Ajaxtalk

brigade zuid schreef:

Rishi schreef:Wanneer begint de kaartverkoop voor de JC-schaal?

die is al lang en breed begonnen.

Thijs schreef:Je zou wel eens gelijk kunnen krijgen, BZ...

brigade zuid schreef: Weet jij meer? hoeveel zijn er verkocht? Er zal nog wel wat bijkomen van de open dag bezoekers.

LADS LOOKING FORWARD TO GOING DUTCH

Tonight's game at Ajax represents something of a homecoming for two of Chelsea's young defenders, Dutchmen Patrick van Aanholt and Jeffrey Bruma.

Both players have come through our Academy after arriving in 2007, but are looking forward to a return to their homeland this evening for a friendly against one of Europe's most illustrious names.

Rotterdam-born Bruma, 18, was a keen follower of our opposition in his early years.

'I supported Ajax as a kid!' he told the Official Chelsea Website. 'I think from when I was born until about eight years old, but then I started to play for Feyenoord at six or seven, and at my first session I had my Ajax bag and shinpads, but after a year or two I changed to Feyenoord and followed their senior team.

'I remember people like Patrick Kluivert, Edgar Davids, Marc Overmars, I think the De Boers were there, Clarence Seedorf, what a team!

'I still watch Dutch football now, sometimes it is on ESPN so I try to watch it, and I look out for results on the internet to see who won and lost.'

Van Aanholt on the other hand grew up not far from Eindhoven, and so chose rivals PSV as his side.

'As a kid I supported PSV, and Ajax are a big rival as well as Feyenoord,' he said. 'All the sides down the years had great players, at PSV I liked Romario and Ajax had great players coming from the Academy.'

As youngsters stationed away from home, both are hoping tonight's game in the Amsterdam ArenA will provide a rare opportunity for friends and family to see them in action close-up.

'I think part of my family will be over, my mum, dad, brothers and sisters so I am looking forward to it,' said 19-year-old Van Aanholt. 'Playing back home will be special and I hope I can see my family, and that they enjoy seeing me play, it is always good to be backin my homeland.'

'It will be very nice to play against Ajax, and back in Holland as well,' Bruma added. 'I have friends and family coming to watch, it is nice for them to see me play and hopefully we can do well.

'Ajax is a good team, I don't know if they will have their World Cup players playing so there may be some younger players like us as well, I don't know if Luis Suarez, Gregory Van der Wiel and Maarten Stekelenburg will be there, but they are still a good side.'

In the Ajax squad is another Holland Under 21 defender, Daley Blind, who is well known to both Chelsea men and is the son of former defender and now Ajax director of football.

'His dad was Ajax right-back and played a lot for Holland, a very good player,' said Bruma.

'Daley can play centre-half, holding midfield, left-back and has played right-back on loan at Groningen. Now he is back at Ajax and he will be fighting to impress the coaches there, so I hope he does well.'

ARNESEN ON AJAX – PART TWO

Yesterday former Ajax captain and current Chelsea sporting director Frank Arnesen spoke about coming into the Ajax side of the 1970s and how the changing face of football affected that club.

In the second part of the interview he discusses the famous Ajax youth academy and how it has impacted on modern day Barcelona and the way the Chelsea Academy currently operates. He also discusses the stadium in which Chelsea play tonight...

There is no academy more famous in football than the one Ajax run, and the fact so many of their European Cup-winning sides were nurtured within it backs up its good name with solid success.

Of the side that won the Champions League in 1995 - the most recent lifting of the European Cup by the Amsterdam side, over half were academy products.

If any club is starting to match the reputation of the Ajax academy then it could be Barcelona who like Ajax in the 1970s are seeing a clutch of homegrown products transfer their abilities together onto the international stage.

That these two clubs can be compared is no coincidence according to Frank Arnesen whose first-hand knowledge of the Ajax youth set-up influences his current work.

'At Ajax it was always about the same idea,' the Chelsea sporting director explains.'It was always about the tactical and technical side, and the physical side will come naturally.

'If you were not strong then the answer was you play the ball quicker, you just play around the opponent, and Ajax was always a club that scouted players who were also good runners, who were elegant.

'They would never take a player who was only physically strong. It was never priority number one. It was always see how he can run, see how he can play. It was always about details and the players got better and better in the academy.'

Another advantage Ajax enjoyed was a population of three to four million in the city and its surrounding area, who if they were aspiring players, wanted to go to Ajax. There really was no competition for the best youngsters.

Players from the city of Utrecht less than 20 miles down the road such as Marco van Basten (pictured below) and Wesley Sneijder found Ajax a magnet too.

You know you can get a fantastic career there,' says Arnesen who relates the current Chelsea youth development system with the one he observed when he was an Ajax player.

'It did affect my thinking and this is something I also brought in when I was with PSV.'

Following his days on the pitch, Arnesen worked for a decade as technical director at another of Holland's biggest clubs - PSV Eindhoven.

