Ajax

Netherlands · one of the fourteen clubs in the Normal pool

The only club in the Normal pool from outside the big five leagues, and one of the most influential in the history of the game. Ajax's teams of the early 1970s won three European Cups in a row and gave the world Total Football; their academy has supplied great players to every other club on this list.

The story in brief

1965–1973: Michels, Cruyff and Total Football

Rinus Michels took over in 1965 and, with the teenage Johan Cruyff at the centre of it, built a team in which players swapped positions freely and the whole side pressed and moved as one. Ajax won the league three years running, lost the 1969 European Cup final to Milan, and then won the trophy three times in a row: in 1971 against Panathinaikos at Wembley, in 1972 under Ștefan Kovács against Inter, as part of the treble, and in 1973 against Juventus. Johan Neeskens, Ruud Krol, Arie Haan, Piet Keizer and Sjaak Swart were all part of it. Cruyff left for Barcelona in 1973 and the team broke up soon after.

The 1980s: Cruyff again

Cruyff came back as a player in the early 1980s, when a young Marco van Basten was breaking into the team, and then returned as coach in 1985. His side, with van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and the teenage Dennis Bergkamp, won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1987.

The 1990s: Van Gaal's champions

Louis van Gaal's Ajax won the UEFA Cup in 1992 and then, in 1994–95, went through the entire Dutch league season unbeaten and won the Champions League, beating Milan in Vienna with a late goal from the eighteen-year-old Patrick Kluivert. Edwin van der Sar, the de Boer twins, Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf and Jari Litmanen were in the side. They reached the final again in 1996 and lost on penalties to Juventus, and within a couple of years the Bosman ruling, which let out-of-contract players leave for free, had scattered the team across Europe. The Georgian striker Shota Arveladze joined in 1997.

Since 2000

Ajax have kept winning Dutch titles and kept selling — Zlatan Ibrahimović, Wesley Sneijder, Luis Suárez, Christian Eriksen. Erik ten Hag's young side of 2018–19, with Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong and Hakim Ziyech, came within seconds of the Champions League final before a stoppage-time goal for Tottenham knocked them out.

Ajax in Treble Winner

Ajax are in the Normal pool but not in Easy. On Normal they come up in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s — which means the three-time European champions of the 1970s, Cruyff included, appear only on Hard.

Ajax in the game's pool, decade by decade.
Decade	Players	Best-XI rating	Rank	First on	Highest rated in the game
1960s	49	75.8	97	Hard	Piet Keizer, Johan Cruyff, Henk Groot
1970s	64	78.5	41	Hard	Johan Cruyff, Johan Neeskens, Ruud Krol
1980s	89	78.4	42	Normal	Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, Dennis Bergkamp
1990s	111	81.8	9	Normal	Edwin van der Sar, Dennis Bergkamp, Patrick Kluivert
2000s	165	75.8	96	Normal	Luis Suárez, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
2010s	166	76.3	89	Normal	Luis Suarez, Matthijs de Ligt, Frenkie de Jong
2020s	64	72.7	474	Normal	Dusan Tadic, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Hakim Ziyech

The game rates the 1990s as Ajax's best decade by a distance — one of the strongest cells in the game — with the 1970s and 1980s level behind it. After 2000 the club's best players tend to be the ones it sold, and the 2000s, 2010s and especially the 2020s are much weaker.

Drafting tips

The 1990s cell is a full team. Van der Sar, Frank de Boer, Davids, Seedorf, Litmanen, Kluivert, Bergkamp: there is someone good for almost every shirt.
Cruyff and Krol cross three decades, the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, so on Hard you get more than one chance at each.
Re-spin out of the 2020s. It is the weakest Ajax cell by some way, and on Normal the reels can still land there.