Dusan Tadic, Daley Blind and Davy Klaassen are the most important players of Ajax, as it sounds in the program Studio Football of the NOS. Thanks to a 4-0 victory over FC Emmen, the team from Amsterdam secured the 35th national title in club history. Pierre van Hooijdonk states that bringing in Tadic has been ‘the best purchase of the last decades in Dutch football’.
Presenter Sjoerd van Ramshorst asks at the table in the talk show who was the best player at Ajax in the past season. “Davy Klaassen and very shortly after that Daley Blind:” answers Van Hooijdonk. “But I found Klaassen in particular to be phenomenal this year. If you make it 1-0 for your team nine times … We are talking about his scoring ability, he is able to give assists. He can also play controlling. It is an extension for the trainer. The booster, he has that poison. As a trainer you embrace such a player, because this is what you want in your team. ”
“For me it was between Daley Blind and Dusan Tadic. At Ajax everything starts with Blind, a player with so much quality on the ball. Nobody talks about his defensive weaknesses. The balls he gives cannot give that many players ”, says Ibrahim Afellay. Van Hooijdonk is mainly very pleased with Tadic, who scored 22 goals and 25 assists in 48 games this season. “This is the best purchase in Dutch football in recent decades. This is his third season and he has been performing great at this level for three years, I think that’s amazing. ”
“It has been a masterstroke by Ajax to get Blind and Tadic. That will pay off in the long run. The talents that emerge are taken by the hand by those two experienced guys and you can see that it is solid as a rock ”, Afellay emphasizes. Van Ramshorst asks Sjors Ultee, trainer of Fortuna Sittard, who is also present, which Ajax player he prefers to watch.
“Daley Blind”, is Ultee’s answer. “When we played against Ajax, I consciously made the choice to put our striker on him. When he touches the ball, the ball passes between the lines and the free man is found. I think he is so extremely good on the ball. He dares to wait just a second, so that there is free space. It was nice to see Blind, Klaassen and Tadic standing together during the presentation of the bowl. Then you wonder: who is actually the captain? They have three players who are so far above the rest of the Eredivisie. That is typical of the predominance that Ajax now has. ”