'At PSV they played more or less 4-4-2,' he continues, 'but in those 10 years that I worked there we played 4-3-3 in the youth.

'This is also what I did here at Chelsea, I am not saying it is necessarily the best system but this is the system I know and I know it is very good for developing players. They have to think, they have to look around and they have to take good positions.

'The coaches have to believe it also because I am not there all the time, especially in the last year when I have also been with the first team, and we have done a lot of work on it.'

Arnesen gives huge credit to Johan Cruyff for what is now regarded a Barcelona way of playing football, the Dutch legend having enjoyed time as a player and a manager for both Ajax and the Catalan club.

Cruyff's time in charge at Camp Nou was so successful that its product was dubbed the 'Dream Team', a team that included current manager Pep Guardiola. Cruyff's coach at Ajax, Rinus Michels also managed both clubs.

'When Cruyff came back again to Barcelona he had a harder voice in the strategy of the club and then they had Louis van Gaal and even though he and Cruyff were maybe not the best friends, their philosophy of football was the same - they like to play attacking football, control the game and to control the game you have to have good possession and good technique.

'Then Frank Rijkaard was there five years so there was the Dutch school. Johan developed all the ideas and now the coaches of the youth are more or less coaches who have played for Barcelona, like Guardiola who was Under 16, Under 18 and then reserve coach and now Luis Enrique who is the reserve coach.

'You can see ex-players who know the system but it is not only the way they are playing, it is the way they are scouting the players.

'This is very interesting and this is what is started at Chelsea. When I came here I said I want to play 4-3-3 in the youth but I didn't force it.

'I was much more let's sit down and talk about it and people then bind in. Automatically things will start happening. Firstly you have to play out from the goalkeeper and so you will see if the goalkeeper can play football, then if the central defenders can play football, so automatically it is not just enough to be big, you have to play football as well.

'If you see the development in the last three years of our central defenders then they can all play football. If you play a controlled game but you make the combination with the heart and the fight of the English system then you ended up winning the Youth Cup like last year.'

On Friday Chelsea will take some of the young players developed by this thinking to the club where Arnesen observed much of what influences his thinking - but not to the stadium he knew.

The Amsterdam ArenA (pictured below) was opened in 1996 replacing two grounds that Ajax used to call home.

'We played all the games at De Meer except we played PSV, Feyenoord or European games in the Olympic Stadium where we had 65,000capacity,' he explains. 'In De Meer it was only 30,000 maximum but the pitch was always fantastic. We couldn't be beaten at home in De Meer.

'The first year they moved to the Amsterdam ArenA and started losing I was working for PSV and in nine years we were never beaten there.

'The magic of being at home had gone for them because it was not really their home and the pitch was awful at first.

'It is normal that you don't like to have changes and there was nostalgia about De Meer, but they became used to the change and the current stadium is amazing.'

D_skilled schreef:Dat zou heel goed kunnen. Belachelijke entreeprijzen voor Chelsea II (minus twee spelers) tegen het veredeld eerste elftal van Ajax. Dit is zeer waarschijnlijk de opstelling van Chelsea:

Turnbull
Cork - Bruma - van Aanholt - Bertrand
Mikel
Essien - Matic
Mceachran
Sturridge - DiSanto

joey schreef: Wat een affiche!

Wat is dit? De uitverkoop? Komt Chelsea echt met dit team?

D_skilled schreef:Ja, de grote jongens sluiten pas volgende week aan bij de groep. Franco Di Santo staat op de nominatie om verhuurd te worden. Wellicht bevalt hij Jol vanavond, kan die gelijk een akkoordje sluiten met oude bekende Frank Arnesen.

Die Mceachran is nog maar zeventien jaar oud. Staat te boek als een 'supertalent'.

Bertje schreef:Ieder weldenkend mens had kunnen bedenken dat de internationals van Chelsea er niet bij zouden zijn. Als je je bedrogen voelt is dat dus volledig je eigen schuld.

D_skilled schreef:
Die Mceachran is nog maar zeventien jaar oud. Staat te boek als een 'supertalent'.

Bertje schreef:Blijft staan dat je gerust zelf mag nadenken.

Bertje schreef:Blijft staan dat je gerust zelf mag nadenken.

brigade zuid schreef:Vind ik nergens op slaan, oke als je een wat meer doorgewinterde fan bent misschien, maar een gezinnetje wat gezellig naar de open dag gaat en nog even deze wedstrijd meepakt wordt gewoon genaaid hoor. Dat AJAX op de voorpagina van haar eigen website ook nog eens ff lekker iedereen opwarmt met Lampard & Co is ook een beetje matennaaierij vind ik.

gaizka schreef:Is ook al bekend welk Ajax we kunnen verwachten, doen bijvoorbeeld de internationals (behalve Suarez) mee?

Bertje schreef: Als je naar het theater gaat kijk je toch ook eerst wat voor voorstelling er speelt? Mensen die 'zomaar komen binnenwandelen' en dan gaan klagen dat ze niet krijgen wat ze hadden verwacht zijn niet goed bij hun hoofd.