After making 29 crosses in Sunday's 2-1 Eredivisie victory and connecting with just five, the coach must adopt a new attacking style if his team are to regain the title
Having come under immense scrutiny and criticism over the last two years, Frank de Boer is under pressure and in a period which could well shape his career as a coach. Despite making history as the first trainer to win four consecutive Eredivisie titles with Ajax, his reputation has taken a battering of late as Phillip Cocu’s PSV proved too much to make it five in a row, and the Eindhoven side are in better shape this year again.
After seeing PSV take over at the top of the league in recent weeks, Ajax’s challenge for the league title is in danger. And if De Boer is going to add a further spark into it, then Sunday’s 2-1 win over Feyenoord must teach him a lesson or two, though the key moments were perhaps not part of his initial plan.
Only two years ago, De Boer was seen as one of Europe’s most promising coaches, but his lack of development has caused some cause for concern.
His team has become slow and lacking creativity and the former national team captain has shown few signs of finding a way to inspire them.
The current campaign has been particularly dismal. Despite not losing any key players in the summer – a rare luxury for an Ajax boss – his team have been impotent in attack. With players easily isolated and the forwards disconnected from each other, they have been limp and too easily kept at bay by well organised teams.
Dropping points against PSV, Roda JC and Utrecht showed their real deficiencies, but they have been able to rely on luck at times to see them emerge victorious against smaller teams. To add to that, their European campaign was a shambles from start to premature finish.
Ajax have been developing into a one-dimensional team, plagued by making too many crosses – which tend to lack any accuracy – and a strict aversion to taking risks in passing and creating chances.
It was again so in the Amsterdam Arena in the big derby match. The home side made 29 crosses – 22 coming in open play – but they connected with just five. Despite that, they were able to emerge with three points.
And the way their two goals came about must show De Boer that there is a more efficient way to threaten and, crucially, get the best out of his key players.
With Ajax trailing, captain Davy Klaassen took the ball on the left side of the pitch and spotted the run of Amin Younes into the half space in the box. The midfielder played a neat, instinctive pass into his path and the German attacker’s close, Velcro-like control allowed him to dribble from the byline, take it into the centre and slot past Kenneth Vermeer, pulling them level.
Even the second – a blistering strike from outside the box from teenage sensation Riechedly Bazoer – gave something to think about, as Younes again drifted inside to take the ball on and, covered by three defenders, saw it nudged on to the midfielder who blasted it in.
Their focus through the central always opened up more effective chances than the hoofs into the box from the flanks from the likes of Mitchell Dijks and Lasse Schone, yet still they did not exploit it enough and instead stuck by a wasteful tactic.
De Boer, though, stands by his strategy of a wing-heavy play.
"You want to always get the ball to the man in red," he said in his press conference when asked about his team’s ineffective crosses. "It’s difficult when the opponent is organised. You have to do much better.
"If they play like this, you have to put the ball behind the defence earlier. Normally with a cross if you win the second ball, you can get into dangerous situations. The quality of Younes is to score goals in small spaces. If you win those duels, then suddenly you have people around the ball, you win that and then you can open a chance.
"There will be chances, it will drop for your feet, if you don’t search for that luck then nothing will happen for you."
But it seems misguided for a team of Ajax’s calibre to rely on the luck of the second ball.
Younes, a tricky winger with neat dribbling ability, is rarely afforded the freedom to open up those chances by cutting inside when they attack down the left as it inevitably ends at the feet of Dijks who blasts it into the box.
El Ghazi, a powerful and precocious winger, is so easily dealt with because of a lack of support through the centre and is forced to send it in from the flanks. It is the main weapon of a team dominating possession, but it is blunt and they are rarely doing enough with it.
Klaassen is Ajax’s biggest gem in midfield and can carve out chances with his passing. Freeing up the likes of Younes, El Ghazi and Viktor Fischer to move inside would give this team a new dimension to their attack.
Alas, it has not been utilised enough and unless De Boer uses this game as a lesson to explore a more risky and intelligent set up, then he could yet again see Cocu’s PSV storm to another title.
De Boer is likely to move on to another team at the end of the season. With Premier League teams on alert and interested in him, he must begin to impress if he is to attract the lucrative jobs he looked destined for in his early years. He may have made history with Ajax, but unless he challenges himself to come up with new ideas, his future will not be so bright.
- Goal