According to André Onana, a conversation with Josep Guardiola in 2019 contributed to Ajax’s stunt in the Champions League against Real Madrid. The team of trainer Erik ten Hag surprisingly won the return match in the Santiago Bernabéu with 1-4. Guardiola gave Onana a pep talk prior to that game, which his teammates would eventually hear.
Ajax lost the first leg against Madrid at the time with 1-2. Due to a late winning goal by Marco Asensio, the team from Amsterdam had a bad starting position for the return. Onana spoke to his former coach Guardiola before the game. “I had been to the Manchester City game against Schalke in Germany and there I spoke with Guardiola about the return,” Onana said in an interview with The Daily Mail. “He laughed and said, ‘André, you’re in the ideal position. If you had won the first game, you wouldn’t know whether to defend or attack in Madrid. Since you have already lost, all you can do now is win. So go to Madrid and give everything.'”
Onana was inspired by Guardiola’s words and decided to share the Spanish manager’s pep talk with the Ajax players group. “That’s exactly what I told the team. We could win or lose, but no matter what, we would go to sleep like champions. And then the first two shots on target were actually goals. You don’t even dare dream about that.’ Ajax won a visit to Real in the Santiago Bernabéu thanks to goals from Hakim Ziyech, David Neres, Dusan Tadic and Lasse Schöne in the end with 1-4.
Ajax then settled with Juventus in the quarterfinals, but the semifinals turned out to be the final station in the Champions League in the 2018/19 season. Lucas Moura plunged the team from Amsterdam into mourning on behalf of Tottenham Hotspur with a goal in the last second of the return. “I still haven’t watched that match again,” Onana says. “It’s painful. I can’t even tell you who scored in the final. I was on a flight to the United States because I didn’t want to get any of it.”
Moura’s decisive goal still hurts Onana a lot. “Everyone cried,” the goalkeeper recalls. “The ball boys, the staff. We (the players, ed.) went to the locker room and couldn’t even talk. When we went home we couldn’t sleep and the next day at training we had no courage or motivation to do anything. If you lose 3-0 and the opponent was just better, that’s fine. But to lose at the last second…”