van de Beek in the Europa League final, but their times are coming. All are under 21, all have made their first team debut, and at least a couple of them will be on the bench on Wednesday. They’re the future stars of Ajax and should have increased roles next season after some of the current first-choice players move on.

This is to say nothing of the Ajax youth team stars who have yet to make their team debuts. There are more of them who have drawn rave reviews and earned youth international caps than we could possibly mention here.

But that’s always been the case at Ajax. The difference now is that they seem to have the right structure in place to be a little bit more than a conveyor belt for solid players who they can sell off for a nice profit. Van der Sar, Overmars, and Bosz appear to have the marketing, transfer business, and coaching expertise to keep Ajax relevant, even when they inevitably lose star players this summer.

Ajax might struggle against United on Wednesday, and they might not get back to another European final anytime soon. Still, they look likely to remain consistently relevant in European competition, something they haven’t been for over a decade.